the waiting country

Psalm 74 portrays the experiences of the people of Israel in the most graphic terms. Their enemies had roared against them, had smashed the ...

Paul writes to the church in Rome about his hopes to come to them, on his way to Spain. His confidence is this: “I know that when I come to ...

You’ve got plans that need to be made, steps forward that need to be taken. You glance in the direction of heaven and hope that, somehow, th...

It’s said that on a clear day you can see forever. But we live in a world that is frequently opaque and whose skies seem to be filled with t...

During the course of an (entertaining) interview about what books he's currently reading, Carl Trueman made the point about his non-use...

The perspective of Joseph on his sufferings at the hands of his brothers is quite stunning. When he reveals himself to them they are (to par...

We have enemies, within and without. The Bible couldn’t be plainer on this point. Whatever terms it might use - “the world, the flesh and th...

“Can these bones live?” Can this life be turned-around? Can hope be embedded in the heart? Can these bones live, the dry bones we see all a...

Pleading your own righteousness is a mug’s game. Anyone who has any awareness of their own fallibility, their own propensity to sin and dece...

As you offer yourself to the Lord each day, in worship and as a living sacrifice, how do you see yourself? What image comes to mind, what de...

Matthew tells us about fear at the empty tomb of Jesus - the guards who experience the earthquake and see an angel of the Lord come down and...

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep....

“He saved others but he can’t save himself!” It was an insult hurled at a dying man, hung between two criminals. A man who had healed the s...

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...