by James Webb
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
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
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!
