Isleworth Congregational Church
Twickenham Road, Isleworth, Middlesex, TW7 7EU, United Kingdom
by Rev. Antony W. Ball As I type this, our Harvest Supper is scheduled for tomorrow evening but, by the time you read this, it will have taken place and will, I trust, have been enjoyed – although it’s unlikely that there’ll be as many of us as in this photograph. It’s one of the […]
Read on...by Rev. Antony W. Ball . You have not seen Him, yet you love Him;and trusting in Him now without seeing Him,you are transported with a joy too great for words,while you reap the harvest of your faith,that is, salvation for your souls. 1 Pet i 8,9 NEB At a first reading, that phrase ‘harvest […]
Read on...by Rev. Antony W. Ball Before writing my newsletter article each month, I routinely check what I wrote that month on the previous three years – trying to avoid, of course, repeating myself too often, which is a particular danger around the time of ‘annual’ events like harvest or advent. Last year I wrote… …to […]
Read on...by. Rev. Antony W. Ball …they were afraid as they entered the cloud, and from it came a voice‘This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to Him.’ Lk ix 34b,35 NEB “Listen to Him.” You can’t get a much simpler instruction than that. Peter, James and John were witnessing an extraordinary event – the transfiguration1. […]
Read on...by Rev. Antony W. Ball Only in Luke’s Gospel do we find the story of Zacchaeus, whom Luke introduces as a “superintendent of taxes and very rich”. Tax collectors were not very popular in those days – that’s probably not changed much over the years – but in New Testament times there were very definite […]
Read on...by Rev. Antony W. Ball That’s what this diagram is called, according to the famous ‘Wikipedia’ – I’ve long been familiar with it without knowing its name – and, the encyclopedia tells us: “The Shield is not generally intended to be a schematic diagram of the structure of God, but it presents a series of […]
Read on...by Rev. Antony W. Ball This is an ultra-traditional depiction of the ascension, which St. Luke mentions twice1, but is not really described in scripture. Such artistic representations as this must inevitably be offered in a spirit of “as good a guess as any”, because we are not actually told anything about Jesus’ appearance – […]
Read on...by Rev. Antony W. Ball Trouble is, we don’t even know for sure who that ‘disciple who had reached the tomb first’ was, we’re just told that ‘he saw and believed’. We think it might have been the apostle John (the writer of the Gospel) who mysteriously refers a couple of times1 to ‘the disciple […]
Read on...by Rev. Antony W. Ball Twice in his letters in the New Testament1, St. Paul compares Jesus with Adam, but the comparison is not immediately obvious apart from the scriptural claim that neither had a human father – and there’s more to it than just that. According to the creation story in Genesis2, Adam’s disobedience […]
Read on...by Rev. Antony W. Ball In ‘free’ or ‘independent’ or ‘nonconformist’ Churches like ours we tend not to make such a ‘big deal’ out of Lent – the season leading up to Easter – as they do in Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches. I’m not sure why that should be except, of course, that being […]
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