For decades Joni Eareckson Tada has been sharing the hope of Jesus from her wheelchair. She is honest, raw, but full of peace and joy. In this short clip she offers a perspective on how to cope when life feels unbearable. Read more
For decades Joni Eareckson Tada has been sharing the hope of Jesus from her wheelchair. She is honest, raw, but full of peace and joy. In this short clip she offers a perspective on how to cope when life feels unbearable. Read more
Another year has passed. Today is the anniversary, not of my actual diagnosis with blood cancer (that came 22 long days later), but rather the day I became a sick person. I think of that day as something of a “Sliding Door” Moment for those who remember a movie from the 1990s. I often wonder what my life would have been like if that day had just been like any other ordinary day of commuting to work instead of my... Read more
There is an often forgotten marginalised group of people of whom I am a member. You might spot one of them glancing around at other people nervous, as they move about somewhere, now the only one wearing a mask. They are likely to get exceptionally nervous if someone approaches them closely, or insist on talking to them close to their face. They might talk to a shop worker whilst standing in an open doorway of a shop to make an... Read more
I received a disturbing email this morning. A well known Christian ministry, which I shall not name, had decided that now was the right time to launch an appeal to help the Ukraine. What’s wrong with that, you might ask? Well this ministry’s campaign was to raise enough money to create a brand new website with their own translated material to bless the Ukrainians with the gospel. I understand the sentiment, but as the Bible says “there is a time... Read more
I was recently reading Psalm 37 and saw something I had not seen before. Jesus seems to have been alluding to this psalm in his famous line in the beatitudes “The Meek will inherit the Earth”. This teaching is of course as counter cultural now as it was when Jesus preached or when King David wrote. But what I hadn’t noticed is that David describes the attributes of these meek people who will be blessed, happy, fortunate, and who will... Read more
When our own country says it has sent a special force to bring freedom to a failed nation that is practicing atrocities or poses a threat due to weapons of mass destruction. Other nations sometimes see it as just an unprovoked, illegal, unjustified invasion. We in the West have often persuaded ourselves before that wars far from our shores are justified. Looking back we may not feel quite so certain in some cases. It is striking how similar some of... Read more
The idea of obeying someone, anyone, doesn’t sit kindly with us Westerners these days. Most of our countries have got rid of their Kings and Queens, or if like us in the UK we have kept them, the one thing they do not get to do is command us any more. Lots of controversy rages these days about things like mask or vaccine mandates. Essentially we do not like to be told what to do. And of course much of... Read more
Well this has been the longest blogging break I’ve taken since 2003 when I started writing daily. Does anyone still manage to write personal reflections daily I wonder? Does anyone still want to read another person’s reflections daily? Though to be fair I have not been totally silent these last months. I have written material over at blood cancer Uncensorsd. But it’s different writing for fellow blood cancer patients than it is for a mostly Christian general set of... Read more
Anyone who has a chronic illness and Christian friends is likely to have heard the words “keep strong!” They are normally well meaning words. And in one sense there is nothing wrong with them. And yet they annoy me a bit each time they are said to me. Sometimes other people will say something like “Oh you are strong, I admire you. I don’t know how you cope”. I often wish I could take them back to points in the... Read more
There is no point me retelling the story of what happened in the nineteen days between getting sick with pneumonia and the 20 May 2017, the day my diagnosis with blood cancer was confirmed. Suffice to say that each year since the gap between the 28 April when I first became sick and the date my diagnosis was finally confirmed seems incredibly long. I retold the story quite clearly and reasonably succinctly a year ago exactly today: A blood cancer... Read more
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