the waiting country

The command to 'remember Jesus Christ' at first sight seems extraordinary. How could Timothy ever forget him? Yet the human memory i...

My memory isn't what it used to be, suffering the fraying of edges made ragged by the wastage and shredding of time's unkempt false ...

Reflecting on the growth of the early church, Gerald Sittser offers some thoughts to explain its success: Christians had to guard the newnes...

Augustine’s Confessions bears rereading because its story is the human story, a story that—with time and contemplation—I can also make my o...

If Ephesians 3:12 was a statement in isolation it would still be splendid, conveying such warmth and hope: that being joined to Jesus, by f...

‘There is a river’ - the most powerful statement, definitive and decided. Set within a psalm that exhorts us to stillness because God reign...

Where did I get my knack for being a fool? If I could advise God, why didn’t I just advise Him (like our great preachers and politicians) to...

New post over at the waiting country on Substack... "There were other boats with him."

Psalm 32 is justly famous, both within the Bible and in the lives of Christians, for its plain and powerful statements about the blessings o...

On the same album that yielded the title of this blog, The Blue Nile also penned a song that has the words,  “I write a new book every day -...

The most fundamental values in a culture will be coherent with the metaphorical structure of the most fundamental concepts in the culture. (...

When the UK was on the cusp of lockdown, back in mid-March 2020, I wrote an email to our church members to encourage them in the Lord Jesus ...

Have you ever seen a sign that warns you a certain footpath is liable to flooding? It’s a great candidate as a sign to write over your life:...

Some words that I wrote a few years back have now made it into song, courtesy of Rob Halligan. I can't begin to say how thrilled I am b...

Have you ever felt you spoke too soon? That you were too hasty and if you’d only listened to James’ exhortation to be “slow to speak” thing...

Everything is worse at night - or so it seems. But there are good reasons, both psychological and physiological, for believing it’s true. Th...

Does your life count? Does it really matter what you do and how you do it? It’s easy to think it doesn’t - we’re ordinary people, living ord...

“Where are the other nine?” Those words of our Lord Jesus search our hearts and press us about our own response to all that he has done for ...

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” (Prov. 4:23) There’s no beating about the bush, no hedging your be...

As the greatest of songs buds and opens, like a flower in the life-giving rays of the sun, the Beloved says to the Lover, “Your name is as p...