word | spirit | world | church
What is joy anyway? It’s one of those words we all think we understand, but sometimes I wonder. I’ve written before on how longing is the ground of joy, but a friend pointed out that I didn’t actually define joy in that piece. A fair criticism, that if I’m honest was because I was still… Continue reading On Joy
God creates by dividing, that’s the pattern begun in Genesis 1. He continues to create that way today. I’ve written before on how the Lord makes order from chaos in the first Creation narrative, and how that work which is begun but not completed becomes our work. Adam was meant to create order in the… Continue reading Creation requires Division
Do we have free will? It’s one of those perennial philosophical questions which we would rather not engage with—either because it seems self-evident that we do and therefore the question is a nonsense like enquiring if cats meow, or because we’re slightly concerned the answer might be no and that the weight of that answer… Continue reading On Free Will
Sometimes when we pray people are healed, and sometimes they aren’t. But why is that, why isn’t everyone healed? I’m a charismatic, I believe that God heals today and that this happens frequently. I’ve watched someone’s leg grow while someone else prayed for them. I’ve felt the muscles in someone’s back untwist while I prayed… Continue reading God and Healing
A few days ago, as I write, I watched Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, procession, and committal, along with 5.9 billion other people. If you’re reading this (you are) then it’s likely you watched it too. Two thirds of the world did. As an Englishman whose roots on these isles date before the Conquest—which… Continue reading After Watching a Funeral
And stop trying to fix each other. Friends, you are not a machine. You are a beautiful, complex, confusing mess of a creature. This matters, because we talk about ourselves as though we are machines, and language creates the categories that our thought then fills. When we speak of ourselves as machines we start to… Continue reading Don’t Fix Me
It’s Epiphany today, Christmas is over, the new year doesn’t start today but it’s as good a day as any for reflecting on the last twelve months. I appreciate I’m a little behind the curve here, but I did it last year and so this now makes it a tradition. It’s the (approximate) anniversary of… Continue reading 2022 in Review: The difficult second album
If you’ve heard a sermon on the incarnation in a conservative evangelical circle I suspect there’s a high chance the preacher quoted C.S Lewis to refer to the Son of God condescending to take on flesh as “the Grand Miracle.” He is our patron saint, after all—despite not being one of us—so the reference is… Continue reading The Grand Miracle
Advent is a time for silence. Or, to put it a little better, Advent is a time for facing up to the silence of God. We don’t like to admit it. This is the time of year for declaring the Emmanuel—that God is with us—and for saying that God is the one who steps into… Continue reading The Hidden God
“Silence is violence,” we are told—to not speak on a particular issue is to perpetrate violence against those affected by it. If that is true, how then do we cope with the silence of God? In the midst of our pain and our struggle, is his silence an act of violence against his people? Perhaps… Continue reading Deus absconditus
nuakh 