“all hearts are open…”
We are remarkably adept at dressing up our selfish ambitions in highly pious language, perhaps trying to convince both ourselves and our fellow parishioners that our desperate prayer for a lucrative promotion is solely so we might give more to the church building fund, when Jesus is perfectly aware we simply fancy a slightly nicer car.
For centuries prior to the English Reformation, the ordinary men and women who gathered in the great cathedrals and modest parish churches of England experienced the liturgy as a distant spectacle rather than an intimate communion
When Jesus stepped away from the pressing crowds to deliver His most famous sermon, He was speaking directly to a small group of disciples whose rough, working-class backgrounds naturally prepared them to understand the harsh realities of worldly poverty.
Theological libraries across the globe are groaning under the sheer weight of scholarly volumes dedicated to the Sermon on the Mount, with countless academics dissecting every Greek syllable to uncover the deepest nuances of what was spoken on that hillside.
The unalterable Persian decree of death is a striking picture of the reality of human sin and the spiritual law that dictates the wages of sin is death. God, being perfectly just, cannot simply pretend that this spiritual law does not exist, and the sentence of death hangs over humanity.
“Oh death where is thy sting?” Then Jesus, crying out with a loud voice, said, Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. And having said this, he breathed his last. Luke 23:46 I’ve never really delved into the structure of this sentence in Luke before in too much detail Read more
Watching Spielberg’s Disclosure Day, I felt the “spine-tingling” pull of the unknown, but as a reformed anglican, I see a devalued humanity. Is the “Alien Hypothesis” a spiritual diversion? From “nothingburger” UFO files to the elevation of empathy over truth, I explore why our unique place in God’s story remains unshaken by cinematic disclosures.
I usually spend my mornings troubleshooting cloud-based document management solutions, navigating AI implementations for clients or wondering why my smart fridge has decided to stage a silent protest against my choice of cold drink, so finding a lengthy papal encyclical on Artificial Intelligence in my inbox was a bit like receiving a system update for my soul.
We often labour under the delusion that we need to “tidy the cupboards of our souls” before we can let God in. We treat our spiritual lives like a divine audit, terrified that our lack of “filter” or our general dishevelment might trigger some celestial “Access Denied” message.
Let’s be honest: most days, life feels less like a serene walk with God and more like trying to assemble a particularly fiddly piece of flat-pack furniture while the instructions are being chewed by the dog and you’ve misplaced the allen key.
In the relentless bustle of modern family life, the notion of “quiet time” can feel like a bit of a tall order. For a tired mother or father, the distance between the kitchen sink and the “quiet conversation of prayer” can feel like a very long way indeed…