word | spirit | world | church
How often do you look at the sky? I’m sure the answer is multiple times every day—even if you live in a major city like I do there’s still an awful lot of sky, but how often do you actually look at it? I think we know implicitly that there’s something bad about not being… Continue reading Sky Painting
“What’s the worst that could happen?” Dr Pepper asked us repeatedly—since I don’t like it, I always assumed that drinking it was punishment enough. They also printed this under the ingredients which is wonderfully self-aware marketing, if a little dark. Though, I read that this was not their slogan outside of the UK, so perhaps… Continue reading Taking the Long View
At the height of the pandemic, I was invited by one of my best friends to preach at his church in Manchester, which of course meant via Zoom from my living room. This collided with the height of our house renovations—we had a labourer in to strip the old plaster off the halls, stairs and… Continue reading Eternal Surprise
How does someone know that you love them? My wife knows that I love her. She can remember that I swore vows to do so, she can remember all the times that I’ve said so before, she can watch my behaviour both past and present and see that it must be true. She knows that… Continue reading From Knowing to Knowing
One of the features of Charles Taylor’s argument in his great (in every sense!) work A Secular Age is that we are a people who are disenchanted. We no longer readily believe in magic, or that hobs sour the milk. We find supernatural claims extraordinary, and all of us—even believers—find that our ‘social imaginary’ means… Continue reading The Myth of Disenchantment
Last week I moved a lot of sand. We laid a patio out the back of our dining room and dug out and concreted the path down the side of our house. I hit a lot of things with a mattock—which I like telling people because I like the way the word ‘mattock’ sounds in… Continue reading Sand
There’s something about trees. Being around them is good for us. There’s a wealth of evidence that our mental health is positively affected by being around trees, but for now let’s take that as read and try to think a little more theologically about why that might be. The Bible uses trees a lot. We… Continue reading On Trees
There is one truth in the glorious panoply that is the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3) that is particularly special to me. One that stands out as a shining beacon on the darkest of days, one that daily speaks to my heart and revives me in the truth.… Continue reading After death, life
Do we need more evidence of divine love and affection than the existence of the egg? Most of you will be thinking, “yes Tim, stop being weird.” Which is unfortunately not in my gift. So, you’re right, we do need more ‘evidence’ than that—we need the incarnate Son to give himself over like a lamb… Continue reading The argument from eggs
When the Wise Men arrived to find the child with Mary and Joseph they: Rejoiced exceedingly with great joyMatthew 2.10 Which I think is just about the most wonderful expression I’ve heard in a long time. There’s something about the way the Bible uses language that even in translation is beautiful. I can’t remember the… Continue reading Fuelling your Joy
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