You might be surprised to learn that the parish where I work here in East Ham is part of the Church of England’s Diocese of Chelmsford in Essex.

Strange! but very nice for us this year because Chelmsford diocese celebrates its centenary and I was at a fantastic service last week where, on the way into the cathedral, each of us had our photos taken.

There were great hymns and a wonderful sermon from our Bishop Stephen; then, at the end of the service, we were asked to turn and look at an icon of the face of Jesus, projected onto the back wall of the cathedral, and that picture was made up of the photos of all of our faces. It was breathtaking! I felt incredibly moved to think that my picture was up there with all the others in Jesus’s face. Wow!

But, later in the week, I was at a meeting of charity chief executives and one of my colleagues told us that an online directory of churches and faith groups that they run had been hacked, and a virus had been put on each one of the 400 pages, which meant that, when someone clicked on that page, a lewd picture came up. They took the website down immediately of course, and now money and time which the charity can ill afford will have to be used to remove the virus and make the website useful again. What a terrible waste.

The person who was clever enough to do that could have been finding a cure for the common cold or anything, other than spoiling someone else’s efforts.

I reckon that technology is one of God’s gifts and it can be used to bring light, life and love into this world just as it can be used to ­degrade and bully; it’s not the technology that’s bad, it’s the things we use it for that reveal the sadness of some people’s lives.

What will we do today with the gifts God has given us?