nukelearfishing

Category: love

  • post-truth?

    The word ‘post-truth’ has been declared the Oxford Dictionaries word of 2016. It is an adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’. It emerged this year to try to describe the way in which the UK…

  • a love story

    This Sunday morning in my sermon I will be exploring Hosea (the whole book). Every time I come to Hosea I find myself thinking, “What would I do if I was in Hosea’s position?” How would I feel? How would I cope? Hosea’s story is a love story… of sorts. The narrative is fascinating: Hosea…

  • I don’t think Facebook really cares about me

      When I log on to Facebook now I often get reminded of a post I made a few years ago on the same date with the heading, “Your memories on Facebook”. I quite like that, it reminds me of things that I had forgotten had happened and people with whom I was in touch…

  • for the victims of violence

    Violence appears strong: it intimidates; it wounds; it destroys; it instils fear; it undermines; it screams; it demands; it provokes negative reactions; it kills. And grace and love appear weak: they can be trampled underfoot; they can be ignored; they can be pushed around and taken advantage of; they can be shouted down; they can…

  • how do you read the Bible?

    How do you read the Bible? That question has a range of answers from the simple: “You open the book and read the words on the pages” to the complex: “You need to understand the culture surrounding the events and you need to understand the form of literature that you are reading.” Actually both are…

  • a rANT against violence 

    Over recent weeks and months there seems to have been an escalation in hatred, violence and bloodshed across the world. It may just be a perception-thing, and the situation may not be worse than what I hesitate to call ‘normal’, but there have been so many atrocities. How do you feel about it? I have…

  • The parable of the okay Samaritan

    (This is the most recent parable we are sharing with our churches. It is based on The Message paraphrase of the Bible). Just then a religious scholar stood up with a question to test Jesus. “Teacher, what do I need to do to get eternal life?” He answered, “What’s written in God’s Law? How do you…

  • in anticipation of St Valentine

    This morning there was a discussion on the radio that reminded me that William Shakespeare invented over 1700 new words and phrases that are now in common usage in the English Language. Wow! When you consider that the average vocabulary is perhaps 35,000 words (wow again), that’s quite a significant proportion of words that have…

  • some things I have learnt in 26 years 210 days

    Sally and I have now been married for 26 years 210 days (to the date of writing this bloggage). I am not telling you this to brag, but to set a context for today’s bloggage, which is about a few things I have learnt along the way. In my previous role as a local church…

  • how free is speech?

    One of the foundational principles of life is ‘freedom of speech’ (or freedom of expression to use the more inclusive term). In many countries it is enshrined in the Constitution and a basic ‘right’, and where it is denied by those in power it is one of the things that the people crave. It is one…