Category: Jesus
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171 What is before Birth and after Death?
My personal experience Many years ago at a time of personal crisis, I woke from sleep one night, and I’m sure that I stayed on the bed, but it felt as if I was held above the bed, and as sure as day, God spoke to me. I don’t imagine that anyone else awake in…
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170 Elif Shafak ‘On the deep human need for a homeland’
In Sunday’s “Observer” there was an article by Elif Shafak: ‘We are not rootless. We are each others roots.’ The novelist on the deep human need for a homeland and how storytelling can help to unite people in an age of displacement.’ It caught my eye because I’m a fan of her novels, but also…
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167 ‘Up and Away’ The Ascension of Jesus
I’ve never been able to engage easily with the story of Jesus’ Ascension into heaven. I remember as a young curate declining to take an Ascension-tide service for the local junior school because I couldn’t see what the story could helpfully mean to a group of young children. Artists have usually portrayed The Ascension as…
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165 Why Jesus had to be abandoned by God
In my previous blog “God plays hide and seek” I wrote that “My experience is that when God appears to have disappeared it has been for one or two reasons: maybe both. Either in order to invite me to deepen my trust in God’s reality and love, despite the seeming lack of evidence. Or to…
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163. God in Community
I have a friend who came to his Christian faith, as a young man, in a fundamentalist brethren church many years ago. He had been going through a painful personal crisis and found this church to be a place of warmth, acceptance and love, which was what he desperately needed. He also came to know…
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162. God’s Vision for the New Year
During Christmas I re-discovered some words that spoke to me and which seemed to belong together. Words of St John of the Cross, that I had unconsciously echoed in “Midwife God this Christmas” “If you want the Virgin will come walking down the road pregnant with the holy, and say, “I need shelter for the…
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161 Midwife God this Christmas
Above is a Christmas card given to me many years ago by Janet Driver, I recently re-discovered it and made a connection with image below, which might be of a Quaker meeting, but could equally of be wherever two or three are gathered together.
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158 So many other worlds
Early this September I spent a week alone in my friend Andy’s cabin on the Gower coast as I have done for some years. It was a rich and nourishing week as it always has been. On my last night I slept well as I usually do. I woke at 3.40 restless at the prospect…
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156. Isn’t it easy to believe in God
My friend Keith Griffin has sent me an article he’s written. I’ve found it an exciting & hopeful read and he’s agreed that I can add it to this blog. Thank you Keith. “In thirty years of parish ministry what I valued most of all was the freedom to work across a whole range of…
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155 Thy Kingdom comes
What has God revealed to me so far through my prayer and life experience? I am ambivalent about writing these words, who am I to do so? We each have unique insights to share with others. I have a friend who can tell what’s wrong with the engine of a car simply by listening to…
A CONTEMPORARY SPIRITUALITY 