Rev elations

WATCHFUL WAITING AND NOT KNOWING Advent is a peculiar season of the year but one with profound insights about the nature of human existence. Its themes of ‘watchful waiting’ and of ‘not knowing’ for me are particularly resonant and I hope meditating on these themes might be helpful for you too. Advent is a season that enables us to remember what has already happened (Jesus’ birth) and to look forward to what we believe will happen (the last days, Jesus’ return). In so doing it is a season of the year which has an element of great familiarity and comfort to it, here we are again, it’s December and we’re getting ready for Christmas. That build up to Christmas couldn’t be more nostalgic and comforting. We know the Christmas rituals so well.   Yet at the same time it is a season that helps us to see some of the huge gaps in our knowledge – it asks us to think about the themes of Christian judgment, end times, eternal life, heaven and hell, areas of Christian life...

My kids love baking –they especially love doing the mixing; they want to be involved, be active and play their part. They want to hold the wooden spoon, mix in the flour and butter, and they do it with enthusiasm and relish; they and we get very messy in the process, but the results are usually pretty good. Stir-up Sunday reminds us to literally start baking for Christmas. It’s a heart-warming tradition - think of all the people preparing their Christmas cakes weeks in advance to allow lots of permeation of the fruit with alcohol! Preparing for Christmas we think not only about getting celebration food ready but we are also reminded that God wants to continually stir up our hearts and wills. God wants to move us, he wants to impact upon us, he wants ultimately to change us. And it is part of our duty as Christians to keep enabling that stirring up of ourselves. Of course stirring up is not a neutral thing. Someone who is a stirrer is thought of as being a trouble maker. An...

It has been just over three weeks now since we have arrived in Rugby and it feels like a world away from South London. If I was used to being in what is generally thought of and written about as a post-Christian secular world then Rugby looks and feels very different. There are a proliferation of churches across Rugby which are very active in working together for the good of the town. There seems to be a genuine Spirit of God's love working across Rugby in impressive ways that I'm not sure what century I am in! It is surprising to find a town that works so hard in regenerating and reinvigorating all that it is and it feels like an enormous privilege to be here.  Not that South London was any kind of spiritual desert! It was also a great privilege to work there and see how God can still be so central to people's lives in the 21st century. If the image we get from the newspapers and national media is that God is redundant in the modern age it seems that the reality is very ...