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Church

Faith through the furnace

“Until the lion learns how to write, every story will glorify the hunter.” – African Proverb I still remember when I first walked through the doors of the church. I’d heard about places like this, I’d seen them on music videos, but to find one in Newcastle was something else. Smiling people greeted me and got me a drink before taking me into the auditorium. It was in darkness with haze rolling across the stage and strobe lighting. I’d grown up in a cult and leaving it had been hard, not because I didn’t want to leave, but because cults...
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The Day After Pentecost

Today is the day after Pentecost. It’s the day after Christians around the world celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the first church, and the fact we live after Pentecost is hugely significant. In the third chapter of the book of Acts we read a story that happens not long after the day of Pentecost. Peter and John were walking to the temple and passed a crippled man who begged there daily. And a man lame from birth was being carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the temple that is called the...
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Welcome Home

I’ll never forget the feeling, sat on a train at a station somewhere west of Budapest, that something ominous was about to happen. I’d cut it scarily fine getting to Kőbánya-Kispest station and dashed through the halls trying to find my platform; I was shocked to find that even in that suburban station there were people slumped against walls and hovering with desperation in the ticket office. I got on the train, with a minute or two to spare, and found that our carriage was filled with people fleeing the war in Syria. As we stopped at the first station outside of Budapest, I glanced up to see a dozen...
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Fighting For The Furthest Heart

I’ve often wondered about war photographers. How did Robert Capa feel when he captured the image of a man dying in a Spanish battle? How does it feel to observe yet not have the power to intervene? There’s a moral tension between the duty to tell the world the story and the duty to join the struggle. Martin Luther King Jr understood this; a photographer once put down his camera and waded in to try and stop police brutality. King reprimanded him severely, because now the world would never see what had happened – all he had done was add...
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Keep on Running…

It was about four kilometres in to the race when I decided to give up. I was 80% done, my time was within touching distance of my best, but my will was broken. Let me rewind a little bit and I’ll explain. This year I started taking part in parkrun; it’s a weekly 5km race that is open to all and takes place in parks around the world. The first week I ran the race in 24:25, and felt like I had almost killed myself, but then I started to quicken up. The weekly run strengthened my legs and expanded my lung capacity. Three weeks ago...
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