word | spirit | world | church
“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
“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
Advent is a season of questions. Which is good, because I’ve got plenty. Have you? Sometimes people act like you can’t ask questions in church life, as though you just have to ‘have faith’, which is true but not in the way that people who usually say it mean. I think they act like this… Continue reading Questioning God
The music swells, the symphony approaches its glorious end. You’re swept up in the majestic writing and the promise of what is to come. You’re noticing the intricate detail and the way the rest of the story is being recapitulated here at the eventual end. There is a new heaven. Wonder of wonders. There is… Continue reading The edge of the sea
The snow melted today, and the world is drab. We’ve had four days of it. We awoke to a crisp blanket laid over our garden, and then it kept going. We did the thing that you do when it snows: we stopped and stared. Every time you glance out of the window or walk into… Continue reading Ode to Snow
“When I caught Gerald in ‘68 he was completely wild.” “Wild? I was absolutely livid!” There’s a cliché that abounds in evangelical spaces that you can’t “put God in a box”. Well, no. If we’re feeling particularly clever with ourselves, we might then quip that “someone tried that, it didn’t end well.” Quite. I haven’t… Continue reading The wildness of God
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