Viewing all items in Resource Category: Editorial

August is the month when schools are off and many of us go on holiday. This year will be very different, with many opting for a ‘staycation’! The good news is that Jesus offers us a true rest: ‘Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take...

The parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) is one of Jesus’ best-known stories. It beautifully presents the good news of the gospel: the story of God’s generous and underserved love towards us. It’s the story of us being lost yet also found by Him. The younger son is lost when he demands his inheritance...

In England, hopefully by the time you read this, all the lock-down and social isolation measures will have been relaxed. Church buildings and services will be ‘back to normal’. Working folk will be back in their workplaces, and all will be well with us all. I live in hope – but I am well aware...

Just 90 years ago, on 19th August 1931, the Yangtze River and Huai River floods peaked in China. It was one of the worst natural disasters of the 20th century: up to four million people died, and the floods lasted from July to November. The inundation followed a two-year drought and a particularly harsh winter...

 We should beware of using our firepits and barbecues when it is windy, an insurer has warned. Home insurance claims for domestic fire incidents increased by 38 per cent over the past year, according to figures from Aviva. As a number of these fires were started by barbecues, Aviva is urging people to ‘rethink’ their...

Spare a thought for John the Baptist: however rough your local sandwich bar may be, it probably doesn’t serve you locusts with a honey dip; you won’t be imprisoned for saying derogatory things about the local MP’s wife, and even the boss from hell is unlikely to have a daughter who wants to hip-hop about...

After the Bible, John Bunyan’s wonderful Christian allegory, the Pilgrim’s Progress, is one of the most celebrated and widely-read books in the English language.  It has been translated into more than one hundred languages around the world and keeps its place as a Christian classic. Names of people and places from its pages have been...

Seventy-five years ago, on 16th August 1946, the Great Calcutta Killing took place in Kolkata, India. Muslim and Hindu mobs rioted across the city following the Muslim League’s demand for the creation of Pakistan. More than 4,000 people were killed and 100,000 left homeless. The riot sparked further religious violence in other provinces, leading to the...

In the 3rd century a Chinese philosopher, Chang Tsu, had a very vivid dream. He dreamed he was a butterfly, happily flying here and there. When he awoke, he thought to himself, ‘Did Chang Tsu dream that he was a butterfly, or did the butterfly dream that it was Chang Tsu?’ Dreams are often like...

In my local church, we use a parish prayer which includes the line: ‘Help us to be brave enough to fail – but try again.’ Encouraging words indeed, and if we look back throughout the centuries, many men and women who have made the world a better place have taken those words to heart. For...

The persecution of Christians is set to intensify in Iran, following the election of hard-liner Ebrahim Raisi as the Islamic Republic’s new president. That is the warning from Release International, which is also urging Iran’s new president to allow full religious freedom and release all prisoners of faith. “This victory for the hardliners will mean...

** Hard to tell During a summer music festival, a punk rocker stopped at the front desk of the reception tent to ask if there were any messages for her. The desk clerk handed her an unsigned note, and she asked for a description of the person who had left it. “That’s easy,” replied the...