Home

Welcome to our website for the

Three Valleys Team Ministry

 

A man was taking his dog for a walk along the sea front.  He threw a stick into the sea and told the dog to retrieve it.  The dog did this by running on the top of the water to the stick and then running back with it.  A passer by who saw the dog couldn’t believe it.  But it happened a second time, and a third. The dog ran across the surface of the water and collected the stick.

The passer by went up to the dog owner and started a conversation with him.  Eventually he plucked up courage to ask about the dog and its ability to walk on water.  The owner seemed unmoved by his pet’s miraculous ability.  “Well I don’t know what you are getting worked up about said the owner.  Obviously the dog can’t swim!”

Miracles and miraculous things are sometimes misleading as well as difficult to understand.  People tend to look for what I call the ‘grand’ miracles and then get cross because they don’t come along.  By this I mean we don’t see God’s direct and spectacular intervention on Earth.  No lighting bolt comes crashing down from heaven our prayers don’t seem to have been answered when gran dies anyway.

We get so used to this idea of the ‘grand’ miraculous events that if they don’t happen we shrug our shoulders and say God doesn’t act today like he used to or does not exist.  Unfortunately we then fail to see what he is doing.  Have you considered that ever time you give money to a charity you are maybe answering someone’s prayers?  Every time you respond to a request for help after a natural disaster you are answering someone’s plea for a miracle.  Every time you visit a lonely person you may be the miracle they are praying for.  Every time we stop to help someone we become a vehicle for God’s miraculous action on Earth.  In their own way these miracles can be every bit as grand as the other sort and they are in our own power to grant or deny – we become God’s agents on earth.

 

Tony Gilbert

 

Team Rector

 

 

 I hope that you will find plenty of useful

 and interesting information in here. 

    

 

 

The Reverend Tony Gilbert

and

Tony with his wife Nicola