Yesterday my wonderful wife treated me to a guided tour of the Vatican Museums with an art historian. I am still carrying it round with me. The place is breathtaking. It really is. Marble and gold and pigment and centuries of prayer, power, fear, longing, all pressed into stone. You can feel the weight of history there. Human beings reaching for transcendence. Human beings reaching for power too. And perhaps those two have often been closer than we like to admit. What has sta

'Ed used to crouch
 outside Morrisons— not always asking, 
just hoping someone,
 tipsy from a night out, might drop a fiver
and not ask why. He said it was for food—
 but it wasn’t.
 Not really. The city’s full of street kitchens. What he needed
 was the bag of brown
 that quieted the ache
 that never really left.' Extract from Grace May yet Win, Rev' Jon Swales When Hope Shrinks For Ed, hope has become painfully small. Not small in importance, but small in reach. He is not t

Philip said, 'Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.' Jesus answered, 'Have I been with you this long? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father' ------ Tony is from Middlesbrough. You can hear it in the accent. Kindly. Friendly. Geordie-ish— but not quite. He’s been around church for a while now. Not the tidy kind of belonging— not the polished testimony version. More the kind where you drift in near the end for the cuppa and a custard cream, & stay close

“We need a theology of revolt,” says Greg Boyd. He is right. But if the word revolt is to be more than noise—if it is to be faithful, liveable, and genuinely good news—then it must be shaped not only by urgency, but by mercy. Because the truth is this: many are not standing on the barricades. Many are barely standing at all. And still, the call of the kingdom remains. A theology of revolt does not begin with what the church must do, but with what God is already doing—and the

Christian leaders are complex human beings. That shouldn’t need saying. But sometimes it does. We are shaped over time — by desire, fear, love, disappointment, trauma, hope. We change. We are never static. Christian theology speaks of a 'calling' towards Christlikeness, often named as cruciformity. But calling is not direction, and vocation is not arrival. Leaders, like the communities they serve, are a mixed bag. Some are being softened. Some are being hardened. Formation in

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

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