word | spirit | world | church
What does Jesus mean by that? I've got a new article out at Mere Orthodoxy exploring this saying of Jesus. This is one of those flashes of inspiration I had, sat in a conference that was expounding why it's a difficult saying, three different books I'd read collided in my head. It took me a… Continue reading Blessed Are Those Who Mourn
If you want to mature, you’re going to have to suffer. Actually, that’s not quite right. You are going to suffer, that’s the nature of life under the sun. Some of that will be petty, some of it will be serious, and (heaven-forfend) some of it will be so psychologically scarring that you’ll be getting… Continue reading Maturity requires suffering
Honestly, so does everything worth having. We always have to die in order to rise. The scriptures command us to rejoice with those rejoice and weep with those who weep (Romans 12). That’s a lot harder than it sounds. It is, I think, almost impossible to rejoice with those who rejoice until someone has wept… Continue reading Joy requires sacrifice
“Well if God’s called you, it’ll work out.” I’ve been told this lots of times myself, I think I believe it half of the time. But it’s not true. Not in the way we mean it anyway. What we’re saying is, you’re going to do this risky seeming thing on the basis of your faith… Continue reading Success looks like obedience
Larry Crabb tells story after story in his book Shattered Dreams of people whose lives have been upended by grief and pain and the unexpected mundanity of living. Tears have become my deepest form of worship, some reflect. They discover deep desires for God, and then a new hurt on top of the cavalcade of… Continue reading God in the Pit
Sometimes when we pray people are healed, and sometimes they aren’t. But why is that, why isn’t everyone healed? I’m a charismatic, I believe that God heals today and that this happens frequently. I’ve watched someone’s leg grow while someone else prayed for them. I’ve felt the muscles in someone’s back untwist while I prayed… Continue reading God and Healing
And stop trying to fix each other. Friends, you are not a machine. You are a beautiful, complex, confusing mess of a creature. This matters, because we talk about ourselves as though we are machines, and language creates the categories that our thought then fills. When we speak of ourselves as machines we start to… Continue reading Don’t Fix Me
The forest burned down since last I went. England has faced a series of brutal heatwaves this summer along with much of the rest of Europe. Wildfires are uncommon here, but in the hottest heatwave the Lickey Hills above Birmingham sparked into blaze. Acres of woodland at the edge of the city were gone across… Continue reading After the Burning
We live in the Between, this now and not yet time stretched by our waiting for the Kingdom to come on the one hand and by its grand arrival in the ascension of Christ on the other. Our eschatology is firmed realised, present and not yet present. The Kingdom is here, the Kingdom is not… Continue reading Longing, Lament, and Joy
The Psalms have sharp edges. They cut the unwary and cut the bonds of the broken. I’ve just prayed my way through them, at roughly one a day. I’m starting again at the moment. I knew they were raw but have often been surprised by how raw. Which I really shouldn’t be, but my church… Continue reading The Hard-Edged Psalms
nuakh 