David's Pen

He should be in bed. Should have been in bed for some time. But he wasn't. He was clambering over the roof and sliding down the wall, onto the ground. Jesus and three of His friends were just a few feet away as he drew himself into the shadow, realising just what a mistake being wrapped in a white, highly visible, sheet was. He really should be in bed. He loved his parents and wanted to honour them, and bed was where they believed him to be. For a moment he hesitated, almost beginning the climb back onto the roof and then to his space next to the upper room. But that brought back the flood of memories from the extraordinary evening. The pride he saw in his Father as Jesus invited him, as the youngest child present, to ask the age-old question: "Why this night, why this way?", the moving interruption of Mary as she broke the alabaster jar and the extraordinary changes Jesus had made to the formal prayers: "This is my body..." And now it was too late, with t

From time to time, I see articles in the press, or documentaries on TV that seek to expose the misuse of the benefits system. You'll have come across them too - the picture of the family that can't afford to put food on the table, but there's that big, flat-screen TV on the wall. Now, I'm sure there's the same cross-section of the good, the bad and the ugly in every socio-economic group, which means that there are sure to be some 'bad apples' out there. But some recent experiences have helped me see a different dynamic - here they are, the 4 B's. Buffets Been on holiday... got suckered in to the 'welcome deal' of four buffet meals, taken across the week. Interesting observation (other than that it wasn't the greatest deal...) -  how people respond to the risk of missing out… When the food level in any one of the many selections began to get low, a little queue formed, trying to make sure that they didn't miss out. I noticed the re

There is a beguiling whisper in Christendom, that for the sake of the Kingdom, one should move on from pain without gaining an adequate response to what you believe to be the cause of it.  Beguiling, because it carries echoes of Godly values: words and phrases such as forgiveness, reconciliation, unity and respecting those put in authority over us. Yet too often the motive isn't ultimately about love, it's about fear. Fear that the result will be conflict which might end in division, that it will be a bad witness, that outsiders might see through the veneer of relationship that sometimes masquerades as Christian love.  But the scripture says: "Come, let us reason together, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow" It says that the first step, is to reason together, to get to a place, under the Holy Spirit, where we are convinced of our sin and the depth of its consequences. To acknowledge the scarlet. Only then can we repent and se