word | spirit | world | church
What does Jesus mean by that? I've got a new article out at Mere Orthodoxy exploring this saying of Jesus. This is one of those flashes of inspiration I had, sat in a conference that was expounding why it's a difficult saying, three different books I'd read collided in my head. It took me a… Continue reading Blessed Are Those Who Mourn
This is the next part of my ongoing series exploring the letter written by St Polycarp to the church in Philippi, collaborating with my friend Adsum Try Ravenhill of the Raven’s Writing Desk. You can read the previous parts at these links: I; II; III, IV, V, VI, VII. Dear Adsum Thank you for your last letter. Your strong encouragement to… Continue reading Hold on to Hope: Polycarp VIII
Sometimes light reflects, refracts, and disperses in water droplets causing its brilliant white radiance to split into the visible spectrum and hang suspended in the air. We call it a rainbow, as the sun breaks through rainclouds and colours bend the sky. It has a similar effect on most of us as snow does, we… Continue reading Repost: On Rainbows
Larry Crabb tells story after story in his book Shattered Dreams of people whose lives have been upended by grief and pain and the unexpected mundanity of living. Tears have become my deepest form of worship, some reflect. They discover deep desires for God, and then a new hurt on top of the cavalcade of… Continue reading God in the Pit
It was a Thursday evening when they took him, guards appearing at the prayer meeting, all his friends scattering to the four winds. He went meekly, like the lambs being lined up outside the Temple, waiting for the Passover. Earlier that evening Jesus had sat up a hillside surrounded by olive trees, with his three… Continue reading This Bright Surprise: An Easter Sermon
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
We all struggle. We all suffer. We all know pain. At the same time, we’re acutely aware that we don’t have access to each other’s struggles except as they are related to us. There is nothing more humanising than suffering—this is the human condition—and there is nothing more isolating. When Christians suffer, when we experience… Continue reading The Privilege of Pain
We read in 1 Chronicles 12 of men from each tribe who came to support David in the wilderness. Among their number are the those of Issachar, who send 200 chiefs with their retinues. We also read that they “have understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do.” It’s oft quoted in… Continue reading 5 Ways to Read the Times
We are a people of the Exodus. Our lives are exodus movements. I’ve written before around the edges of the idea of cosmic geography and about the way the sea was viewed in the Old Testament as the place of chaos and death. When the climactic act of Yahweh’s saving power happens at the beginning… Continue reading Our Emotional Exodus
“He’s no longer in the land of the living,” we say with great solemnity as we pronounce that our friend has fallen asleep on the sofa. It’s a phrase we use fairly commonly, either to mean prosaically, “they’re dead”—which is actually uncommon because we prefer cleaner euphemisms that hide the reality entirely—or to refer to… Continue reading The Land of the Living
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