Breaking Barriers

October 2025

Signs warning some types of people not to enter.  A fear of being defiled by those who behave differently or eat different foods.  Derogatory names for other people groups and pride that ‘we’re not like them’. 

I’m talking about the deep divisions in the 1st Century between men and women, slave and free, and supremely between Jew and Gentile - the temple in Jerusalem had walls and warnings to keep certain groups out of the central areas.

But I could have been speaking about our 21st Century world, where deep divisions still lead to disdain, angry messages, shouting and threats, sticks or bullets.

If we despair of an end to all this we should remember the remarkable reconciliation seen in the 1st Century in fledgling congregations of believers in Jesus Christ.  The tensions didn’t disappear overnight; the New Testament records several disputes between Gentile Christians and Jewish Christians – in one case fuelled by the hypocrisy of the apostle Peter!  And down the centuries there have been many examples of Christians failing to treat each other as brothers.

But the New Testament also shows the Gospel message itself defusing the hostility.  The Jewish believers learnt that they were not rescued from God’s judgment by their keeping of Old Testament laws but only by putting their trust in the death of Christ on their behalf.  And the Gentile believers learnt that they were reconciled to God in exactly the same way.  There could be no boasting from either.  And so, standing together in prayer, sitting under the authority of God’s Word preached, breaking bread and sharing the cup on exactly the same terms, the great dividing wall of the day was torn down, along with all other divisions that spring from human pride.

Today this can still be seen in local churches where fellow servants of Christ kneel, sit and stand together with others from completely different walks of life and parts of the world.  In the DNA of the church is hope for true peace.  Christ’s ‘purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace’ (Ephesians 2:15)

Sincerely

Graham Burrows

When can I retire?

September 2025

Dear Friends

When I arrived in Holme and Burton 12 years ago and began to get to know the villages and the congregations I discovered that a man called Medwin Sherriff, already in his 80s, was doing a lot of things in Holme.  Nobody seemed to know how long he had had these roles but the time was measured in decades rather than years.

That applied to him serving on the Parish Council, and as Chairman of the Parish Council, but also to his editing of the Holme Parish Newsletter, a mix of church news and other village news – the rough equivalent for Holme of ‘Burton News’ in the other place.  Medwin told me that he’d been asked to edit the newsletter by a vicar who was so far back in the history of the church that (as a newcomer) I’d never heard of him.  Medwin had edited the newsletter, year after year, ever since.

We’ve got very used to the idea of retirement – both from paid jobs but also from unpaid roles.  Sometimes we have to stop, but we can also just reach a point where we say, “I’ve done my part, someone else can do this hard work now!” 

The Bible certainly teaches us that work has been frustratingly difficult right from the fall of man onwards, but Jesus also tells us that work is fundamentally good because he knows that God, his Father, is always at his work (Jn 5:17).

Medwin seems to have understood that very well, as he continued labouring to the best of his ability, in the service of others, and encouraged and supported by his wife, Molly, until he really couldn’t work anymore.

Medwin Sherriff died at home on 17 July, aged 94.  His funeral was held at Holy Trinity Holme on Friday 15 August.  I thank God for Medwin, for his steady energy and hard work, and for the great encouragement and help that he was to me, and so many others.

Sincerely

Graham Burrows

When hope returns

August 2025 

Dear Friends,

“We need hope … For a person to have no hope just sucks the blue out of every sky” (Max Lucado).

We all want to be sure that the things we are doing today are going to make our lives, or the lives of those we care about, better.  If we don’t have that hope, why do anything at all?  “Hope is a spark inside you that brings a smile to your lips, a light that shows on your face, a feeling that lifts your head and pulls you forward.”  That’s why dashed hopes are so hard to bear and why hopelessness is so destructive.

The word on the street is that some young adults are discovering hope in one man, a man that their great grandparents knew well but who was buried under an avalanche of ‘liberating’ ideas, experiences and new ways of living in the 20th Century.  The promised liberation was elusive, but some of the children and grandchildren of those whose lives were engulfed by cruel despair are once again finding hope in Jesus Christ and his radical call. 

‘Hope Explored’ is a brilliant and clear explanation of the things that our culture has forgotten – the hope that Jesus offers – and the evidence for thinking that this is not just wishful-thinking nonsense but a “joyful expectation for the future, based on true events in the past, which changes everything about my present”.

‘Hope Explored’ is an informal three-week course.  It’s for anyone who wants to find hope, peace and purpose in life, whatever your age or circumstances.  The next group of explorers will be meeting on three Wednesday evenings beginning on 6th August.  It’s not too late to join us and you will be very welcome.  Do please ring, email or text me if you want to ask more or to let me know that you are interested in joining us. 

Sincerely

Graham Burrows

Under His Wings

July 2025

Dear Friends

Take your dog through a field of sheep at this time of year and listen to the noise as lambs are quickly recalled to the safety of their mother’s side!  This desire to protect offspring is seen across the animal world and we feel it too.

When danger comes near, parents instinctively search for their little ones and wrap their arms around them.  When children go missing, or when they begin to treat their parents as ‘the enemy’, the deeply-felt longing is to be able to hug them once again.

God thinks like that too.  He speaks of ‘finding’ his child Israel in the desert and shielding and caring for him like a eagle spreading its wings over its young. (Deuteronomy 32:10-11)

And Jesus was the same.  When he thought about how the people of Jerusalem had distanced themselves from him and his Father he wept for them.   "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” (Luke 13:34 19:41)

What could draw us back to our Creator when we know we have distanced ourselves from him?  Does this powerful image of our heavenly Father’s grief over his missing children and his longing to gather you up again move you?

And if you’ve never felt that God was a Father to you then take a look at the astonishing Bible account of Ruth.  She was from the people of Moab who were no friends of God’s people.  Tragically widowed as a young woman she decides to count the people of her Israelite mother-in-law as her own.  Boaz, who eventually marries her, declares: “May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge." (Ruth 2:12)

It was a homecoming to a home and a Father that she never knew she had!

Sincerely

Graham Burrows

At the Top

June 2025

Dear Friends

What would you say is most needed for a country, or a family, to thrive?  Hard work and enterprise?  Law and order?  Compassion and kindness? 

These are all good in their proper place but we’re wrong to assume that we human beings can fix our problems on our own, without reference to the God who designed us and runs our world.  That would be like assuming that any problems with our car can be fixed from the driving seat without lifting the bonnet.  The problem, and the answer, goes deeper.

If God has more than a little to do with our thriving or not-thriving then I suggest that our most-needed list should be topped by these:

First, Grace.  In the Bible this means not ‘graceful’ but rather the undeserved kindness of God.  He gives or withholds (as he chooses) – rain, crops, business success, family happiness, good government, military strength, health, sanity, and life itself.  Since every breath we take is a gift from God it follows that no person, family or nation can survive or thrive without our Creator’s gracious giving.  No man has ever given to Him but every man receives all he has from Him.

And second, Faith, which is not the ability to believe in unfounded myths but simply means ‘trust’.  Faith is the conviction that God is trustworthy and so we can rely on every word of his Word, the Bible.  We like to think that we live in a scientific age where we have personally proved all facts but in reality nearly everything we know comes from the testimony of those who we trust.

Faith is the natural partner to grace.  God gives; faith is the holding out of our hands to receive.  Faith takes us from grumbling to gratitude, from self-justification to confession of our faults, from self-sufficiency to dependence on God’s provision, from pride to humility, from disobedience to obedience, from worry to trust.

Even if you’ve never done this before why not ask God to give what you need, and to give you the open hands of faith to receive his gift?  Ask for yourself, for your family, for our nation.  Jesus tells us that God his Father loves to give good gifts like the best of fathers.  (Matthew 7:7-11)

Sincerely

Graham Burrows

A Great Boon

 
June 2025

Dear Friends

Later in May we are holding ‘Boon Days’ at both churches to which you are warmly invited.  I had never heard of this term until we moved here 11 years ago.  I knew that a ‘boon’ was something very helpful in life but not that ‘boon day’ meant a day of work without pay, including those days when neighbours got together to help each other out.  Farmers told me that there was a tradition of helping each other with tasks that needed many hands – boon days would be held in turn on different farms and they would all go to help each other.  Those were special days because working together is better than working alone.

So our church boon days are an invitation to come and help look after the village church and, especially, the churchyard.  We ask for help because we know that many value these historic and beautiful spaces in our villages, and because the buildings and churchyards are available to the whole village, for worship and prayer, for weddings and funerals, and for the burial and remembrance of much-loved relatives. 

In England each local church has to provide the funds and manpower to look after its own building and churchyard – that is why a fee is charged for every burial (whether full or of ashes) and for introducing memorial stones or for adding an inscription to an existing stone.  Your payments help us to maintain the churchyards while the rest of the money comes from the gifts of our congregation members and sometimes from generous legacies.  Mowers and their fuel and maintenance are expensive, as are the services of professionals like tree surgeons.  Our churchyards are looked after by a small number of volunteers who work very hard to maintain these large areas with all the challenges of mowing around graves and walls.

Our Boon Days run from 10am – 1pm on 17^th May (Burton) and 24^th May (Holme)   All help is welcome even for a short time.  If you can bring gardening equipment that is helpful but we also have some available.  It is an encouragement to those who usually maintain the buildings and grounds when a good number of us give a few hours to tackle the parts that they cannot reach.  Be a boon!

Sincerely

Graham Burrows

A Good Day?

April 2025

Dear Friends,

“What is wrong with the world?”  If I asked you all this question I would receive a large assortment of answers!  Whatever you think of the Bible, its ancient answer does make sense of the world that we live in:  

We are created to be God’s ambassadors, his agents in his world.  What’s gone wrong is that we don’t want the job.  We would rather serve a different ‘god’, one who doesn’t restrict us or expect us to serve him, a ‘god’ who leaves us free to pursue comfort, wealth, approval, success or self-indulgence.  We might say our family is all that matters to us, or the good of the nation or the planet, or we might be fully committed to an ‘ism’ – they can all be ways of serving the goals we choose.  

Our hymns are ‘I did it my way’ and ‘No-one tells me how to live my life’ but a whole world of people pursuing their own agenda leads to the darkness that we experience – irritation, selfishness and loneliness through to hatred, violence and war.  Darkness with glimpses of light that make our hearts ache with a deep sense that life should be better than this.  ‘Do whatever makes you happy’ does not make us happy.

And the relationship that is most damaged is with our Creator – we want life and all his other gifts but not his authority over us.  How could we complain if swift judgment followed?

How amazing then if our Lord should don our garb and wade in to take our mess on himself.  “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.”  That tree was the cross from which Jesus cried out as he allowed God’s wrath at our sin to fall on him, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!”

Thorns – a symbol of creation against us – were made into a crown and pressed into Jesus’ head.  Iron – a gift in the rocks from our Creator – was shaped into nails to kill him.

And that terrible day became known as ‘Good Friday’.

Sincerely

Graham Burrows