Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 85 (October 2015)

Sacred Treasure

• This is serious – Turkish Protestant churches sent death threats – directly affects a number of churches that I’ve regularly spent time with in Turkey. PRAY.
• My former All Souls colleague Jo Jackson has written a couple of great posts about weakness: 1. Willingly Weak and  2. Wonderfully Weak
• Phil Whittall (aka the Simple Pastor) has a great post on ‘We are alone in the universe‘

Q Combinations 7: Lewis, Fujimura and Elemental Love

It was a while back when I encountered this poem from the polymathic Lewis, that master of words and fantasies and reality. It is an astonishing poem (some suggest his greatest).

Q Combinations 5: Kamienska & Wyeth and a winter hope

If the last Q combo was a chronological mismatch of artist and poet, this one is seasonal. Today’s still been pretty warm for a British September day, so it’s perhaps rather incongruous to be thinking about winter. But a dear friend and colleague, Jennifer, sent me this all too brief poem last week, and so I felt it was a perfect combo contender.

Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 84 (September 2015)

Sacred Treasure

• Did God Betray You? Really helpful piece about suffering and faith.
• We’re all sadists now: Carl Trueman on provocative but insightful form
• Tim Neufeld on cracking form about U2’s current tour: Ancient Psalms for a State-of-the-Art Tour

Q Combinations 4: Donne, Chagall and a possible prayer of Jacob’s

This is a complete mismatch chronologically – but there seems an undeniable synergy here (to me at least). For Jacob (the deceiver) is the one from whom the nation is named and the one privileged with extraordinary divine encounters.

The Black Dog (10 years on) 8: SOME LITERARY COMPANIONS…

William Nicholson wrote Shadowlands, the play (which became the film) inspired by C.S.Lewis’s extraordinary testimony A Grief Observed. In it, he gave Lewis this lovely line, one he never actually uttered, but may as well have done.

We read to know we’re not alone

The Black Dog (10 years on) 7: SOME TOP TIPS…

As I wrap this little sequence of ruthless self-exposure up, various omissions and oddities have occurred to me, so the easiest thing is probably to string them together in a miscellany that’s almost Pauline in its randomness (though naturally without his claims to authority).

Q Combinations 3: Thomas, Spencer and the Tangible Kingdom

So here’s the 3rd Q Combination. I don’t know how well known these two geniuses are beyond British shores – but they are true 20th Century greats. In their different ways, both articulate a deeply earthy, incarnated spirituality.

The Black Dog (10 years on) 3: THE DARKENED CAVE…

I touched on the surprisingly physical reality of the black dog yesterday. It’s surprising, because, of course, depression is as much about emotional pain and scars as anything else. But here’s the really weird thing: the emotional anguish actually feels physical at times. I think I really get now why people talk about feeling heart-sick. It is a piercing constant, perhaps a little like having emotional toothache.

The Black Dog (10 years on) 1: BEHIND THE MASK…

Poets and artists have had it. Leaders and teachers have had it. Normal and extraordinary people have had it. For all I know, even educated fleas have had it.

All kinds of stats get flung around about the black dog (1 in 4 so they say??) but who knows? What matters is not the exact numbers but how commonplace it is – and yet how extraordinarily varied.

Q Combinations 2: Jyoti Art Ashram & Angelou

So here’s the 2nd Q Combination. This time much more contemporary. Maya Angelou was a truly remarkable, versatile writer, who died only last year. I’ve nowhere near read enough of her stuff, but everything I have has blown me away.

Q Combinations 1: Rembrandt & Herbert

Have been thinking of different things I can do on the blog, and one of them is to offer occasional juxtapositions of creativity that warm the heart, stretch the mind, quench the soul. So here is the first: a bringing together of two masters (to whom I’ve returned more than once on Q).

Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 83 (August 2015)

Sacred Treasure

• Prof Gary Habermas has made his 90-page book, Evidence for the Historical Jesus available as a free pdf.
• Gabe Lyons and Andrew Sullivan have a remarkable conversation about the pain of Church/LGBT (can’t they find a vowel!!?) relations
• She doesn’t mince her words here – it’s necessarily shocking – but this is important – Gail Dines TED talk on Growing Up in a Pornified Culture

Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 82 (July 2015)

Sacred Treasure

• Ding Dong the witch is dead: if you’ve missed this, it is a must read – a harrowing account of a pastor who is a survivor of horrendous child abuse
• Turkish Armenians with previously hidden Christian heritage are returning to Christianity from Islam
• Phil Whittall has a very good piece on the issue of transhumanism (after the discussion between Peter Thiel and NT Wright)

Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 81 (June 2015)

Sacred Treasure

• Philip Yancey has a good piece on the value of small churches… he also passes on a lovely John Ortberg story about a bus driver in San Francisco.
• Eddie Arthur has a consistently thought-provoking blog – this piece particularly good: Go to where God is Not at Work!
• Krish Kandiah on 7 reasons why preaching is dead and 7 reasons why it lives

Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 80 (May 2015)

Sacred Treasure

• Tolkien and the Long Defeat: this is such a powerful piece from Dec 2013 – so counter-cultural in our utilitarian world.
• Phil Whittall makes some helpful points about the strong tides of ethical change
• Did the early church believe in substitutionary atonement? Michael Kruger has a look
• 9 Traits of Church bullies – sadly very true

Don’t be afraid… an Emmaus snapshot

No one expected it. Few believed it. Even when they had it on good authority. Even when they’d been forewarned and forearmed (see Mark 8:31; 9:30-32; 10:32-34).

But still it didn’t sink in. Not immediately. And it wouldn’t, would it. After all, dead men simply don’t rise. They just DON’T. OK?

Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 79 (April 2015)

Sacred Treasure

• Emma describes how she and her husband Phil found themselves planting a church in Stockholm
• Cranmer has a bold but perceptive take on the Phobia culture that we find ourselves in
• Google CFO retires with an important challenge about work/life balance

Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 78 (March 2015)

Sacred Treasure

• Josh Byers over at Visual Theology has produced a GREAT infographic summarising all the arguments for the historicity of the Resurrection
• Cranmer rightly notes the increased levels of Christian engagement in the next UK General Election (see last month’s Q treasure). And here’s his great reflection on Andy Flannagan’s book Those Who Show Up.
• Ian Paul covers the ground on Stephen Fry and God

Q marks the spot – Treasure Map 77 (February 2015)

Sacred Treasure

• Show up: a fantastic campaign endorsed by scores of different outfits – to encourage Christian involvement with politics generally, and May’s General Election specifically.
• It isn’t a battle; it’s a pilgrimage: helpful wisdom for anyone, not just those struggling with porn issues
• Michael Wenham is someone with Lou Gehrig disease and so uniquely qualified to consider the Stephen Hawking movie, Theory of Everything.