‘Your endurance will win you your lives’. That hardly seems a cheery prospect—tough it out, head down, carry the cross and bear the pain and it’ll all work out in the end. And that maybe what we have to from time to time in our lives—we all hit rough spots, and maybe we land up …
Monthly Archives: November 2004
Monday Last Week Year II
It’s a day of anniversaries—at least two people have reminded me so far today of what happened on November 22nd … whenever. A year ago England won the Rugby World Cup. Do you remember? I remember uproar in the team room and much rowdy drinking … of strong tea. This is a harder one: do …
Sunday Week 33 Year C (Remembrance Sunday)
It was, with hindsight, asking for trouble to call it the war to end all wars. It became only the foretaste of a century of slaughter that left 110 million dead in combat, not to number the quiet millions murdered by war’s camp-followers: poverty, plague and famine. So many dead! ‘At the going down of …
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Monday Week 32 Year II
I must admit to feeling let down whenever we come round to read Titus. It feels so buttoned-up, so institutional, so dull. Whatever else you might say for the Paul in the missionary letters you can’t call him dull. He can be enthusiastic, argumentative, quarrelsome, bold, stubborn, brilliant, eloquent, touching, controversial but not dull. So …
All Saints of the Society of Jesus
The word is already in our mouths and in our hearts—our mouths and hearts. Our mouths are full of words—we taste them bitter or sweet; we watch them find their target; we hear them echo in silence; we squander them in the rush and bluster of lives tumbling downriver. Our mouths reveal our hearts, betray …
All Saints
I’m suffering from deja vu all over again. The last time I preached on All Saints Day was a Sunday exactly four years ago but half a world away in Oakland, California. Then, like now, it was just a couple of days before a presidential election. A couple of wars later, the decisions placed before …