Bible study groups are a great blessing to so many. It is a joy to read the Bible with others and discuss the implications, and to pray together. These groups are rightly at the heart of community in many local churches and parachurch organisations. Groups have to navigate the dynamics that arise when any group …
We live in an era of many opportunities to escape the real world. Different people will do this in different ways. Some will be physically walking through the world but absorbing none of it due to the music playing in their headphones and the mobile phone up against their face. Others will go into social …
I love to read. In theory, I like to read literary fiction, and when I am relaxed and not too tired, I still do. Give me a good Russian novelist or a Booker Prize winner and I am pretty sure I would enjoy it. Yet, if I am honest with myself, I am often not …
Christmas (in theory, anyway) is supposed to make us happy. The songs have happy tunes, whether Christian ones or just ones about snowmen. Bright lights and calls for goodwill to all are everywhere. (A lot of it is aspirational rather than reality, of course. I don’t get filled with happiness wandering through a large shopping …
It is commonplace for many people to listen to music constantly through the day. Their lives are set to a soundtrack of their own choosing. Whether walking along, catching a bus, or eating their meals, there is always music. Never silence, always music. So what is the problem, you might ask? I like music! What’s …
It can be hard work being a Christian in the workplace. For many people, they are the only Christian in their office or in their department or on their building site. The workplace culture might be challenging. Everyone else might have different values to you and spend their time and money in wildly different ways …
There has been so much commentary in the past few years about the transgender movement. This has often ended up with Christians and transgender activists lining up on opposite sides from one another shouting opinions at on another. Too often the Christian traditional teaching on gender (which I hold to) comes across so poorly as …
All people, just because we are human, are in the image and likeness of God. This means that people are God’s representatives, made to be special, different from the rest of creation. This foundational truth taught in the first chapter of the Bible has all kinds of important applications to it, but today let’s consider …
Christians are those who are living sacrifices, giving our lives to the service of God. We are to be different from the world around us, as we read in Romans 12:2-3: 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what …
I’ve just finished reading a thorough and very interesting historical account of China’s Great Leap Forward in 1958-62. The book is called ‘Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe’ by Frank Dikotter. It’s a harrowing read at times. In an attempt to bring China’s industrial output in line with the developed countries …