suffering
Sometimes a page is difficult to turn. Like this one. It lists most of the names of those who died in a massacre of 159 missionaries over a few weeks in the summer of 1900 in ‘Shansi’. The right hand side contains the names of those who died from the China Inland Mission, known today…
READ MOREThey even looked a bit alike. They were even diagnosed with cancer at about the same time. And now they have both died, just 11 months apart from each other. Having both enriched my life in such different ways, I took such delight in knowing that there was that day when they met each other,…
READ MOREAtul Gawande’s Being Mortal takes me back to grace and truth. The author is concerned that we lack ‘a coherent view of how people might live successfully all the way to their very end, (as) we have allowed our fates to be controlled by the imperatives of medicine, technology, and strangers’ (9). Drawing a little on…
READ MORESaying thanks. Building trust. The first principles of leadership. Study them deeply and then do them creatively and repetitively and you will be well on your way in leadership roles, large or small. Take trust, for example. How do you build it? Well, it operates like a bank account. The deposits are made early –…
READ MOREA billboard caught my eye last week. The driver kindly stopped so that I could take a photo – although I could tell that he wondered what I was doing. He was insistent on stopping in front of the neighbouring billboard – but, no, this is the one I wanted: It is the conflictual relationship…
READ MOREGazing out the window thinking about God. That is what I’ve been doing this week. Situated at Siloam, on the fringe of Barapani (literally, ‘big water’) near Shillong in Northeast India, Barby and I have had a room that looks out across the lake to some rolling hills. As the light and the weather changes,…
READ MOREWhen things get tough I try to look in two directions. One is horizontal. Maybe chronological is a better word. I bring to mind the way God works with a 24 hour day and how dawn follows midnight. Always. Without Fail. Then in many countries, far from the equator, He works with a 4 season…
READ MOREThe word is used so much today. I hesitate to bear witness to depression in my own life, lest by doing so it mocks those whose struggle with it is so serious, so debilitating. Down through the years … the names, the faces, the situations. They fill my heart and mind as I sit down…
READ MORETe Manihera and Kereopa. It is Keith Newman (in Bible and Treaty) who introduced me to these two Christian Māori men, martyred near Tokaanu (situated ‘at 6 o’clock’, on the southern edge of Lake Taupo) in 1847. When our family took a holiday earlier this month in nearby Kuratau (‘at 7 o’clock’ on the lake), I became…
READ MOREIt was like driving into spring. In Toronto the trees were leafless, but as I made my way by train to Windsor (Ontario) – and then by car to Ohio and on to Kentucky – the trees and countryside came alive with a fresh and velvety green. It was beautiful. That was last month. Last…
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.