I recently read Psalm 40, which includes this verse: Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust, who does not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after a lie! Psalm 40:4 Very often, when we come across a verse like that, we tend to focus on being ‘blessed’ – and how we should trust in the Lord. Rightly so. But I got to wonder about the other part of the verse.1 It’s is saying that…
It was our son Paul’s 40th birthday last week, so naturally we had a ‘bash’! Paul is our eldest child and is adopted – he also has Down’s Syndrome. At this landmark point in his life I thought it would be good to share our story. There were four events than happened one after the other over a period of twelve months or so. Event 1 – The Book It started the day before we moved from Leicester to Macclesfield….
When we first went into lockdown, churches across the UK were required to stop physically meeting together, along with all other places where people would congregate. At the time, across the wider church community, there were those who challenged this. The challenge was on the basis of Hebrews 10:25 “not neglecting to meet together”. The reasons for not meeting physically were simple: to have done so would have broken the law; would have put members of the congregation at serious…
I’d not long been a Christian when I found myself sat in a house with a student group. The person giving a talk would occasionally mention a Bible reference, then point to someone and ask them to quote it. I was terrified! What if he asked me? And where was I – in a group of spiritual giants! Fortunately, I didn’t get picked on, and I later found out why. After the meeting I asked how come everyone seemed to…
My daily Bible Studies have just started 2 Corinthians. This is a natural progression from 1 Corinthians, however it’s not quite that simple. It seems that Paul wrote the first letter after his visit there in order to answer some questions and address some issues. Things weren’t going well though, so he paid them a second visit. This was apparently ‘painful’, so much so that he did not immediately want to go back in case it caused more pain. So…
As a child I used to love going to the cinema (and still do!). It was always a great family outing which didn’t stop once the film was over. On the way hame and for a time afterwards we’d go over our favourite bits of the film: “I liked the bit where…”, “What about when…”, “Do you remember…” and so on. It was a great part of the whole experience and to keep it going we’d end up repeating the…
There seems to be a lot of talk about anxiety these days. People refer to ‘their anxieties’, and the lockdown certainly won’t have helped. But I don’t think this is anything particularly new. I remember my grandparents talking about how they worried about things. This was often related to activities my brother and I would get up to (“ooh we did worry about you”), reaching a climax when I ended up in hospital – they wrote me a letter saying…
I found out something quite interesting recently. In the musical Les Misérables the main character, Jean Valjean, is trying to come to terms with his past as a former criminal with a well know song ‘Who am I?’. He concludes the song with a reference to his prison number 24601. Apparently that number was a way for Victor Hugo to identify himself with Valjean, as it refers to the date on which Hugo believed he had been conceived – 24th June 1801. In…
It’s been nearly a month now since a small spacecraft landed on Mars. It had been many years in planning, and it’s successful landing was a remarkable achievement. One of its objectives is to bring back samples of Mars rock to the earth. But it will be many years before they get here. The spacecraft is aptly named ‘Perseverance’. In it for the long haul. In many ways it’s like the end of the pandemic – we can see light…
“Our planet was perfect – until a new force came along that tilted it off balance – humans.” (David Attenborough – BBC) There seems to be a view that is growing in popularity that goes something like this: ‘The earth, with all it’s life and ecosystems, has been around for millions/billions of years, evolving into something approaching perfection. Very recently (on an evolutionary timescale), human beings have appeared, and their principal impact has been to pollute and destroy the earth…