the waiting country

The fact that the Psalms never clearly report a change in external circumstances is one mark of the Bible’s persistent realism. Prayer is no...

The pandemic and its fallout are far from over. There is much we have yet to experience. ‘Long-Covid’ will perhaps come to describe not just...

Without wonder, we approach spiritual formation as a self-help project. We employ techniques. We analyse gifts and potentialities. We set go...

The letter of James is chock-full of practical, wise advice and instruction. It looks at life under the sun, with all its challenges and per...

Noticing that the word fear is used in Matthew 28 to describe both the reaction of the guards at Jesus' tomb (v.4) and the women who ha...

In the early months of being a Christian, now some 38 years ago, 2 albums provided wonderful company and comfort to me. They were probably ...

In his poem, Enriching The Earth , Wendell Berry speaks of his own life's labours as renewing the soil by planting and plowing and stirr...

Maybe you’ve asked that question to others and perhaps they’ve asked it of you. All sorts of things will legitimately come to mind - better ...

Twice, in a matter of verses, Mark records the Lord Jesus asking the same question to different people. All have sought his attention and hi...

Tim Keller was recently interviewed about his latest book, Hope in Times of Fear , written as he suffers from pancreatic cancer. He was ask...

Jesus encounters a rich man who wants to know what he must do to inherit eternal life (Mark 10:17ff). The sticking-point for his untrammelle...

Between the solidity of God's promises and our experience of life in the here and now, there are ambiguities. Not because his promises a...

Do you have days when you feel you’re facing overwhelming odds? You have torrents of troubles and sorrows that sheet down like rain. There a...

Love is a choice, however much we might feel we’ve been swept up by it. And God’s love of us is a choice, a choice he made before the founda...

The contrast could not be more stark: one group has come to take charge of Jesus, the other sits at his feet, devotedly learning. The real s...

There are so many things in life we could wish were ‘better’. Better health; better job; better friendships. We long for things to be differ...

Leah is the woman wronged by her father and rejected by her husband. Her story is told in Genesis 29, where she is used by her father to dec...

The first readers of the letter to the Hebrews were living in difficult times. Their faith was being assaulted and they faced strong temptat...

Bookending John’s gospel are two accounts of scepticism being dispelled by the Lord Jesus, tucked just after the prologue and just before th...

Be very careful, then, how you live —not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. (Ephesians ...