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Jesus

Outrageous Love

July 25, 2016, Published by

Every time I sit down to write a blog recently, there’s some new atrocity in the news. Shootings, bombings, stabbings. Somehow terror has grown even more terrifying, sudden, and startling. It’s hard to imagine the kind of evil it takes to drive a truck deliberately through a crowd of celebrating families, open fire on revellers with a semi-automatic, or detonate a bomb that indiscriminately massacres crowds of people. The easiest, most obvious, and seemingly most natural, response is to hate. Hate Daesh and al-qaeda, hate the Mahdi Army and Boko Haram, and hate whoever else is presently unleashing their evil upon the world. And yet, a couple...
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Everything is Illuminated

September 1, 2015, Published by

I watched the sunrise, yesterday, but you could be forgiven for thinking that I didn’t. It’s become an August bank holiday tradition to sleep under the stars. We’ve been in a cave, on a hillside, and yesterday found us on a beach. As tends to be the way with sleeping in the open, I was awake at dawn with my eyes scanning the eastern horizon. A low line of clouds hung in the sky and the time for sunrise came and left without that beautiful slither of gold making it’s appearance. I didn’t see the sunrise, but I knew that it had....
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Everyday Miracles…

August 14, 2015, Published by

My house mate is a music producer, and I remember one day last year he came home and played a song he’d recorded that day. It was a cover of Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A Changin’, by a local artist called Brooke Bentham. It was haunting and beautiful and I can honestly say that, much as I love the original, I enjoyed this more. But that’s rare, isn’t it? In general no one is flocking to Elvis impersonators because they’re better than the man himself, they’re going to impersonators because the real thing is dead. When we’re reading the words of...
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Crime and Punishment…

August 7, 2015, Published by

I remember a time, when I was growing up, when the biggest question in the world seemed to be whether OJ Simpson was guilty and what the punishment should be. Twenty years later and the world found itself similarly preoccupied by the Pistorious trial in South Africa. Suddenly everyone becomes a forensics expert, a lawyer, a judge and a jury; we become fascinated with punishment as though it somehow sets things right. There can be something oddly reassuring about the concept of punishment – perhaps it’s a hangover from childhood. You never want discipline but after it’s done there is the feeling that you broke a...
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Lose Control

June 25, 2015, Published by

I like to feel in control. I’d not go as far as saying I’m a control freak but I’ve definitely got the tendencies. It’s said that people fear what they can’t understand, but it’s equally true that people fear what they can’t control. One of the scariest things about enduring life’s storms can be the feeling that we no longer have control and there’s nothing we can do. The anxiety and worry of feeling unable to get a handle on what’s going on often seems even worse than the potential outcomes. A lesson from history Two thousand years ago when they finally decided to...
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