by James Webb
Easter is a topsy-turvey time. Everything is back-to-front. Suffering brings salvation, death brings life; the established order of things is turned on its head. Yet we spend so much of our time and energy trying to make things work in a world where we believe that death is stronger than life and that despair is greater than hope. Read more
I believe in God the Father, the creator of the world and everything in it.
I believe that He has guided His people over the years, with many miraculous signs. Read more
It’s easy to hold the Church up as a good argument for atheism. Our shame is not that we have been exceptionally bad, but rather that we haven’t been exceptionally good. But you can’t shake off the Holy Spirit that easily. Read more
Crunching along the path,
the black skies reflect
on how easily I mislay my peace:
Like a five pence coin, a TV remote
or a needle in a haystack.
There was this one time when I was asked to visit a friend of mine who was in hospital. Let me clarify what I mean by ‘in hospital’. He was actually in the hospital’s locked ward. He’d had a psychotic episode and been sectioned. So I went to visit him, and I sat with him in the secure unit. I was out of my depth, which is where I spend a lot of my time. He asked me to read to him, from the Psalms. So that’s what I did. That’s all I did. For half an hour I just sat and read from the Psalms while he wept beside me. Then I went home to my family. Read more
One: Christians should never ever cause trouble.
Two: The harder you work, the more God owes you.
Three: Spiritual warfare is no concern of mine. Read more
An actor and a preacher were discussing their work.
“What I don’t understand,” said the preacher, “is why my congregation will come to one of your performances and sit for hours, engaged and alert the whole time, while I can hardly get them to stay awake during one of my twenty minute sermons.”
“Maybe,” said the actor, “it’s because I present fiction as though it were the truth, and you present the truth as though it were fiction.” Read more
I saw a man throwing a child at the sun.
“Why are you doing that?” I said.
“I’m helping him. He told me that he was cold,” the man said.
I looked at the bruised child on the floor.
“I think he needs to go to the hospital,” I said.
“Sure,” said the man, lifting the child above his head once more. “Which direction is the hospital?”
My post last week got me thinking about some of my own experiences in leadership. Sometimes a leader needs to be a good negotiator, a good speaker, a good manager, or a good accountant. Sometimes there are things that can only be done by a good person. Read more
What do people want from their leaders? Reflecting on my own experiences in leadership and viewing the current political climate in the West makes me conclude that what we really want are leaders who think the same way as us. The personality and character of a leader is less important than whether or not he or she agrees with me on certain issues. We want leaders who are an extension of our opinions, a proxy who will do the things that we would do if we were in charge. “My will be done,” we say. Read more
