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Isaiah for everyone - (Un)spiritual Practices
Isaiah for everyone - (Un)spiritual Practices
by SPCK - John Goldingay
(Un)spiritual Practices I was talking with a friend about the way Christians in our culture have got interested in “spiritual practices” such as meditation, silence, and fasting. This development is taking place in a context where Christians don’t have as much sense of God as the…
Isaiah for Everyone - A Day When There Will Be a Song to Sing
Isaiah for Everyone - A Day When There Will Be a Song to Sing
by SPCK - John Goldingay
A Day When There Will Be a Song to Sing Our city’s annual Black History Parade this year had the theme “Looking back and remembering: we’ve come a mighty long way.” The words reminded me of the hymn, “We’ve Come This Far by Faith.”…
Isaiah for everyone - A Politician’s One Fatal Mistake
Isaiah for everyone - A Politician’s One Fatal Mistake
by SPCK - John Goldingay
A Politician’s One Fatal Mistake When I was the principal of a seminary, I would get lots of mail. Usually my assistant would open it, but on Saturday I would do so, and thus would get first sight of the tricky pieces of correspondence, ones that raised worrying issues or asked q…
Isaiah for Everyone - A Sign of Hope
Isaiah for Everyone - A Sign of Hope
by SPCK - John Goldingay
A Sign of Hope My wife’s son-in-law returned yesterday from one of his recurrent trips to meet with Darfuri refugees in Chad to encourage them, show some interest on the part of people from the United States, and look for ways of advocating for them. The focus of activity on this…
Isaiah for Everyone - A Singer-Songwriter's Strange Song
Isaiah for Everyone - A Singer-Songwriter's Strange Song
by SPCK - John Goldingay
A Singer-Songwriter’s Strange Song When we are going out for the evening, and if the time of year requires it, I will put a sweater on top of whatever I have been wearing all day. It’s a delight to me when, in contrast, my wife disappears into the closet and reappears in her fine…
Isaiah for everyone - A Time to Cry and a time to Whoop
Isaiah for everyone - A Time to Cry and a time to Whoop
by SPCK - John Goldingay
A Time to Cry and a Time to Whoop We had dinner with a young couple a few months ago and were delighted to discover that they were expecting their first baby. It was not their first pregnancy; the wife had had a miscarriage last year. I remember how distressing it was when my fir…
Isaiah for everyone - An Ambiguous "Because"
Isaiah for everyone - An Ambiguous "Because"
by SPCK - John Goldingay
An Ambiguous “Because” At Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, is a room dedicated to the million and a half children who were murdered in the Holocaust. It’s a hollowed out cavern with some candles whose light is reflected on the ceiling by hundreds of mirrors so tha…
Isaiah for everyone - An Invitation to Imagination and Hope
Isaiah for everyone - An Invitation to Imagination and Hope
by SPCK - John Goldingay
An Invitation to Imagination and Hope I was exchanging messages with a Pentecostal friend yesterday, the Feast of Pentecost, and was amused when he observed that oddly “we don’t really celebrate Pentecost in the Assemblies of God.” I don’t know whether his Pentecostal church has …
Isaiah for everyone - Beautiful Feet
Isaiah for everyone - Beautiful Feet
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Beautiful Feet My feet went all nasty a few years ago in Jerusalem. Visiting Jerusalem was the only occasion when I got to wear sandals continually for two weeks, and the skin on my heels frayed. One result was that it became impossible to keep them clean…
Isaiah for everyone - Blown Over and Anointed
Isaiah for everyone - Blown Over and Anointed
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Blown Over and Anointed This week I’m meeting with a young man considering ordination in the Episcopal Church who wants to “seek my advice regarding my vocation.” There are aspects of the Episcopal Church about which he is uneasy—how will he cope with those? Should he ask his rec…
Isaiah for everyone - Can a Mother Forget?
Isaiah for everyone - Can a Mother Forget?
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Can a Mother Forget? At a party, I overheard a mother talking to her daughter who is soon to have a baby, about how it would be to look after the baby, and about how it had been for the mother herself in relation to her daughter. The mother had gone back to work soon after her da…
Isaiah for everyone - Choose Your Ending
Isaiah for everyone - Choose Your Ending
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Choose Your Ending There’s a classic movie called The French Lieutenant’s Woman, set in nineteenth-century England, that tells of a tortuous relationship in which a man is powerfully drawn to a woman who hardly belongs to his class and when he is already committed to marrying som…
Isaiah for everyone - Comfort My People
Isaiah for everyone - Comfort My People
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Comfort My People A week ago we had dinner with two clergy friends from England, one of whom commented in passing that on present trends the Church of England would be functionally non-existent in twenty years. I discovered that the comment was echoing speeches at the Church of E…
Isaiah for Everyone - Compassion and Openness to Learning
Isaiah for Everyone - Compassion and Openness to Learning
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Compassion and Openness to Learning I have mentioned that my wife’s daughter and son-in-law give their lives to seeking to make known the plight and needs of the hundreds of thousands of Darfuri refugees who fled from genocide in Sudan ten years ago and have been living since the…
Isaiah for everyone - Don't Be Afraid
Isaiah for everyone - Don't Be Afraid
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Don’t Be Afraid My wife’s degree program requires her to take part this week in a day’s silent retreat. Students are not allowed to bring their computers or other communication devices. Kathleen is looking forward to the event, but some of her classmates are freaking out about it…
Isaiah for Everyone - Egypt My People
Isaiah for Everyone - Egypt My People
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Egypt My People Yesterday I had dinner with two people home from working in the Middle East, one in a Christian university to the north of Israel, the other in a seminary to the south. In both countries the Christian community is a minority in a tough context where increasing num…
Isaiah for everyone - God Is Our Refuge and Strength, Really?
Isaiah for everyone - God Is Our Refuge and Strength, Really?
by SPCK - John Goldingay
God Is Our Refuge and Strength, Really? I have just read a message from an Indian Christian couple who expect tomorrow to go to another village for a day of teaching for which they expect Christians to gather from many villages in the area. They’re thirsty to hear the Word of God…
Isaiah for everyone - God the Creator of Evil