As we tiptoe tentatively through the first weeks of 2022, wondering what lies ahead for us this year, I’ve been musing on an attitude which I’ve seen cropping up in a few different places recently – most obviously in the title of the rather universally panned Netflix mockumentary ‘Death to Read more…
We enter Holy Week this year just a few days after the year-anniversary of the UK’s first lockdown. What a difference a year makes. It’s become a staple of the national conversation in recent weeks to observe the transformation in attitudes, plans and expectations from last March up to now, the Read more…
As this strange and troubling academic term comes to an end, I can think of no better way of finishing it than by turning to God in prayer—in adoration for his grace, confession and thanksgiving for what’s past, and supplication for the future. Dear Lord and Father, We thank you Read more…
‘Long lay the world in sin and error pining,Till He appear’d and the soul felt its worth.A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.’ I’ve remarked in previous posts how much I love Christmas; though it is nowhere near Christmastime, I was reminded Read more…
Like many who are not schoolteachers, NHS staff or other key workers, in these recent weeks I have been getting used to spending most of my time at home, getting very acquainted with Zoom and the various tools we are using for online teaching at the university where I work. Read more…
George MacDonald (1824-1905) was a Scottish clergyman and writer who profoundly influenced the fiction and non-fiction works of C.S. Lewis. One of Lewis’s lesser-known publications is an edited collection of MacDonald’s writings: the book can be hard to find in print now, but a dear friend gifted my a copy Read more…
As 2019 has come to a close, and a new decade is beginning, I have been thinking about a poem by Emily Dickinson – one of my favourites, for its enigmatic imagery and its expression of longing: ‘I did not reach Thee’. Here is the first stanza (you can read Read more…
I’ve always felt sad at the passing of Christmas Day: at how quickly the world moves on to Boxing-Day sales, extinguished fairy lights, discarded fir trees and raucous New-Year revelries. Perhaps it’s partly nostalgia, but I yearn for those past times when the twelve days of Christmas were celebrated in full. Read more…
One of my favourite pieces of Christmas music is ‘For unto us a Child is born’ from Georg Friderich Händel’s Messiah. I have loved it since I was a child, touched by its bouncing joy and the intricacy of its polyphonic choral writing, with lines appearing and disappearing like needles through Read more…
As we approach the most significant point in the Christian calendar – the weekend where we remember the sacrificial death and glorious resurrection of Jesus, our saviour – it is good to return to some of the core truths that he taught about himself whilst on earth. I’ve been struck recently Read more…