“Nothing good can come of this,” said the man,
watching his neighbour leave his home
because he had heard a desert voice.
*** Read more
James’s Blog: Nothing Good.
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James’s Blog: Handling the Psalms with Care.
It’s been said that the Bible is a record of God speaking to Man, but the Psalms are a record of Man speaking to God. This, I think, is one of the reasons why they have a universal appeal. Psalm 23 is the Amazing Grace of the Bible; it’s the one that everyone knows. The power of the Psalms is that they put into words the inner music of the human soul. Whatever is going on in you, there’s a Psalm that you can read and say, “Me too!” Read more
James’s Blog: The Rich Man and the Farmer.
There was once a rich man, who owned many wonderful and precious things, and he loved those things greatly. There was, however, one thing that he loved more than all of his possessions, all of his wealth, and that was himself. Read more
James’s Blog: Natural Words and Spiritual Words.
Sometimes I’ll talk to someone about how things are going, and they’ll say something like:
“When she was out walking the dog, Sheila noticed that the family a couple of doors down was selling their car. So, we bought it for a good price. It turned out to be really convenient.” Read more
James’s Blog: Musings on Faith, Reason, Experience, Colouring-in and Worship.
It’s been one of those years – the kind of year that was meant by the ancient Chinese curse, “May you live in Interesting Times.”
Here’s a couple of things I find interesting about these Interesting Times. The first is that, through following up on Tweets and stuff, I learned that in America three of the top five best-selling non-fiction Christian books of 2016 were adult colouring-in books. After what I wrote a couple of weeks ago, I don’t know what to say. I understand that some people find them helpful, but really? Three out of five? Read more
James’s Blog: Looking Forward to Christmas.
I like the build up to Christmas. I like the festive lights, nostalgic songs and the general atmosphere. I even enjoy the weather – the crisp, cold winter days. In Australia we had nine months of summer and three months of grim misery in a house that was designed to shed as much heat as possible. Plus, Christmas in the summer just felt wrong. Read more
James’s Blog: We Don’t Believe in Jesus Anymore. We Believe in Colouring-in.
The title of this post is a line that I’ve had floating around in my head for a couple of weeks. It feels like it wants to be the punchline to a poem, but that sounds like too much hard work at the moment. Read more
James’s Blog: Fair Trade.
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
James’s Blog: A Metaphor.
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
James’s Blog: Fishers of Men?
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
