by James Webb
Posts from the Author, James Webb
This is an edited version of a sermon I once preached (though I’ve not edited it much). It’s a true account, though the lesson I was taught took a while to formulate and wasn’t delivered to me in the divine monologue that I have written here. However, I knew that when I told this story I wanted to present it as something personal that took place between God and myself, because it was… Read more
There was once a boy who wanted to make a difference. He worked hard at this, but was often left frustrated by how little change he saw. On one particularly frustrating day, he took a scrap of paper, wrote on it TRUST IN JESUS, rolled it up and put it in an empty glass bottle. Then he took that bottle down to the beach and threw it into the sea as hard as he could. It didn’t really make him feel any better, but at least, he thought, he was doing something. Read more
I’m beginning to come round to the idea that there’s no such thing as a shallow person. I think that we all have depth; we all have significant, meaningful needs. What we think of as a ‘shallow person’ is just someone who hasn’t realised just how deep their identity goes, and tries to meet profound needs with shallow, disposable things. Comfort Eating, Retail Therapy and Binge Watching all work, but not for long. Read more
I’ve recently been thinking about Ruth’s motives. No, not my Ruth – the Old Testament Ruth. What was it that motivated her to commit to her mother-in-law, leave her country and start all over again in a strange land? The conclusion that I came to is that perhaps it doesn’t matter what her motives were. The important thing was that she put herself at God’s mercy – why she did it might not be important. Read more
The Second Listening Book is now available from Amazon, and I thought that I should mention this in the blog. It’s another collection of short stories and parables, ripe for misunderstanding. Being misunderstood is an occupational hazard for me. I’ve preached at least one sermon where my sophisticated and intelligent delivery (i.e. being too clever for my own good) was taken to mean that I was saying the exact opposite of what I was really trying to say, with hilarious consequences. Read more
This post marks the first year anniversary of The Listening Book blog. I’ve been scribbling on this page once a week for a whole year now. It would be a good time to stop and reflect on what’s happened over the past twelve months, but I’m not going to do that. “What has happened in the past year?” is a good question, but a more important one is “Am I a better man than I was this time last year?” Read more
He doesn’t make it easy for us. In John 10 you can read about a group who came to Jesus to ask him a question.
“Are you the Messiah, Jesus? Give us a straight answer. No games now. Yes or no. Are you the one?”
They said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”
John 6:42
I’m not one who enjoys change, but I do quite like new beginnings. One of the best things about going to university was being able to leave the past behind. No longer would I be defined by my school’s social hierarchy – I could reinvent myself and start all over again!
A friend of mine once told me about a small group of young people from his church that had gone and done some praiseworthy good deed. Local television sent a news crew to ask what had motivated them to do such a noble thing. Most of the group gave safe answers, but one girl talked about how her actions were an expression of her faith in Christ. I’ll let you guess which was the one piece of footage that they didn’t use when they ran the story. Read more
I was discussing with someone who suggested that, as an atheist, he at least was ‘…thinking for himself’. I pointed out that, unless he had invented atheism, he actually wasn’t. None of us really think for ourselves, I told him. There are thousands of years of history and debate and experience behind each of us, and all we can ever do is just pick a side. Read more
