word | spirit | world | church
Creation is finished on the sixth day. God’s work is finished on the seventh day, when he rests (Gen 2). That is surprising to us, I think. God’s work includes his resting, literally his stopping, his sabbath. We want to position work against rest as though they are opposites. They aren’t, though they aren’t the… Continue reading Working and Resting
Pastors hate being told that don’t have a real job—the old joke being that you only have to work one day a week. The thing is, it’s more true than you think. I’ve been an elder in a couple of churches for around ten years now. Which makes me pretty green in the pastoral stakes,… Continue reading Pastor, you don’t have a job
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 live in a world of constant connection. We carry with us little black glass ‘communication’ devices that mean we’re connected at all times; there is no situation in which we can’t be reached or distracted or bothered by an economy built on attention. We’ve all been there: you’re having a deep conversation with a… Continue reading Constant Connection
I suspect most of us give little thought to time. It’s simply something we move through, or exist in, or bemoan the passing of as the years slowly strip away the vigour of our youth. The fact that what time is amounts to a philosophical question that is notoriously tricky and nevertheless vital to any… Continue reading 5 Theses on Time
Evangelicals love magic. On the face of it that doesn’t sound like a true statement, perhaps you remember the mild panic over Harry Potter in the early 2000s, or the much bigger panic over Dungeons and Dragons in the eighties—witchcraft remains something we are inherently nervous about, sometimes leading to absurd extremes. Which is true… Continue reading When Christians Love Magic
Israel is given seven feasts. We can read about them in Leviticus 23, Numbers 28-29 and Deuteronomy 16. They come as a set, a week of feasts to pattern the year with, each mapping onto the days of the creation week. They mark the harvests and they operate liturgically: they tell the people of God… Continue reading The Supper in Israel’s Feasts
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
Last week I wrote a rambling exposition of some of the features of Genesis chapter one, but to keep to a reasonable length I didn’t attempt any application. I thought I’d take some time to tease out these ideas in a little more depth what that means for our lives. I’ve written previously that rest… Continue reading Living in Time
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
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