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Acts for Everyone part 1 - An Explanation is called for
Acts for Everyone part 1 - An Explanation is called for
by SPCK - N T Wright
An Explanation is Called for Acts 3.11-16 ‘How did you do that?’ I stood beside the car as it spluttered into life. I had fiddled and jiggled with everything I could, and hadn’t been able to make it start. (This, I should say, was a long time ago, in the days when you could poke …
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Ananias and Saul
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Ananias and Saul
by SPCK - N T Wright
Ananias and Saul Acts 9.11-19a As the concert progressed, I watched the different players in the orchestra. There at the back sat a man who looked very, very bored. In fact, he disappeared for about half an hour at one point. (There are stories of musicians turning up in bars nea…
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Ascension!
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Ascension!
by SPCK - N T Wright
Ascension! Acts 1.9-14 We were having supper with some friends who had recently moved to western Canada. ‘So,’ my wife began, ‘does Vancouver feel like home?’ ‘It’s not home,’ replied the wife energetically. ‘It’s heaven!’ ‘Well, my dear,’ commented her husband, a theologian, rep…
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Back to Peter
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Back to Peter
by SPCK - N T Wright
Back to Peter Acts 9.32-42 ‘When I look out of the window from where I am sitting, I have two quite different types of view. If I stretch my eyes and look through the trees (it is still spring, and the leaves have not yet blocked the view) I can see the ruined castle, standing on…
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Controversy and Vindication
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Controversy and Vindication
by SPCK - N T Wright
Controversy and Vindication Acts 1.1-18 By common consent (even among those who disagreed with him), John Henry Newman was one of the finest minds of the nineteenth century. Having spent his young adult years as an Anglican priest, he famously converted to Roman Catholicism, and …
Acts for Everyone part 1 - David Speaks of Jesus' Resurrection
Acts for Everyone part 1 - David Speaks of Jesus' Resurrection
by SPCK - N T Wright
David Speaks of Jesus’ Resurrection Acts 2. 22-36 I watched the Press Gallery during the speech. For most of the time, the journalists looked bored. One was sharpening his pencil; another was varnishing her nails. Then, quite suddenly, all that changed. Notebooks were seized, sho…
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Disaster
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Disaster
by SPCK - N T Wright
Disaster Acts 5.1-11 Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the great Victorian Baptist preacher, recounted the story of how, on one occasion, he was preaching as usual when he found himself denouncing some- one in the congregation whom he didn’t know. Words came into his mouth describing how …
Acts for Everyone part 1 - God's Rescue Plan
Acts for Everyone part 1 - God's Rescue Plan
by SPCK - N T Wright
God’s Rescue Plan Acts 2.37-41 It’s one thing to discover you are driving along the wrong road. It may be frustrating, and even embarrassing if you have people in the car who thought you knew where you were going. But you can at least admit the mistake, turn round and set off aga…
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Handmade Shrines
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Handmade Shrines
by SPCK - N T Wright
Handmade Shrines Acts 7.35-53 When you go into a store in my country, and you see a sign saying ‘Made by Hand’, you know what it means. ‘This is good quality; it wasn’t just turned out by some faceless machine or computer; someone has taken personal trouble over it; you will appr…
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Healed by Peter's Shadow
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Healed by Peter's Shadow
by SPCK - N T Wright
Healed by Peter’s Shadow Acts 5.12-16 Imagine you are the manager of a great concert hall or opera house – the Metropolitan in New York, say, or the Albert Hall in London. For generations now this has been the place to which concert-goers have flocked in their thousands, week aft…
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Here Comes the Power
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Here Comes the Power
by SPCK - N T Wright
Here Comes the Power Acts 2. 1-4 Sometimes a name, belonging to one particular person, becomes so attached to a particular object or product that we forget where it originally came from. The obvious example is ‘Hoover’: in England at least we speak of ‘the Hoover’ when we mean ‘t…
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Here Comes the Sequel
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Here Comes the Sequel
by SPCK - N T Wright
Here Comes the Sequel!Acts 1.1-5 The English playwright Alan Bennett wrote a famous play about the equally famous madness of a well-known king. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, England had four kings in succession all called ‘George’, and the third of them – George I…
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Herod Kills James
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Herod Kills James
by SPCK - N T Wright
Herod Kills James Acts 12.1-5 What makes a monarch act violently towards his subjects? That question presses upon us at this point in Acts, because up to now we have heard nothing of Herod in this book. Parallels from other places, and other periods of history, may or may not be …
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Herod's vanity and Death
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Herod's vanity and Death
by SPCK - N T Wright
Herod’s Vanity and Death Acts 12.20-25 Whether or not Luke was aware of the comic value of the previous interlude, he was certainly aware of the powerful impact of the story with which he now closes the first half of his book. The official king of the Jews plays at being a pagan …
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Human Inventions and Divine Instructions
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Human Inventions and Divine Instructions
by SPCK - N T Wright
Human Interventions and Divine Instructions Acts 5.27-42 We stared at the parcel as it lay on the floor inside the front door. Nobody had heard the delivery man. Nobody knew why it had arrived at this time of the day. The parcel was bulky, somewhat misshapen, with various semi-le…
Acts for Everyone part 1 - Introduction