justice
It’s one month ago now. Two conversations. One in which I participated. One which I heard about second-hand a couple of hours later. But there they are – both running around my mind ever since … and annoying me. So it is back to the purge-by-posting strategy. The first conversation was with a bunch of…
READ MOREI have lived in the book of Amos for years. Sparked by having a grandson of the same name, it is the ripe time to encounter Amos’ contemporary – Micah. I have been reading and rereading this little book. No commentaries. Just reading it for myself. What have I been discovering? The verse everybody seems…
READ MOREI’ve been waiting for the right opportunity to write this post for some months. Take a look at the front page of yesterday’s newspaper. You may need to expand it a bit. These are epochal days in the history of India. News of Modi’s stunning landslide election victory deserves inches of headlines and multiple columns.…
READ MOREI have a friend who has been to Myanmar more than sixty times. Another friend is pushing twenty. My sister and her husband are closing in on ten visits. As for me, it has been only three … But that is enough to be sobered by what I’ve seen. There is something particularly evil about…
READ MOREIt has been around for twenty years. I’ve been aware of it, but just never read it. But recently Langham’s Executive Director, Mark Hunt, gave me a copy of Gene Edwards’ A Tale of Three Kings. It tracks with David as he relates to Saul above him and then Absalom below him, giving the reader…
READ MORESome conversations are for keeping. Dinner with Conrad… in England. It was a cold wet night in Sheffield. I was perched at the end of a long table in a restaurant on a night set aside to celebrate the contribution of Jonathan & Margaret Lamb to Langham Partnership. Next to me was a new member…
READ MORE‘We do not care about a strange war fought by black people somewhere in the middle of Africa’ (334). So writes Jason Stearns in Dancing in the Glory of Monsters (2012). It is hard to argue with him. Truth be told, I don’t expect many of you to go on and finish this post. Built…
READ MOREThis is our one hundredth day living back in India, the land of our childhood. The joys, the frustrations – and the conversations – have not changed much over the decades. Once again Barby and I find ourselves talking a lot about how to live alongside the poor. While it is not the daily ‘in…
READ MOREI was seduced by the cover. As I walked through Heathrow the other day, its extremist image and glaring headline captured me. I bought. I read. “The War on Christians: the global persecution of Christians is the unreported catastrophe of our time” The article commences with three observations about the landscape of anti-Christian persecution today,…
READ MOREMy dearest son, I must speak to you. Life has caused a reversal But my sacrifice remains. This is what you are doing. This is what I have done. You threaten me with harm. I threatened those who harmed you. You gain by forcing me to go hungry. I chose to go hungry for your…
READ MOREAbout 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.