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The Whole World in His Hands
When I was young, and the Bible was read in church beyond the bounds of sanitized lectionary, I heard that ‘the whole world lies in the hands of the evil one’ (I John 5.19). Coming from under the Blitz, through the war, the holocaust, Hiroshima, into cold war, this text had plausibility. We took it at least half…
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Territorial Rights on a Greek beach, 1988
Into this little bay/ Where a city sunk six centuries ago/ We turned half an hour since/ In a little boat like yours
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Tsunami theology
Matthew 18.10: Do not despise one of these little ones for their angels always behold the face of my Father in heaven God together swept out by the waveNo habitation left to stand upon the earthSea swallows without commentsmoothes memory all awayThe children fathers mothers are not Once little ones quite nothing nowwaved away, Tsunami…
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No Kingdom No Baby
A remark on contemporary Christmas in England Today we have baby But no kingdom The baby is beautiful What baby is not? But the baby signs Nothing now The baby signs No gift, no hope, No kingdom Signs nothing Because for us Self-referencing consumers There is no screen Picking up and reflecting back The light…
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Tenting with Jesus
Name Jesus, Emmanuel, which means ‘God is with us’ (Matt.1.23). But how is God with us? A clue: God became flesh and pitched his tent among us (John 1.14). Tents remind us of holiday fun and festival togetherness, but it was not all sunshine for Jesus. He had ‘nowhere to lay his head’ (Luke 9.58). He tents ‘among us’ but…
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‘For your to-morrows these gave their to-day’: sermon for Remembrance Sunday
Sermon preached at Moortown Baptist Church on 10th November 2024, Remembrance Sunday. The texts for the sermon are: 14 At that time David was in the stronghold, and the Philistine garrison was at Bethlehem. 15 David longed for water and said, “Oh, that someone would get me a drink of water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem!” 16 So…
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Parents as Agents in countering Child Sexual Exploitation
Pages 344-362 of Stepping out of the Traffick: Pausing for theological reflection on Christian Response to Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking, Edd Glenn Miles and Christa Foster Crawford with Bill Prevette. Regnum, 2024. Introducing Pace Pace (now called Ivison Trust) is a voluntary charity in the UK which supports parents whose children are sexually exploited or…
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Reflections on ‘Stepping out of the Traffick’
Reflections on Stepping out of the Traffick: Pausing for theological reflection on Christian Response to Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking, edd Glenn Miles and Christa Foster Crawford with Bill Prevette, Regnum, 2024. Published on pp27-30. The varied chapters in this book share two key characteristics. First, they want sexual exploitation to end, the exploiters to be deterred and…