In a huge universe God can seem far away

This week Nasa has outlined plans to revisit the moon, with a target date of 2024. This time they hope to put both a man and a woman on the moon. They have further plans, if all goes well, to extract water ice from the moon which could be made into rocket fuel, a cheaper option than carting it all the way from earth. There’s even a plan to build a base camp there to enable further exploration.

As someone who has always been entranced by the idea of space travel and

New ministry of deacons to be celebrated across the Diocese

New Church of England curates are to be ordained locally as deacons this autumn in an extensive sequence of seventeen parish-wide celebrations across the Diocese (19 September – 9 October). the wonders of the universe, I will be following the progress of this latest Nasa project with interest.

I’ve recently moved house and where I now live, there are no street lights. The sky at night is so very dark and the stars are shining and endless.

I wonder if you’ve ever had one of those moments where you look up at the night sky and feel so very small and insignificant. You wonder how the universe can go on forever, and how human life can possibly be sustained.

The first astronauts to land on the

The Ordination of deacons is usually a highlight of the summer in the Diocese of Chichester but the Cathedral event in June with its huge crowds simply was not viable this year.

This year’s individual ordinations to be held in parish churches across Brighton & Hove and East and West Sussex will be led by the Bishop of Chichester, Dr Martin Warner and the newly consecrated suffragan bishops of Horsham and Lewes moon in 1969 were struck by the fragility of the earth, and also by its beauty, as they looked back at our planet from the surface of the moon. Life does indeed feel fragile in this time of pandemic, environmental threat and global inequality.

One of those first visitors to the moon, Buzz Aldrin of Apollo 11, marked the extraordinary achievement of landing on the moon by taking communion on his arrival. He was given special permission by his church to take the bread and wine of the church up into space and to give - the Revd Ruth Bushyager and Revd Will Hazlewood.

The new curates will be ordained as deacons – which usually marks the first year of Church of England ministry. As curates the women and men put their training into practice working in a parish with a training incumbent before usually being ordained as priest the following year. For more information, please see: www. chichester.anglican.org thanks to God from humanity’s furthest horizon.

Of course, God’s horizons are limitless, rather like the universe. And sometimes that can make God seem far off, incomprehensible, an utter mystery. We can have too much of that feeling of insignificance when we look at a mystery head on.

In Jesus Christ, God comes close to us – he comes to us as a human being: into our world, into our joys and our sorrows, into our hopes and fears – to the very heart of human life. For that we give thanks.