word | spirit | world | church
I suspect to many readers of the Bible this is a silly question. Honestly, who cares? The idea that I constantly want to convey is that we should ask the questions we find curious about the scriptures, assuming that there are answers deeper than the obvious. We can, of course, become enamoured of all sorts… Continue reading Why does Jesus eat so much fish?
I’ve become enough of a trope of myself that friends quip about how much I talk about dragons. It’s part, apparently, of the trifecta of things I get excited about in the Bible: trees, tables, and dragons. In reality, I’ll rarely mention the word ‘dragon’ in my preaching and I can’t remember the last time… Continue reading On Dragons
Jesus in the Tabernacle VI Next the narrative moves through two sections I included earlier in this series, the boundaries of the courtyard and then the oil to burn in the lampstand. The instructions for the construction of the tabernacle then seem to be interrupted in Exodus 28 for a digression on the clothing of… Continue reading High Priest’s Clothes
I’m colourblind, and profoundly so. This admission in front of people usually results in a long litany of being asked what colours certain items in the room are and which colours I can’t see. I do pretty well at the test, you learn to cope and have some sense of what something might be. The… Continue reading Seeing in Colour
In Revelation 21 the church (the ‘bride’) is described as a city, a new Jerusalem, in intricate detail. John is referencing from all over the Bible, he has the later part of Ezekiel and Genesis 2 in particular view, but liberally references elsewhere. John is at this point in Revelation talking about the future; this… Continue reading The Gates of the City
In Matthew 16 Jesus declares to Peter that he is the rock on which he will build his church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. What does that mean? In popular piety it’s most often quoted when we feel under attack by the forces of the Enemy. We’re most likely under… Continue reading The Gates of Hell
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
Recently, my wife’s Step-Grandmother died. Along with a plethora of other things, we inherited from her house stuffed with treasures a very large Bible. It’s about the size of a PC tower—they don’t make them like they used to. It’s the Step-Grandmother’s family Bible, it has all her family’s names written in it going back… Continue reading Written in the Book
Adam and Eve lived in a garden in the centre of the land of Eden. In the middle were two trees, perhaps forming the apex of this Temple—for it was a Temple. This was the most holy place (Genesis 2). They had one simple rule, which we are largely familiar with: eat whatever you like,… Continue reading In Between Two Trees
A couple of weeks ago we were at a wedding. We were invited to the evening but not the reception, so we’d brought a few sausage rolls and a pack of crisps for lunch and went looking for somewhere to eat it before we went on to the afternoon activities we’d planned—exploring the Cotswolds in… Continue reading Burial is Hopeful
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