Originally posted on therevdrjs:
Easter People John Foster tells how an enquirer from Hinduism approached an Indian Bishop. Unaided he had read the New Testament, and the story had fascinated him. In particular he was gripped by the person of Jesus Christ. He felt he had entered a new world. In the Gospels it was…

Originally posted on therevdrjs:
The Harrowing of Hell Two of my grandsons were discussing the meaning of Easter. Their conversation went something like this. George (age 5): ‘Luke, do you know that Easter time is when Jesus died on the cross?’ Luke (age 3)  ‘Yeah … then he fell down a big hole!’ Now in…

The schoolteacher was completely nonplussed. It was her first Easter with her new class (she had only started at this particular school in the January) and she had innocently asked her children who the person at the heart of the Easter Story was. ‘The Easter Bunny!’ one little boy had replied instantly. ‘What about Jesus?’ […]

Reflecting this week on the events of that first Palm Sunday, and particularly the hollow praises of the majority of the people who witnessed Jesus’ so-called ‘Triumphal Entry’ into Jerusalem (Matthew 21:1-11), reminded me of another incident forever etched on my memory from my student days at Spurgeon’s College back in the 1960s. [NB. It […]

Someone sent me a short film clip recently of a barn owl caught up in a barbed wire fence. Now, I love barn owls – perhaps it has something to do with living in rural Dorsetshire for five years, or perhaps it is their cute faces – although if I were a small vole or […]

One of the best illustrations of the progressive nature of temptation is found in the Jungle Doctor stories. The story in question is called ‘The Small Wisdom of Feeding Vultures’. ‘A small monkey called Tichi was once fascinated by the curves of the dangerous beaks of vultures. A vulture landed near Tichi in the family […]

Archibald Orr Ewing (1857-1930) was born into a wealthy family in Scotland. A successful businessman, he was deeply influenced for Christ both through the D L Moody mission to Glasgow in 1882, and by attending the Keswick Convention in 1885. As a result he devoted himself to missionary service and served with the China Inland […]

Anthony de Mello (1931-1987) was an Indian Jesuit priest, psychotherapist, and spiritual writer. His classic book is Awareness, specifically about spiritual awareness. He was also known for his story telling. For example, ‘A businessman goes into a bar, sits down and sees this fellow with a banana in his ear! A banana in his ear, […]

Is there anything more frustrating in life than discovering something is missing? You spend hours doing a jigsaw puzzle (that was a bargain from the charity shop) only to find at the end that a piece is missing. The endless hours of pleasure doing it, spoiled in a moment! You carefully put together the unit […]

It may come as a surprise to many of us, but ‘God’s ways are not our ways nor are God’s thoughts our thoughts,’ so the Prophet Isaiah tells us (Isaiah 55:8). God doesn’t think the way we think or work the way we work. The positive spin on this for us is that it means […]