word | spirit | world | church
A small child totters out of the children’s work after your church’s Sunday meeting and beams at you as you get a coffee and cast about for someone to chat to. “What did you learn today?” you absentmindedly ask while thinking about ten other things. “God wants to be my friend!” they excitedly declare while… Continue reading God is our friend
There’s this odd moment in the midst of our Easter celebrations, you might call it ‘Holy Saturday’ or just that day in the long weekend that doesn’t have a name. It’s that strange day caught between Friday’s sorrow and Sunday’s joy, where ‘nothing happened.’ Or maybe, an awful lot happened. There are I think three… Continue reading Holy Saturday
Jesus hung on the cross, suspended between heaven and earth, dying. To us, a detail that we can perhaps use poetically but incidental among the whole. To the Church Fathers, however, an important point to understand the cross. When St Athanasius is exploring why God became Man in his famous On the Incarnation, he devotes… Continue reading High and Lifted Up
Have you ever noticed how often secular advice on, for example, wellbeing coheres with what the church would say? It veers wildly away at points as well, but I don’t feel like we do a lot of noticing of when it’s the same. Not to pat ourselves on the back though—I see a bit of… Continue reading Church is for the Lonely
There I was, stood shifting from foot to foot on a sodden football field, the cold air biting at my bare knees. Dreaming, but not hoping, that this week I would be picked to play up front, imagining that winning goal. In all honesty I only dreamed of a well-placed kick that added something to… Continue reading Outsiders
In Genesis chapter 3, after the events that we usually call ‘the fall’ where the man and the woman are cursed along with the snake and the woman is given a promise for the future, Adam names the woman Eve. Then they are gifted new clothes from the skins of a sacrifice so they can… Continue reading The Naming of Eve
After his resurrection Jesus gathered his disciples to give them his parting instructions and pass on his mission. Each of the gospel writers summarise his words a little differently but they all include what Luke calls “the promise of the Father” (Luke 24). Matthew records it as a promise that Jesus would be with them… Continue reading The Promise of the Spirit
When trying to describe sin and how it lives and corrupts our hearts, people often come up with "all sin is" statements. "All sin is idolatry" is a common one. The other day I said to a friend, “all sin is taking, isn’t it.” The very next day I found myself saying to someone else,… Continue reading Ten Kinds of Sin
In the western liturgical traditions the last seven days of advent include singing these seven chants—they would be largely unknown to churches like mine whose hymnody owes more to Hillsong than ancient Latin verse. Except, I bet you recognise them. They’re the content of the only advent hymn most of us know, O Come O… Continue reading The O Antiphons
In John chapter nine, Jesus heals a blind man and declares himself to be the Light of the World. John wants us to see Jesus as the light that brings sight to dead eyes, physically and spiritually. To compare the arrogant Pharisees who condemn Jesus for healing on the Sabbath to the blind man who… Continue reading Spit & Mud
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