Christ Church Huntingdon Blog

 Click here for audio Good morning. My name is Charlie Newcombe, I'm the minister at CCH.  Last month, a report was published analysing the countries of the world for how they are doing with their mental health. Those who instigated this report have found that in general after the Covid lockdowns there wasn’t a recovery in wellbeing as might have been expected, but that globally we have sunk to a new low. And specifically for those of us living in the UK, the UK came 2 nd from the bottom of the list for its mental health quotient, and bottom of the list for the percentage of people distressed or struggling with 35% of those interviewed saying that they were distressed or struggling. Why is that? Why are we statistically more unhappy even than those living in Ukraine? Those in Latin America and Africa are far happier than us. Well someone might claim that we are talking about mental health a lot more than before, and so the stats have gone up. And actually that’s a good th

  Audio recording here .  Good morning and welcome to Thought for the Day. It was a big shock to learn on Friday evening that Kate, the Princess of Wales has been diagnosed with cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy. And this only a few weeks after King Charles was having cancer treatment. It’s deeply upsetting. I guess there’s a part of us that looks at the royals and thinks that they live in a kind of fairytale story where life is always good and always has a happy ending. But it’s not. We’ve seen from the loss of the Queen and Prince Philip, difficulties between Harry and his family, and of course the tragic death of the former Princess of Wales, Diana, that no family is immune from suffering. The good news is that it seems her surgery was successful and the treatment is preventative, which sounds like there is every hope that she will make a full recovery. But Kate’s openness and honesty will have done a great deal to help others who are facing similar things. And perhaps there’s

  Click here for Audio.  I just called to say I love you/ Somebody to love you/ When a man loves a woman/ Can’t buy me love/ Love Shack/ Love in an elevator/ Can’t help falling in love/ Got a whole lotta love/ Sunshine of your love/ All you need is love/ It’s the theme of a thousand songs, it’s the name of 29 albums, it’s the title of 20 films, it’s the name of 12 places in the US (according to Wikipedia), it will be the subject of a thousand conversations today, there’s even a crater on the moon named after it. I’m talking about love. We talk about falling in love, staying in love, being in love, falling out of love. We love to love and long to be loved. But what is love? Do we actually know what it is? For some Love is spelled L U S T . LUST. As one song puts it “let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel”. Well we won’t go into details there as this is a family show, but surely there’s more to love than lust. How many people have thought they found love, when actually t

Audio Recording here .    Good morning and Happy Valentine’s Day!   A couple of years ago, the Guardian ran an article on Valentines Day disasters as seen by waiters. Apparently, waiters see all kinds of interesting things on Valentines’ day. One thing is that guys often try to overimpress their dates by complaining about the wine to try and show off. One particular guy complained that the cork had been damaged but the waiter had to explain that it was a screw top bottle [1] . Well I hope you don’t have a Valentines Day disaster. Having met my wife in my thirties, for many years, the only valentine’s card I got was from my mum. She always signed it with a question mark, but I knew it was from her from the handwriting on the envelope, but it was reassuring to get nevertheless. She actually signed it in pencil so that I could reuse the card sometime! Well whether you are in the excitement of romance right now, or whether Valentine’s day is a tough day for you, can I tell you some g

  Good morning and welcome to today’s Thought for the Day entitled “At the end of the day”. Now I wonder if when you were growing up as a child, you had a little routine before bedtime. Some kids after tea get a bath and then a story and then after they have tried to delay things a little, they eventually get tucked in with a kiss. Some of us may even have had a prayer somewhere in the routine, even if it was “God bless mummy, God bless daddy, God bless my little brother and God bless the dog”. I wonder if had a prayer in your bedtime routine? Maybe you never had a religious upbringing, and perhaps the only time you prayed was when an exam was coming up, or to get out of trouble. But many people do pray, and many have the same prayer each night. When I was growing up we used the following little song as a prayer. “At the end of the day I kneel and pray, thank you Lord for my work and pray, I’ve tried to be good for I know that I should, that’s my prayer at the end of the day”. It’s a

Audio can be heard  here .    My thought for the day today is entitled “New year’s revolutions ”. Yes you heard me right, not New Year’s resolutions, but “new year’s revolutions ”. You will be familiar with new year’s resolutions. They are all well and good… ·         Lose some weight ·         stop smoking ·         go to the gym The trouble with new year’s resolutions is that they are so hard to keep. Maybe that’s why I found a list of these slightly easier to accomplish new years resolutions on the internet… ·         Go to a Weight watchers group and eat a bag of crisps during the break ·         Give yourself a high five no matter what number you read when you step on the scales. Or these slightly more wacky New year’s resolutions… ·         Sing instead of speaking for a whole day. ·         Run a half marathon backwards ·         Love yourself as much as Lizzo loves herself. ·         Dance in a public place as if no-one is watching! But the trouble wit

  (Photo John Lewis & Partners here ) Thankyou Peter. My thought for the day today is entitled “Christmas adverts”. I don’t know about you, but one of the fun things to look out for in your Christmas TV viewing is the adverts. There have been some great ones over the years. - Mrs Claus- M&S 2016. - Monty the Penguin, John Lewis 2018 - Kevin the Carrot from Aldi (most years!) My particular favourite is Excitable Edgar from John Lewis 2019. You might remember that Edgar was a little dragon, and unfortunately he kept ruining Christmas. You see the trouble with Dragons is that they breath fire, and fire and Christmas trees, or ice skaters or snowmen don’t really mix. In fact Edgar is a bit of a liability, and he ends up hiding himself away. Except a little red haired girl called Ava takes pity on him and goes after him. To the tune of “I can’t fight this feeling any longer” Edgar arrives at the banquet, and everyone ducks for cover. Is he going to burn the place down and ruin Chris