Viewing all items in Resource Category: Editorial

‘Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call Him Immanuel.’ (Isaiah 7:14) This promise to King Ahaz in eighth century Judah is fulfilled in the coming of Jesus at the first Christmas (Matthew 1:23). However, the promise of ‘God with Us’...

by John Bell, SPCK, £14.99  The need to express grief, to sing our sorrow, is as old as humanity. The book of Psalms, side by side with expressions of deepest praise, contains cries of unfathomable despair. Both are not only acceptable to God, but essential for our mental and spiritual health. In The Last Journey, John...

This is frightening: one in seven university students has fallen asleep with food cooking on a stove, thereby risking a potentially bad fire.  Between 2012 – 2017, 911 accidental electrical fires took place in English halls of residence. These figures, provided by the charity Electrical Safety First, help to highlight some of the dangerous quirks...

Have you ever stopped to consider that the very first martyr of the Christian Church (Stephen died c 35 AD) was a deacon?  (But no, he wasn’t worked to death by his church.)  It was Stephen, one of the first seven deacons of the Christian Church.  He’d been appointed by the apostles to look after...

A friend of mine was diagnosed recently with breast cancer. A bright, vivacious lady in her fifties, she took the devastating diagnosis really well, but when the time came for her mastectomy, she understandably began to feel very nervous. Sitting with her husband in the hospital cubicle awaiting the operation she experienced for the first...

All in the month of December How Silent Night first began – 200 years ago Peaceful Praise on a silent night The Conversion of Ebenezer Scrooge How A Christmas Carol first began – 175 years ago The legacy of Miss Potter The podcast phenomenon Expensive Christmas cracker The great ‘Takeaway’ take-over  ** Editor:  We continue...

One in five people over the age of 70 in the UK eat all of their main meals alone.  This can have a detrimental effect on their health, as they tend to skip meals, or eat erratically. The survey was carried out by the Royal Voluntary Service (RVS), one of Britain’s largest volunteering charities.  Now...

Everyone knows that it was on the feast of Stephen that ‘good king Wenceslas looked on’.  After all, it’s in a Christmas carol – but why? There’s nothing about Christmas in it: a splendid young page who rustled up some flesh, wine and logs, an old man out in the snow (’deep and crisp and...

by Sean Stillman, SPCK, £11.99 ‘Zac’s Place’ is a church in Swansea. It is a small chaotic community of Jesus followers where the most fragile of life’s walking wounded try to work out their faith, because they quite simply wouldn’t fit anywhere else. It’s also the spiritual home for the local chapter of the motorcycle...

Thoughts on the Incarnation The Son came out from the Father to help us to come out from the world; He descended to us to enable us to ascend to Him.  Anthony of Padua Christ became what we are that He might make us what He is.  Athanasius I hope your Christmas has had a...

We all like a good story. When God wanted to grab our attention, He gave us a book of stories. The Bible is full of God’s encounters with people.  At Christmas, we remember the story of Jesus born in Bethlehem. But this story begins back in Genesis and as we go through the Old Testament...

It was 200 years ago, on 24th December 1818 that the popular Christmas carol ‘Silent Night’ was performed for the first time, at midnight mass at a parish church in Oberndorf bei Salzburg, Austria. It had been written just a few hours earlier by teacher and church organist Franz Xaver Gruber, to lyrics by priest...