Tearfund has warned that Coca-Cola is in danger of being left behind, as more companies make the move away from plastic. It has urged the soft drinks giant to ditch single-use plastic after it topped a list of worst corporate plastic polluters for the second year in a row. The list, published by the Break Free From Plastic (BFFP) movement, is based on the number of items collected by more than 70,000 volunteers during community clean-ups across 51 countries. 11,732 branded Coca Cola plastics were recorded in 37 countries, more than the next three top global polluters combined. BFFP’s 1,800 member organisations are calling on corporations to reduce their production of single-use plastic and find innovative solutions focused on delivery systems that do not create pollution. Other top polluters are Nestlé, PepsiCo, Cadbury, Unilever, Mars, Procter and Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Philip Morris, Mentos, and Chupa Chups.

As 70-80 worshippers in a synagogue in Halle observed Yom Kippur, their holiest day of the year, a gunman shot at a locked door. The camera at the entrance showed him trying to break into the building, but the door remained closed. God protected them. The attack, streamed live, was a chilling reminder of the mosque attack in New Zealand which was also online in real time. Footage also shows the assailant laying a home-made explosive outside and uttering anti-Semitic statements. He shot and killed a passer-by, and another man nearby. Following the attack, the synagogue congregants were filmed singing and dancing on a bus transporting them from hospital. They finished the concluding prayer for Yom Kippur inside the hospital. The attacker wanted to carry out a massacre and had nine pounds of explosives in his car.

Alexey, a middle-school dropout, first went to the missionaries’ church for food when he was a homeless beggar. When he got a job and could feed himself, he stopped attending church. He met Anya and they had a baby boy, but he fell into substance abuse and his income did not cover family costs. When child welfare authorities arrived at their door to take their son away, they successfully pleaded for more time to show they could care for him. Realising his need for God, Alexey took his family to church the following Sunday. He repented and asked believers to pray for them. ‘From that day, a huge change took place in our lives. We got married, I ended drug and alcohol abuse, and we read the Bible daily. Thanks to God for the miracle He has done in our lives.’

‘Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.’ (Isaiah 43:18-19) With God all things are possible. In Matthew 17 Jesus told His disciples that if they had faith as small as a mustard seed, they could say to the mountain, ‘Move from here to there’, and it will move. Father, we ask you to move the mountains of discussions that will be taking place in the coming days, especially now that a Brexit deal has been agreed, but has to be backed by all 27 EU members and debated in Parliament on 19 October. May everything progress in line with Your purposes and under Your authority.