What a eulogy! (have some kleenex nearby)

I'd never heard of Monty Williams before, but earlier this month, his wife of 20 years and mother of his 5 children was killed in a head on car accident. What Monty Williams said at her funeral is at once stirring and startling (especially if you're not a Christian!). As a husband of nearly 6 years, I watched what he said with both heartache and tremendous admiration. I commend it to you below but I warn you, have some kleenex nearby...

Mission agencies are you listening?

From Mark Jones at Reformation 21

In my opinion, Africa doesn't need missionaries from other continents in the same way they may have in past generations. Africa needs Africans, whatever colour, to be trained to minister to their own people. 

A salutary word to many of the mission agencies among whom it has been all the rage to talk about (and prioritise) reaching the unreached. Whilst I understand this zeal for evangelization, I have become convinced that for most of sub Saharan Africa what is most needed is not so much the reaching of the lost, as it is to disciple of the nations. This in fact is what Jesus calls the Church to do and something that is often overlooked in the Great Commission.

Knowing the Bible is not enough

This is a point well made by Jesus (and by his brother James) and cleverly illustrated by the brilliant Adam4d:

Abolishing marriage destroys the Church

Make marriage in any serious degree unstable, dissoluble, destroy the permanency of marriage, and the Church falls. Witness the enormous decline of the Church of England.

— D H Lawrence (1885-1930); staggering to think how prophetic such a twisted and messed up man was. Kyrie Eleison.

European men are soft and irresponsible...

...says the Danish journalist below, following the tepid response that German men had to the recent sexual abuse many of their women received at the hands of Muslim men. The sad thing is the interviewer doesn't really want to consider this painful reality and instead pretends there isn't any problem. When is Europe going to wake up?

Luther's recommendations for your devotions

“You should diligently learn the Word of God and by no means imagine that you know it. 

Let him who is able to read take a psalm in the morning, or some other chapter of Scripture, and study it for a while. This is what I do. When I get up in the morning, I pray and recite the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer with the children, adding any one of the psalms. I do this only to keep myself well acquainted with these matters, and I do not want to let the mildew of the notion grow that I know them well enough. The devil is a greater rascal than you think he is. You do as yet not know what sort of fellow he is and what a desperate rogue you are. His definite design is to get you tired of the Word and in this way to draw you away from it. This is his aim.

Let the man who would hear God speak, read Holy Scriptures.”

Another one bites the dust - Reflections on Bowie's death

One of the striking things about paintings of public executions in earlier times is the contrast between the French and the English approach. French artists typically ignored the gathered crowd and focused in detail on the face of the one about to be executed (there is, indeed, one picture of a woman about to be executed where her face has one of the most haunting expressions I’ve ever seen).  By contrast, English artists focused on the crowd, whether jubilant, mocking, or distraught, and left the victim a somewhat shadowy figure.  Public execution was after all, in part, public entertainment; and English artists had the courage (or lack of good taste) to represent it as precisely the kind of popular entertainment that it was.

I was reminded of this recently, when I switched on the news and on every channel/website the focus was on David Bowie’s death.  His death is very sad -- whatever his problems or faults or sins, two children have lost their father, siblings a brother and, if his parents are still alive, mum and dad have lost a son.  What is interesting (though hardly unpredictable) is the way in which the media have focused on the grief of the wider public, on people who never knew him and many cases presented a person’s death as entertainment.

I didn’t always enjoy Bowie's music but he was clearly a popular and talented entertainer. And he continues to entertain in death -- not just because his records will get some major airtime (including the just released album Blackstar) but because the media are able to play his death as one more showbiz event, burying the tragedy of real death, real bereavement, and terminated relationships. Of course, apart from grief, a good response to Bowie’s death (as with any other death) is to reflect on our own death and to ask how prepared we are to meet our Maker. As the poet John Donne movingly puts it:

“Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind,

and therefore, never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Wonderfully in Jesus Christ and by believing in Him, the Bible assures us that we receive forgiveness of sins and are made ready to stand before a Holy God (John 3:16). It is in taking this simple yet life-changing step that we can be made ready for that day, when the bell shall toll for thee.

Parish magazine article for the Second Sunday of Epiphany 2015 AD (with thanks to an article by Rev Dr Carl Trueman)