Episodes

Do you have any regrets? Perhaps words you have spoken and can’t take back? Or a relationship you should never have started? Second Samuel, chapter 11 tells us of the time when King David was relaxing on the roof of the palace when he saw a woman bathing. Attracted by her beauty he invited her over. But she was the wife of one of his officers. He’s away, he may have thought. And, I am the king. But Bathsheba became pregnant, and David’s attempts to arrange for her husband, Uriah to return home...

The Bible is a book without pictures. This is because there’s an essential, impenetrable mystery about God. To try to paint a picture of God reduces his eternal nature to dimensions that can be comprehended by the human mind. But when we think about it, such a truncated, ordinary God is God no longer. How then can we begin to grasp God’s awesome majesty, holiness and power? The answer is that because relationship is at the heart of his nature, we come to know him through words. When it comes to...

We usually expect personal testimonies to be about conversion experiences. However, testimonies from God’s people about God’s ongoing work in their lives can be very encouraging. Of all the psalms, Psalm 116 gives us a rare glimpse of such testimony. It’s a psalm, written in the aftermath of a crisis, that is charged with emotion and punctuated with the personal pronouns ‘I’, ‘me’ and ‘my’. The panic of his crisis is palpable as is his excitement of his spiritual discovery. 1. A cry for help. ...

‘Count your blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done,’ are words from an old Christian song. How easily we forget to thank God for the countless good things he provides for us. Most of them are unknown to us. We take it all for granted. But there is something else we forget; King David writes about it in Psalm 103. It seems he wrote this for the great choir he established in Jerusalem. It reflects his personal growth in his understanding of God. With his...

CS Lewis once observed, ‘I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to “rejoice” as much as by anything else’. Yet rejoicing is not only an apostolic injunction. A number of psalms in the Old Testament Psalter pulsate with exhortations to sing our praise to the Lord with joy in our hearts. Psalm 96 begins, O sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing to the Lord, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day. The psalm seems to have been...

King Lear, one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies, tells the story of a king who voluntarily set aside his titles and property in favor of two of his three daughters, only to find himself reduced to poverty and homelessness because they rejected him. “Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,” King Lear sighs. “How sharper than the serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.” While some parents might identify with these sentiments let me ask, how often do we express our gratitude to the LOR...

One of the things I love about the Bible is its earthy realism. It understands the world we live in – the good and the bad, the grief and the joys. It also understands how we feel about life’s injustices especially when we see people who mock the notion of God, enjoying success. Nothing ever seems to go wrong for them. And as well as the unfairness we often feel, there are the realities of droughts and famines, floods and fires, earthquakes and ruthless autocratic rulers. Why doesn’t God step in...

Last week we reflected on the reality of the depression many people experience. Psalms 42 and 43 testify to this. The psalms are an example of the timeless wisdom and counsel that we find in the Bible. Psalms 42 and 43 are a cry from the heart. The writer asks why he is depressed. ‘I believe’ he says, ‘Why then should I feel as I do? Why am I so inwardly disturbed? What’s happened to me?’ Three times he asks: Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? (Ps 42:5, 11; ...

Many people these days experience depression. It is not something new and should not be lightly dismissed. Some experience it more than others. Furthermore, it is not something that only people who have no religious faith experience. Great ones of the Bible, such as Elijah, King David, Jeremiah, and Paul the Apostle, all experienced it. A cry from the heart. Psalms 42 & 43 which open Book II of the Psalms, reveal lessons we can learn from the experiences described in them. Far from home, in exi...

Twenty-four years ago Judith and I were living three short blocks south of the Twin Towers in Downtown Manhattan. We had awakened on Tuesday morning, September 11 to clear blue skies and the sparkling waters of New York Harbor. But it was not to last. We felt the shock in our building when the first tower was hit from the north. We heard the scream of the second jet flying low overhead and what sounded like a sonic boom when the south tower was hit. We experienced the shaking of our apartment b...

Back in April 2017, The Spectator (UK) carried an article by Douglas Murray who asked, ‘Who Will Protect Nigeria’s Northern Christians?’ Murray pointed out that the Fulani (militia) are watching everything closely from the surrounding mountains. Every week, their progress across the northern states of Plateau and Kaduna continues. Every week, more massacres – another village burned, its church razed, its inhabitants slaughtered, raped or chased away… ‘For the outside world, what is happening to...

Studies reveal that Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world. Not that we should be surprised. Jesus warned his followers that this would be their experience because of their association with him. “If the world hates you”, Jesus says, “know that it has hated me before it hated you …” (John 15:18). The theme of the persecution of God’s people is not new. Psalm 2, written some 1,000 years before, begins: Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? Why introduces the...

Have you ever been resentful of people whose lives seem successful? They’ve achieved recognition; they have beautiful children, and they enjoy material riches. The very thought of them strips any sense of happiness from you. Now there’s nothing wrong with being successful, having a great family or having money. The question is how do we value them? Do they represent what life is about or is there more to life? Today we come to a second Reflection on Psalm 1. The Psalm is important for it lays ...

Happiness is something we long for. But how can we achieve it? It’s elusive: one moment we can be feeling happy, but the next we’re not. Like moonlight it has slipped through our fingers. In fact ‘happiness’ can’t be a goal in the strict sense of the word. For a goal is something that is within our power to achieve. Happiness isn’t like that. There are too many variables outside our control. We can think that being successful, having a good family and friends, material assets and comfort, will...

What do you think of prayer? Do you pray regularly? And if you do, do you pray with confidence? Can God, whom we call ‘Father’, be trusted to hear our prayers and answer them? In Luke chapter 11, verses 9 and 10, Jesus says: “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” On either side of these words Jesus answers two questions we might have about prayer: Does God always listen to us? Does he always have our very best interests at heart? His answe...

I have a simple question: What is your ambition in life? The themes of royalty and service stand out in Dr. Luke’s record of the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth. Although he is demonstrably God’s king, he never used his divine powers out of self-interest or self-aggrandizement, but for the good of others. His service is a constant theme. In the opening lines of Luke chapter 10, we read that Jesus sent out seventy (or seventy-two) of his followers on a training mission so they could experien...

With the current geo-political upheavals many fear what the future holds. The uncertainty today is exacerbated by the angry divisions within societies. Vindictiveness has replaced respectful and serious conversation. And we can feel utterly powerless when it comes to talking about our faith. In Perelandra or Voyage to Venus, the second in CS Lewis’ science-fiction trilogy, Ransom, the main character, feels powerless in confronting an evil force at work on the untainted planet Venus. The crafty ...

In this world of turmoil and suffering, we long for a day when all will be put right. A scene in the public ministry of Jesus of Nazareth helps us. They arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. As he (Jesus) stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs… (Luke 8:26-27). While today the man would probably be diagnosed with some form of psychosis, Luke the physicia...

n his Screwtape Letters CS Lewis observes that there are two equal and opposite errors that people fall into regarding the dark powers. One mistake is to disbelieve in their existence; the other is to believe in them to excess. In Ephesians chapter 6, verses 10 through 12, Paul the Apostle writes: Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power… For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers ...

In the concluding chapter of his book, Dominion (2019), Tom Holland draws together his theme of the ways Christianity has impacted “the rise and fall of empires, the actions of bishops and kings, the arguments of theologians, the course of revolutions, the planting of crosses around the world. Yet”, he comments, “that hardly tells the whole story. “I have written much in this book about churches, and monasteries, and universities,” he writes, “but these were never where the mass of the Christia...

Everyone loves a story – the huge success of the Narnia books of CS Lewis, The Lord of the Rings from JRR Tolkien and, of course, JK Rowling’s, Harry Potter series, all come to mind. But fiction is not the only form of story people long for. There is always wide-ranging interest in the personal stories of people – the successful and the unknown, recent and long-past. It is as though people find their own sense of identity and purpose in the story of others. This is especially true in troubling ...

Can we help our broken and divided world find hope and peace? Or has the voice of God’s people been silenced? As I point out in my recent book, The Jesus Story: Seven Signs, Tom Holland in Dominion traces the influences of the Jesus story on the West, including the values of right and wrong, justice and compassion. In his Letter to God’s People in Colossae, Paul the Apostle writes of the hope that has awakened their faith in Christ Jesus and their love for one another. He reminds them that this...

In his book The Holy Trinity (2004), Robert Letham commented on the impact of postmodernism on society: “In terms of instability and diversity,” he wrote, “the postmodern world of constant flux is seeing insecurity, breakdown, and the rise of various forms of terrorism… As diversity rules, subgroups are divided against each other… A cult of the victim develops, and responsibility declines. This is a recipe for social breakdown, instability, and the unravelling of any cohesion that once existed” ...

Is there anything that can really make us different, that can shake us out of our apathy and anxieties? That can inject enthusiasm and joy, confidence and courage into our lives? Come with me to the events of Pentecost that we read about in Acts chapter 2. It was six-weeks after Jesus’ resurrection. Three questions emerge. What happened? When the day of Pentecost came, the disciples were together in an upper room in Jerusalem. ‘Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came… Divided...