In the last couple of weeks two images have stuck with me. One is this painting depicting the pain associated with post-natal depression – Never Morning Wore to Evening but Some Heart Did Break (Walter Langley). While I can’t begin to understand this fully, I do always find my heart softens to those mothers who battle with it. It seems so common and so unfair. A post from my friend Thalia included this painting and her own candid reflections here and here and here are so helpful..
Then in Kerikeri on Friday, I was leafing through a book on NZ history at the Stone Cottage and this cartoon was sitting there and grabbed me. It is called Roll of Honour (Gordon Calman – 1917) and the link to the National Library describes it depicting “a sorrowful woman with her head bowed drawn in the shape of a map of New Zealand. She holds a Roll of Honour”. It reminds me so much of the ‘mother’s anzac poem’ which I posted some months ago and the deep sadness that overcame so many women whose men did not come home.
Look at the two bowed heads – one from depression and the other in grief…
How critical it is that we have an accurate self-understanding and then in preaching-sermons and building-community we make a special effort to consider and include those who are unlike the ‘self’.
nice chatting
Paul
About Me
the art of unpacking
After a childhood in India, a theological training in the USA and a pastoral ministry in Southland (New Zealand), I spent twenty years in theological education in New Zealand — first at Laidlaw College and then at Carey Baptist College, where I served as principal. In 2009 I began working with Langham Partnership and since 2013 I have been the Programme Director (Langham Preaching). Through it all I've cherished the experience of the 'gracious hand of God upon me' and I've relished the opportunity to 'unpack', or exegete, all that I encounter in my walk through life with Jesus.
Recent Posts
It was my very first training seminar with Langham Preaching. April 2009. We were based at the OMF Guest House in Chiangmai, Thailand. As I wandered the property, I came across this striking quotation on one of the walls: So striking, in fact, that I stopped to take its photo! But is it really true?…
Ten years ago, Ode to Georgetown was my response to being surprised by grief when the only church I had ever pastored closed its doors. Last week brought the news that the theological college which I attended, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS), was to close most of its Chicagoland campus. I have been feeling a…
I am neither painter nor poet, musician nor actor. With Art and Music and Drama classes at school, I was present in body—but absent in spirit and skill. However, as a teacher, there has been the occasional flare of creativity in the crafting of assignments. One of my favourites is one of my first ones.…
John Stott was the first one to help me see the tension in Jesus’ teaching on salt and light. They are pictures for how his disciples are to live in society. Salt pulls them in, keeping them involved. Light holds them back, keeping them distinctive. Being light responds to ‘the danger of worldliness’, while being…
Thank you, Paul.
tkr
Hi Paul, thanks for this.
Mental Illness, grief and loss, all part of the lives of the 1:5 in our population.
Jim Wallis challenges me with this – 'Only those willing to stand close enough to listen will ever hear those closest to the problem'.