The science is clear. We are living in a warming world due to fossil fuel emissions. The world’s most vulnerable are already suffering...

Night deepens. The candle burns low. I reach the next line of the Creed: He descended into hell And I pause. The words fall like a stone into silence. Yesterday he suffered. Today he sleeps. The world holds its breath. God has gone quiet. It is Holy Saturday. The space between agony and dawn, between “It is finished” and “He is risen.” Faith itself feels buried. If incarnation was God with us, and crucifixion was God for us, then this— this descent— is God beneath us. Love go

Passus sub Pontio Pilato, Crucifixus, Mortuus, et Sepultus (Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried) It is evening, and the shadows arrive. The chapel grows dim. I reach the next line: Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. The words weigh heavy, thick with empire and execution. A governor’s name fixed forever in our creed. A reminder that the gospel bleeds within history. Pontius Pilate signs the order. Religion and emp

Qui Conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, Natus ex Maria Virgine (Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary) The afternoon arrives, The air tastes of rain. I reach the next line: Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary. The infinite breathes into the finite. Spirit hovers again— as in the beginning, but now over a young woman’s yes. No temple, no throne, only the quiet chamber of a womb. Theotokos, God-bearer, her consent becomes creation’s hinge. Divinit

Rain taps against the window. A kettle hums. Somewhere the news mutters of conflict, climate and cost. I reach the next line: And in Jesus Christ. The room grows still. Not an idea now, but a man. A man with calloused hands and kind eyes. A man who knew splinters, hunger, laughter. Yeshua of Nazareth, his very name meaning the Lord saves. He comes not as Joshua with a sword, but as Yeshua with open palms. Not leading armies, but walking with fishermen. Not commanding from abo

The recycling lorry grinds past. Children head to work and school. Then stillness returns. After prayer, I step outside. The dawn leans in, dew on grass, a robin’s sermon, breath rising like incense. Creator of heaven and earth, the words arrive not as theory but as touch, taste, trembling: light through leaf, the smell of damp soil, the world alive with God. Once I thought creation a thing, a stage, a backdrop for redemption’s play. Now I see communion, each creature a sylla

A siren fades in the distance. Tea cools by the windowsill. I reach the next line— I believe in God, the Father Almighty. The words familiar, but this morning they hesitate on my tongue. Almighty. A word I’ve prayed, sung, preached— a word that once thundered, now trembles. If God is almighty, why the tears that never end? Why the rooms where violence breathes? Why the long ache of unanswered prayer? I’ve repeated these words a million times, as though power were the point— a

Morning prayer. The chapel hush before the day begins. Candle flickers, breath misting in the half-light. The words come again— I believe. I stop. How many times have I said them? How many times have I meant them? Some mornings they rise like birds, other mornings they drop like stones. I believe— help my unbelief. Not as one who understands, but as one who clings. Belief now is not a certificate of certainty, but a slow turning of the heart, a leaning toward mercy, a yes tha

Before there was sound, there was Word. Before there was time, there was Love— vast, uncontainable, breathing galaxies into being. And Love became flesh, so that flesh might become love. The Eternal bent low, clothed in the smallness of a child, laid where creatures feed. The One who shaped the stars rests now in a trough of straw. The Source of all sustenance becomes the food of the world. The Unbounded becomes breakable, so the frail may taste divine life. In Bethlehem— the

Prison number A34719. That’s who he is on paper. A number. A file. A ticked-off risk. "Repeat offender." "Unlikely to engage." He’s out now, if you can call it that. No fixed abode. He kips in the underpass, names of the dead sprayed on the walls. Sometimes he wonders if his will be next. He begs for a sandwich, but what he really wants is a tenner to shut out the noise: those voices that snake through his skull: You’re nothing. No one’s coming. He goes to the feeds, not just

In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus invites us not just to hear his words but to embody them. Not to admire his teaching from a safe distance, but to let it take root—deep and disruptive— until it changes how we live, love, and lose ourselves for the sake of the kingdom. “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” (Luke 6:46) Two builders.Two houses.Two foundations. One listens and acts, building on rock.The other listens and does nothing, building on sand.And when the s

“You brought me out into a spacious place.” – Psalm 18:19 He boards the early train at Minsterleigh. Black coat buttoned, collar set. A Canon on study leave – though others know what that means. The carriage smells of coffee and rain. Across the aisle: a student scrolling, a man tapping at a laptop. He takes the window seat, bag at his feet, carrying the kind of tiredness that lives behind the ribs. He serves at the Cathedral – a place of beauty, liturgy, and gentle control.

Jo and Nina had been coming to Lighthouse for years. A couple, kind to each other, kind to others, and if you watched closely, you’d see they looked out for the ones nobody else noticed. They were in their early fifties, short hair, hoodies, tired eyes and warm smiles. They sat near the back, hands wrapped around mugs, listening more than talking. They were drinkers, gentle with it when at church, but chaos was never far behind. Nina ignored the letters. “What hospital appoin

They say there is a quiet revival. Praise God for it. Students and seekers return. The disenchanted bow the knee. Secularism loses its...

The Angel of the North rusted, enormous, stands watch over broken estates. Not protection. A witness. Rev Pam walks the cut towards the youth worker’s flat. Grey drizzle. Bin bags spilling. Shouting from upstairs windows. Trained at St Hild near Leeds, cut her teeth in a suburban curacy, but felt the call North, to where the Angel spreads its arms. She passes Kenny, voice like gravel, eyes red from Stella. “Church lot divvent knaa, pet,” he mutters, “kids roond here haven’t a

The church was full. Old hymns sung with cracked voices. A life remembered. The old priest laid to rest. Afterwards, six deacons, six...

The First Word — Heralds Two days before ordination, six wait in cassocks that itch against the skin. They gather in the retreat house...

He was trained in philosophy and systematics, raised on Reformed dogma: the Perfect Being, the God who always gets his way, a...

Redminster bears its wounds— mills rusting, shops boarded, estates sagging under years of neglect. At the bypass sits the Britannia...

Thomas, parish priest, opens the Bishop’s statement on his screen: “We are deeply concerned to hear of the planned ‘Unite the Kingdom’...