word | spirit | world | church
How do you tell what’s good and what’s bad? How do you tell the difference between wisdom and folly? It’s not like it’s just intrinsic to all of us, or we would make fewer bad decisions. I think it’s tempting to suggest that our difficulty here is because our minds are blinded by sin. There’s… Continue reading Wisdom is Work
The bright spring day of April’s heatwave lasted for about five months, a single timeless moment. We were locked down due to Covid-19 from March through to June, and then with schools closed until September those who could continued to work from home. I lived without rhythm. My work was at home on my laptop,… Continue reading Repost: The Rhythm of Rest
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 struggle to understand the concept of rest. You might think it’s pretty obvious, but we live in cultures that are so formed away from the ideal for human life that we often get rest backwards. I’ve argued here at nuakh that rest is about the enjoyment of order, about stopping to be with the… Continue reading The story of rest
The Bible starts with seven words. Then the second sentence has fourteen words. Then there are seven paragraphs each describing a day in this week of seven days. The seventh of these includes three parallel seven word phrases. None of this is an accident. In our modern day with our modern eyes it can look… Continue reading Carving Time
Have you ever noticed that in Genesis chapter one, the days are the wrong way around? When I say the wrong way around, I mean backwards to what we expect, and before you rush off to compare the order of creation and question whether it means anything meaningful that the sun and moon come so… Continue reading Learning from the hours
This is one of those questions that no one other than me was asking. But here's my apophatic answer. Rest is not relaxation. Repeat: Rest is not relaxation. It has become trendy in the evangelical circles I move in to speak of the Sabbath frequently and to use it as a verb, “we Sabbathed yesterday”… Continue reading What is rest?
We live in nihilistic days. We live in quotidian days. Or, in more familiar English: we live in days that are both humdrum and meaningless. The days blur into each other. We go to our workplace; we do the tasks that our employer has assigned to us; we return to our homes to relax and… Continue reading In defence of wonder
We have been told that Covid-19 is the “great leveller” as plague puts us all in the same position, reduces our power and places us at the mercy of tiny particles. As many commentators have pointed out, this has been demonstrably false. Covid disproportionately affects ethnic minorities, the poor, the elderly and those with a… Continue reading The Exposer
The bright spring day of April’s heatwave lasted for about five months, a single timeless moment. We were locked down due to Covid-19 from March through to June, and then with schools closed until September those who could continued to work from home. I lived without rhythm. My work was at home on my laptop,… Continue reading The Rhythm of Rest
nuakh 