​Tom is on holiday this week having a well earned rest. Matthew Ritchie,  who many of you will remember as a student at Sherbrooke Mosspark,  is standing in for Tom. Congratulations to Matthew who has been invited to preach as sole nominee for the parish of Neilston next week. If you need to contact Matthew please phone the office, if no reply phone me on 0141 427 2117. Marie Baird Session Clerk

During this long period of lockdown due to the coronavirus bug, most of usat some time have had to self-isolate, whether this has been for a few weeks, or as in my case, right up to the present moment!
As ever, the members of the general public have been asked what they havebeen doing to fill their time when they could not go out to work, or toattend social events, or simply just being able to visit a neighbour for acup of tea and a chat!   And in most cases, the answers have been quite simple - people have taken up baking which perhaps they did not do before, or sewing or knitting, or redecorating their homes.   And again, in most cases, these activities were very rarely tackled, or had probably not been done before at all!

So now we come to me!   What did I get up to (and am still getting up to!)during this time?   Well, I have been playing the piano now for more than seventy years, so started doing a bit more of that.   Then, I have always been a knitter, and have quite a large stock of unused wool, so, yes, I started knitting again, but not sensible things like jumpers, or socks!  Oh no!  I decided to knit cuddly toys for children!   To start off with, most of these were little teddy bears, which effectively were made up of forty-eight little squares sewn together (diamond fashion), and the faces, hands and feet were knitted in white to distinguish them from the rest, while the rest of each toy was made up of two different colours!   This was huge fun...for a while...then I got bored (which I do rather easily) having knitted quite a few "mummy" teddies, then cut down the stitches used to form babies.    While still knitting, I then turned to knitting octopuses - or octopi, to be more correct - and again, this was good fun, knitting them mainly in white wool, where their eight legs had black boots, coloured socks, then the remainder of the leg in white!   They all had hats on (with pom-poms on top) as well as a scarf round each neck.   Once again, I cut the number of stitches down and made baby octopi!   Then I discovered a very simple pattern for caterpillars, so a couple of these got knitted........so now my couch is like a menagerie, totally covered in little knitted animal
toys.

What next?   Well, I have always enjoyed writing little stories, and in
years gone by would add a little story at the end of the church magazine, ostensibly for the kids, but in all honesty, most of the readers were adults, who seemed to enjoy them.   So I started writing again, creating new characters like Porridge-the-dog, and Blackie, a Scottish Terrier, and human characters like Davina (a tomboy)...then again after getting a wee bit bored with that, started writing little verses about anything and everything which popped into my head - be it things which were in the news, the weather, going out in the rain and so on, there now being seventy of these in my pending file!!

And this is still going on, and on, and on, and on....   And that - or
rather those are the things which I have been getting up to at this time!
How about you??

​Revelation 18:1-10,19-20
A colourful depiction of the fall of Rome, "the whore of Babylon". John saw the excesses and cruelty of Rome as the cause of her downfall.  Check the website for more on the "thought for today "

​3rd John 9-12.
John is warning the community about the behaviour of Diotrephes a man who seeks to control the local church fellowship.

Life and Work in 1940
12/10/2020


Lockdown could be said to have some benefits.  For example, it’s an opportunity to go through all that STUFF that has been waiting for some attention.  While going through a box of papers belonging to my late mum, I came across an issue of Life and Work, dated November 1940 and price twopence.  My mum had held onto it, as in those days, her church, Carfin Church of Scotland, adopted the practice of inserting a “Magazine Supplement” into every edition, and this one contained the notice of her marriage to my dad, David Dick Livingstone, on 12th October, 1940  (It should be noted that they were married for some time before I arrived on the scene..)
Given the date of publication, of course Life and Work contained references to War, but the interesting thing is the lack of emphasis upon it, with articles headed “The Tall Tenements – the Problem of the Single Room House” and “Sunday Returns to the Countryside”.  Close to home, “Expanding Horizons” by the Rev. Geo. J. Jeffrey, B.D., of Sherbrooke Church, Glasgow, is an article on a conference that he had recently attended. A notable quote from this article, with reference to his experience in his new charge, was,
The Sundays loom up with devastating regularity and insatiable demand.
Gosh.
In those days, the cost of producing Life and Work must have been supported by advertising income, but some of the ads wouldn’t stand up to today’s level of scrutiny – for example, who would have thought that Peek Frean’s Crispbread would give you Ironclad Nerves?  And the claims for Phyllosan Revitalizing, Rejuvenating Tablets have to be seen to be believed!

​Jude 17-25
Jude condemns some within the faith community who, by their actions and beliefs, are threatening the faith.

​St John 11:45-57
The plot to kill Jesus after the raising of Lazarus.  The authorities dont know how to cope with Jesus so rather than engage they plot to kill.