BRF - Stephen W. Need
52 Reflections on Faith - Love your enemies: Israelis and Palestinians
52 Reflections on Faith - Love your enemies: Israelis and Palestinians
by BRF - Stephen W. Need
Love your enemies: Israelis and Palestinians It’s well known that Christianity tells us to love our neighbours. The expression ‘love thy neighbour’ has a special place in the English language and there was once a British TV sitcom with exactly that title…
52 Reflections on Faith - Justification by faith: Computer studies
52 Reflections on Faith - Justification by faith: Computer studies
by BRF - Stephen W. Need
Justification by faith: Computer studies Sometime back in the late 1980s, I took an adventurous step and bought an Amstrad computer. Thinking of it now, it feels like a computer dinosaur. Actually, mine was only a word processor and I bought it partly, at least, under the sad ill…
52 Reflections on Faith - Jesus the teacher: words and deeds
52 Reflections on Faith - Jesus the teacher: words and deeds
by BRF - Stephen W. Need
Jesus the teacher: words and deeds We can probably all remember particular teachers we had at school. Some stick in the mind as ‘good teachers’, but we probably remember others because we didn’t like them, got on the wrong side of them or were hopeless at their subjects…
52 Reflections on Faith - The ten commandments: Doing what you like
52 Reflections on Faith - The ten commandments: Doing what you like
by BRF - Stephen W. Need
The ten commandments: Doing what you like The fourth-century North African bishop St Augustine once wrote, ‘Love and do what you will’, which is often rendered ‘Love God and do what you like.’ It sounds ideal— as if there were no moral requirements made of us as Christians…
52 Reflections on Faith - Icons: Looking through a window
52 Reflections on Faith - Icons: Looking through a window
by BRF - Stephen W. Need
Icons: Looking through a window Icons can be a very powerful aid to prayer. They’re mostly found in Greek, Russian and other Orthodox churches but in the last few decades they’ve started to appear in the UK in Anglican churches and cathedrals…
52 Reflections on Faith - Trinity Sunday: The circle of life
52 Reflections on Faith - Trinity Sunday: The circle of life
by BRF - Stephen W. Need
Trinity Sunday:The circle of life Probably the most popular icon of the Holy Trinity these days is the one by the Russian iconographer Andrei Rublev, which is displayed in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. Reproduced widely, it has become very well known in recent years outside th…
52 Reflections on Faith - Wisdom: Christ himself
52 Reflections on Faith - Wisdom: Christ himself
by BRF - Stephen W. Need
Wisdom: Christ himself Late one evening, as I stood outside one of my churches in Essex talking to a churchwarden, he suddenly said, ‘Listen, I think that’s an owl.’ We craned our necks and pricked our ears into the night for a moment, hoping for another ‘hoot’, but alas it didn’…
52 Reflections on Faith - Humility: The compassionate life
52 Reflections on Faith - Humility: The compassionate life
by BRF - Stephen W. Need
Humility: The compassionate life ‘Can’t you have a bit of humility?’ ‘Can’t you back off sometimes?’ ‘Do you always have to have the last word?’ ‘Who do you think you are?’ How often have we said these words to someone, in a moment of anger, in an argument with a spouse, perhaps,…
52 Reflections on Faith - Paul: enthusiast for faith
52 Reflections on Faith - Paul: enthusiast for faith
by BRF - Stephen W. Need
Paul:enthusiast for faith If you get a chance to travel across Turkey or Greece ‘in the footsteps of St Paul’, you’ll learn a great deal about the man who spread Christianity around the Mediterranean world in the early years after Jesus…
52 Reflections on Faith - Jesus the good shepherd: Door of the sheep
52 Reflections on Faith - Jesus the good shepherd: Door of the sheep
by BRF - Stephen W. Need
Jesus the good shepherd: Door of the sheep When I worked in the Holy Land with St George’s College, Jerusalem, we often took groups to the Sinai desert to camp overnight under the stars on the way down to St Catherine’s monastery…
52 Reflections on Faith - Harvest: Saying “thank you”
52 Reflections on Faith - Harvest: Saying “thank you”
by BRF - Stephen W. Need
Harvest: Saying “thank you” It’s always a good idea for parents to teach their children to say ‘thank you’. There are particular times when it’s appropriate, such as when receiving birthday or Christmas presents or when someone has gone out of their way to be helpful. It’s also i…
52 Reflections on Faith - Transfiguration: shining with God’s love