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Being in the presence of a truly holy person can be an uncomfortable experience.  Back in 1995, I recall meeting one of the holiest people I’ve ever met – someone who really lived the apostolic life we read in the pages of the New Testament – and feeling both terrified and strangely drawn into their … Read more

I wonder if you’ve had the experience of God asking you to do something surprising?  Something that at the time didn’t make a lot of sense?  I remember Brother Andrew – who passed away recently after a remarkable life of courageous witness – telling the story of once smuggling bibles into the Eastern Bloc and … Read more

The well-known evangelist J. John is fond of saying: ‘Always remember that the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.’  It’s good advice: whilst we long to grow in wisdom, such that we might have the mind of Christ to apply our faith to the whole of life and of society, … Read more

Our culture has a strange relationship with the supernatural.  On the one hand, there is plenty of scepticism about the existence of the spiritual world; on the other, there has also been a significant resurgence of interest recently – there’s never been so many TV programmes about angels or demons or ghosts. This ambiguity is … Read more

I wonder what you think about your home town (or village or city)?  On one level, we never really get away from it: if you have a passport, it’ll be recorded as your place of birth for your whole life.  And often our place of birth shapes us in ways we don’t always expect, and … Read more

To really understand a thing, you have to go back to its roots.  This is good rule of thumb for life, and it’s also true for plumbing the depths of scripture.  ‘The New is in the Old concealed; the Old is by the New revealed’ – that’s one way of understanding the relationship between the … Read more

Today’s passage is one of the most famous in the bible.  If you’ve been a Christian for any length of time, you will probably have heard lots of talks on it, and may feel that there isn’t much left to say!  However, I’m not going to give you a general guide to this passage, or … Read more

Ancestry is big business nowadays.  Millions of us now regularly use ancestry websites to track down our family trees, and overall the genealogy market is now worth over £3 billion worldwide.  Indeed, its popularity has even recently led to a change in the law.  In 2021, the way marriages are registered in the UK was … Read more

In a coronation service, always the most special part of the ceremony is the anointing.  Even in our supposedly secular age, at King Charles’ coronation last year, the Act of Consecration was deemed so sacred, that it was the only part of the ceremony which was kept hidden from public view and the ubiquitous TV … Read more

One thing that was striking about the recent accession of King Charles to the throne is the role of heralds in royal pageantry.  It’s not something we see much of in day-to-day life: but the fanfares which accompanied the proclamation of Charles as king – both in September 2022, or at his coronation in May … Read more