| A message from our
Minister ........................
Thank you for spending time looking at The Heath
Church. We are a very welcoming group of people, some have lived in
Runcorn all their lives, others have moved to the area through career
changes. Some people like formal worship, others more informal, we try to
embrace all styles with our various services.
I have been a Minister in Runcorn since 1997, but I
have only had Pastoral care of The Heath for just over a year, so we are
still getting to know each other. I have discovered some lovely people who
are eager to share their faith with others, and who encourage those who
are finding life difficult. I hope that you come along and experience this
for yourselves.
We are seeking to find the ways in which God wants to
use us in this area to serve the people of the present generation. We
all have so many influences on our lives and we need a firm anchor on
which we can rely and by which we can measure how we should be living.
Margaret
A View From The Manse
In the Gospel
reading for today, Matthew 15 : 10 -28, we see Jesus teaching a group of
people in which there are a large number of Pharisees present. We are told
that the Pharisees took offence at his words. The Pharisees were very
strict Jews who tried to live according to the law of Moses. If this had
been all then Jesus should have found them his greatest allies, but their
strict adherence to the law meant that they were blind to the full
meaning.
The Pharisees kept the letter of the law but not always
the spirit. For a Pharisee to keep the letter of the law it was very
important to him what he ate and what he drank and all the washing rituals
with the various dishes etc.. Jesus told them that what really matters
isn't whether a person eats a forbidden food, eg. an animal with webbed
feet, but what is in their hearts. What is in the heart can leads to all
kinds of evil.
What we say to people, how we are seen to be treating
others, says so much more about what our faith means to us than how we
stand or sit or kneel to say our prayers. Do people see real love and
caring coming from our lives and know that we believe and serve a God who
is loving and caring? The proof of our relationship with God is shown by
how we live our daily lives.
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