Well I have been back in hospital again! I have to confess that it was my own fault. As regular readers of our blog know, I had a heart attack back at the end of February and ended up in hospital for a week as a result. I am now waiting for a triple heart […]

In the aftermath of the 1981 riots in Handsworth and Brixton, Norman Tebbit (Employment Secretary in Margaret Thatcher’s Government at the time) responded to a suggestion by a Young Conservative that ‘rioting was the natural reaction to unemployment’ by saying, ‘I grew up in the 1930s with an unemployed father. He didn’t riot. He got […]

The 20th Century American poet, Robert Lee Frost’s most well known poem, The Road Not Taken, concludes with the words, ‘Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less travelled by … and that has made all the difference!’ Frost spent the years 1912-1915 in England, where among his acquaintances was the writer […]

  Denis Diderot was an 18th century French atheist. Referring to his life he wrote, ‘Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. Then a stranger appears and says to me “My friend, you should blow your candle out so you can find your way more clearly!?”‘ […]

One of my favourite places in and around Jerusalem is a lovely garden known as ‘The Garden Tomb’ which houses a rock-cut tomb, unearthed in 1867, and which has subsequently been considered by some Christians to be the site of the burial and resurrection of Jesus. The Garden Tomb is adjacent to a rocky escarpment […]

The last words, according to John, Jesus said before he died were, ‘It is finished!’ (John 19:30).  Not ‘I am finished’ but, ‘IT is finished!’ This is the great guttural Aramaic shout ‘TETELESTAI!’ No matter how hard we may try, it is impossible to shout loudly, our English translation, ‘It is finished!’  But in the […]

‘Father, into your hands I commit my Spirit’ (Luke 23:46). This penultimate saying – this piece of the mosaic comprised by these Seven Sayings of Jesus from the Cross – starts to paint a different picture from that we have seen thus far. Jesus is in command of himself. He who freely gave himself into […]

‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!’ (Matthew 27:46). What a cry! And what a staggering sentence … perhaps the most staggering in all the Gospels. ‘Forsaken’ is such a wretched and pitiful word and experience. ‘God forsaken’ is even worse?! Abandoned, rejected, despised, left helpless. This is how Jesus felt in this […]

It is interesting that of all the physical sensations Jesus must have been feeling as he hung there on the cross, one would not necessarily have put ‘thirst’ at the top of the list? But when things are reaching their conclusion … this is what he cries. According to the Apostle John (and he should […]

Standing near the cross are the women who were closest to Jesus. Confusedly most of them are called Mary. They are standing by Jesus when all but one of his disciples have fled and abandoned him. His mother is there, of course. Jesus looks up and sees her there … and standing right next to […]