the waiting country

Referring to the character Dilsey in William Faulkner's novel, The Sound and the Fury, Marilyn McEntyre comments: As a white man, Faulkn...

I recently read The Flourishing Pastor by Tom Nelson - it was really helpful; here are some quotations that struck chords with me: Sheep a...

The word pair passion and serenity establishes an essential contradiction for our inner lives. Imagine a person who pursues his convictions ...

In no particular order (as they say), here are some books/listens I've really enjoyed through this year: Thy Will Be Done: The Ten Comma...

Proper prayers flow from faithful, obedient hearts bringing to God real needs that we beg him to meet. His answer may be “Yes, here and now,...

So in Genesis 33:4, Esau behaves in a way that is echoed by the Father in Luke 15, in their response to the returning (wayward) son - Gen 33...

 Mark Futato: One thing is clear when you look at God’s revelation, from Genesis to Revelation, that whenever really big things happen in th...

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:...