Discerning readers of this blog’s comments will have picked up that our baby, due in July, is a boy. Our first child will be a son. Earlier this week, someone commented to me about how good this is ‘because having a firstborn son is so important in the Bible.’ Deep […]
Grumpy Day is a picture book from Matthias Media which I agreed to review as part of their Free-For-Bloggers promo. It begins ‘It wasn’t a very happy day for anyone’ and we’re introduced to three kids: Ben who can’t get his blocks to stack; Emily who can’t get her toys to sit […]
I’ve been reading late missiologist Ralph Winter‘s essay on predictions for Evangelical missions. He traces a loss of social conscience in evangelicals from the latter part of the 19th century and into the 20th. Think the difference between Wilberforce or the early Temperance movements and the ‘just save souls’ emphasis […]
In my world, anyway, it’s easier to give than to receive. Do other ministry people feel this way? We spend so much of our lives extending the hand of friendship; proffering hospitality; sitting down listening to others; advocating on their behalf. And I don’t consider that an imposition – it’s […]
Most nights, Arthur reads me to sleep. Most of the time, it’s quite soothing. Other times, it’s too exciting. Occasionally, there’s a particularly stand-out moment. Like this one, when he launches into the Grand High Witch’s song from Roald Dahl’s The Witches. For those who are not familiar with the […]
When we started planning to go to overseas with CMS and when that plan became more specifically about Tanzania, a ‘Third World country’ (not my term), one question we had to ask was of the ethics of taking (then-not-yet-existing) children there. A number of people have outlined to us why […]
In our animism lecture, we talked about the idea of liminality. It’s the process of being ‘forgotten’ by your community, of being taken out of it and being brought back in. It’s often associated with rites of passage.
Meet Jesus at uni 