‘You can be lonely anywhere, but there is a particular flavour to the loneliness that comes from living in a city, surrounded by millions of people.’ Olivia Laing – The Lonely City In her haunting book, The Lonely City, Olivia Laing explores the theme of loneliness, especially as experienced in urban contexts. Loneliness is not…
Living Sacrifice: Four talks on Romans 12
Last week Helen and I had the privilege of speaking at a weekend away for Wheatley Community Church. It was such a fun weekend getting to know them better, and serving them. We were certainly grateful for the way they welcomed and embraced us as a family, and I also loved the opportunity for me…
Joseph and Restoration (Genesis 42-45)
On Sunday I had the privilege of preaching at Oxford Community Church, continuing a series on the life of Joseph. We looked at Genesis 42-45, this long stretch in which Joseph is reunited with his brothers after 22 years. But rather than revealing his identity to them immediately, he puts his brothers through a series…
The Bible in Four Minutes
How do you quickly and effectively summarise a story as complex as the Bible? Impossible, you might think. But storyteller-poet Dai Woolridge has given it a pretty good shot! His latest video tells biblical story in four minutes, weaving together many of the key themes and threads, showing how they connect beautifully around the person…
The Provocation of Hope
‘Hope is never mere, even when it is meagre. When all other senses sleep, the eye of hope is first to awaken, last to shut.’ (Gil-Galad, The Rings of Power, Season 1, Episode 5) I’ve been thinking recently about the theme of hope, prompted by a few verses from the Epistles (and that quote from…
Learning to pray on Gethsemane roundabout
This strange little roundabout is a few minutes from my house. The first time I walked across it, taking my then-five-year-old daughter to school, she declared: “Oh, I know this place from my Bible! It’s the Garden of Gethsemane.” It was a strange thing for her to say. Gethsemane in her storybook Bible looks far…
BeReal: Connecting with Culture
If you’re curious what a ‘geriatric millennial’ makes of a social media app much loved by Gen-Z, then you’re in luck! This week I had the privilege of writing the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity’s Connecting with Culture, and I chose to offer a few thoughts on BeReal. The concept is simple. Users receive a…
Covenant-making and context collapse
A few weeks ago I made a joke that took on a life of its own. Sorry if it’s taken you all that time to erase it from your memory, only for me to remind you again. I tweeted a picture from the Bible of Jean de Sy, which depicts Abraham’s circumcision in Genesis 17:…
God’s Holy Love (Isaiah 6)
For some of us, those two words don’t naturally seem to fit together; holiness and love. The idea of God’s holiness can feel daunting or scary, whilst the idea of His love may feel far more warm and inviting. So it’s tempting to see these as two aspects of God’s character which are at war…
Gaia: Has the church silenced the sermon of creation?
‘The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge…Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.’ (Psalm 19.1-2, 4) ‘Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen,…
Liam Thatcher 