Well that was 2020. Much has been said – a year like no other, unprecedented, good to see the back of it. And so on. It didn’t finish with the usual celebrations, but there was one significant event that coincided with December 31st. I finished the book of Revelation in my daily study. You may be tempted to stop reading here – but bear with me. The book of Revelation is full of imagery and can be read in different…
We’ve just watched the latest announcements about lockdown over Christmas. It changed our plans somewhat – our son and his wife had been planning to come up this week, but they live in London… The timing could hardly have been worse. Lockdown in a matter of hours, with only a few days to go before Christmas. First thing for them was to arrange for sufficient food – then chat with the family. I suppose the same phrase could have been…
The last blog post was about being renewed in love. I tried to define love as ‘seeking the best in another whatever the personal cost’. When it comes to loving God, however, that’s not so easy to apply. How can we seek God’s best? He is already perfect, and has no need of anything, so what could we possibly do? Jesus helps here. He says that if we love him, we will obey his commandments. On a human level, such…
For the past few weeks I’ve been going through the book of Hebrews in my daily studies. It’s quite a long book and contains some rich theology as well as practical teaching in everyday living. I did have to smile when I got the the last few verses and read ‘bear with me… for I have written to you briefly’! (Hebrews 13:22) If it has an overall theme it’s this: You can’t go back – press on. At the time…
In may last post I mentioned spiritual disciplines. Things like prayer, Bible reading etc. Then I was reading in Hebrews 12 about how God disciplines us as sons (and daughters). The context initially looks to be about God correcting us for our sins. Heb 12:6. But there’s also a sense of training, the way athletes discipline themselves when preparing for a race. In fact the chapter goes on to talk that way in Heb 12:12-13. This shows another aspect of…
“every life matters … because we’re made by God in his image”We’ve all seen the ‘Black Lives Matter’, ‘All Lives Matter’, ‘White Lives Matter’ slogans – even movements – that have sprung up recently. Some of this is proving to be a force for good, but some of it seems to merely inflame existing, and deep-rooted tensions.Rather than enter these debates for now, I wanted to take a step back and ask: why does any life matter? And to whom…
When the lockdown started we all had to hunt around for ways of communicating with each other. Right from the word go, it was the most natural thing in the world to want to engage with other people.Technology played a massive part in this, with one app that most people had not heard of becoming so popular it became a verb. We ‘zoom’ one another.That’s interesting to me – as someone whose whole career has been in IT. Why should…
A close friend of mine was having a ‘wobble’.Too many Zoom meetings, colleagues getting stressed out and fractious, to say nothing of home life in general.Can certainly identify with this, after all we’re living in a situation that has challenged a lot of the ways we’ve being living our lives. All of a sudden, but with no end in sight. And no time to think it out, as we’ve get on with coping.Sometimes we’re ok, but then a few things…
A few thoughts from Psalm 8 – not an exhaustive exposition! 1 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.2 Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,4 what…
I was sat in my room at the end of my first year at university. And my life was falling apart.I had had to stay on beyond the end of term to do a couple of weeks training on workshop equipment. So most of my friends had gone home. I was DJ in the university discos (rare for a first year!) and radio station. But they had all fallen silent – so I no longer had an audience.I wasn’t even…