A Spirituality of Simplicity
Can less be more? Or, in the world of church and Jesus following, can fewer services, ministries and activities help us draw closer to God? It may sound counter intuitive, but let’s play with the idea and see where it leaves us. It is actually a relevant question. After all, Covid shut downs have seen most churches run significantly fewer programs, and it is important that we ask if that has been to our spiritual detriment, or if in some strange way, it has helped us become a little more like Jesus. If the former, we should probably get back to business as usual as quickly as possible,...
Read MoreSpotting God…
I have a small group of people who come to me for spiritual direction. It’s a richly rewarding experience to sit in the story of another person and to work together with them to discern what God is saying and doing in their life – an astonishing privilege actually. It has also reminded me of the many and diverse ways in which God turns up for people. For some it is while reading scripture, for others while in prayer, for many it is in the flow of life, though often it is then only recognised afterwards as an “I think that was God” realisation. Four things I am...
Read MoreFrom FOMO to hello to here…
Do you, like me, often want to be somewhere else? It’s not that I’m unhappy where I am, it’s just that in a world filled with many options and possibilities – well, why wouldn’t you explore them all? Those younger than me tell me it’s FOMO, aka fear of missing out. Here’s the irony. FOMO can actually see you missing out, and get you to overlook what you already have. Recently I’ve been reading Padraig O’Tuama’s book In the Shelter. O’Tuama is the leader of the Corrymeela community in Northern Ireland, and brings a refreshing and hopeful perspective to Christian spirituality. He suggests we...
Read MoreQuotable: Questions Jesus Asked
A piece of unverified Bible trivia I came across is that Jesus asks 307 questions in the Bible. True, some of the questions appear several times, being repeated in the different gospels, so the number of distinctly different questions is less – but you still can’t get away from the fact that Jesus asked lots of questions. While each had its own immediate purpose and context, they remain powerfully penetrating, and I have found it a worthwhile spiritual exercise to sit with some of the questions and to allow them to challenge me at deeper and deeper levels. As Christmas approaches, I...
Read MoreQuotable: Eugene Peterson and Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places – Take 2
Last week we looked at a few key quotes from Eugene Peterson’s influential book on spiritual theology Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places. Here is a second look… Human beings are not gods; the moment we forget this, we violate the boundaries of our humanity and something is violated in reality itself. The universe suffers damage. Eugene Peterson (p42) But the fundamental inadequacy of codes of conduct for giving direction to the spiritual life is that they put us in charge (or, which is just as bad, put someone else in charge of us); God is moved off the field of action to the judge’s...
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