Speak, Lord, Your Servant Is Listening
It’s no surprise that I love a good poem. Words have power. We Christians, of all people, should understand this. Strung together, words are not like a pane of glass that simply reveals things as they are in naked fact. A great sentence, or poem, or even novel, is much more like a painting. Words draw out to the surface aspects of reality that demand contemplation and response.
How to Be a Member of an “Awkward-Sized” Church
What does it look like to be a faithful member of an “awkward-sized” church? This is something for each one of us to reflect on. The truth is that each one of us contributes something important to the culture and shared life of the congregation.
How to Overcome Shame and Rest in Love
Let me encourage you to reflect on this poem as you prepare for the Lord’s Table this Sunday. The message of the gospel is that of the poem: “Love bade me welcome.” Hear the voice of Jesus inviting you this Lord’s Day to lay down your shame, to detach from self-reflection, and to taste the sweetness of a food and drink that, among other things, is the voice of God whispering, “I love you.”
The dawn is breaking
And so how do we live? We live with hope, we live with expectancy, we live watching the rays of light break in over the hilltops, watching Christ build his kingdom amongst us. Trusting that when Christ returns in glory, the world will take on colour and shape, that safety and warmth will dispel the darkness.
How to Listen to a Sermon
I’m trying to grow in this myself. But, perhaps we can grow together and, as we do, figure out what it means in an age of relentless distraction to listen well to the Word of God.
Should Christians Celebrate Christmas?
We are all aware that one of the functions of a calendar is to divide time neatly into units of years, months, weeks and days, and many of us think that this is all that calendars do. This is shortsighted. The truth is that every calendar performs a secondary, more significant function. They tell us who we are.
Onward in the Service of God
It’s easy for us to think that our toils amount to nothing more than the imprint of a wave on sand that is erased by the next surge. Not so, says Paul. Keep your eyes on heaven and you will see the divine eye overlooks no act of charity or kindness. Our works of service are more durable than the stars in the sky.
Church in a Dialogue with God’s Word
I must have been only seven or eight years old when my grandmother, who had become a Christian a few years earlier, told me in a very serious fashion that the Bible is not effective if it is closed. The Bible only works if it is kept open, she said.
True repentance
Only when we start to see our sin as God sees it will we genuinely have “a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart” (verse 17). It is then that we can ask God to create a pure heart and renew a steadfast spirit within us (verse 10) and to restore the joy of our salvation (verse 12). In fact, the more we understand what our sin really is, the more we understand the depths of God’s amazing love and mercy towards us
