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Lent for Everyone Year A - Friday: Week 2 in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Friday: Week 2 in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 2: FRIDAY Matthew 12.22–50; focused on 12.27–32 27 Just in case anyone thought that the vision of a gentle, humble Messiah meant that he would be a pushover for every evil power that came along, the present passage sets the balance straight. One of the things everybody knew …
Lent for Everyone Year A - Sunday: First Week in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Sunday: First Week in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 2: SUNDAY Psalm 121 1 I must have sung this Psalm a hundred, perhaps a thousand, times before I stopped to think about the famous first verse. (I have seen it carved above doors and mantelpieces in mountainous parts of the country, sometimes in Latin.) ‘I lift my eyes to …
Lent for Everyone Year A - Thursday: First Week in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Thursday: First Week in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 1: THURSDAY Matthew 8; focused on 8.23 –34 Let’s go on that boat and think what it was like. It’s a small lake, as lakes go, but sudden storms come sweeping down from the hills. All of us in the boat know of people who’ve been drowned there, of whole boats that have been swa…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Thursday: Second Week in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Thursday: Second Week in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 2: THURSDAY Matthew 12.1–21; focused on 12.15 –21 To get the full flavour of what’s going on here, you should really read not just Matthew 12, but Isaiah 42 as a whole. Actually, even that isn’t really enough, because Isaiah 42 is a key passage within a much larger unity, Is…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Tuesday: First Week in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Tuesday: First Week in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 1: TUESDAY Matthew 6; focused on 6.5 –15 At the very heart of Jesus’ vision of the kingdom – of heaven’s kingdom coming on earth – we have a picture of one person, secretly in their own room, praying. Prayer is a mystery. I’ve often heard people saying, with a sneer, ‘It doe…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Wednesday: First Week in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Wednesday: First Week in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 1: WEDNESDAY Matthew 7; focused on 7.15 –23 One of the great lies of our time is to suppose that because Jesus brings forgiveness, and urges us to be forgiving people, meek and gentle, there is no sharp edge to his message. To hear some people, you’d think the whole of the C…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Maundy Thursday Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Maundy Thursday Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
OLY WEEK: MAUNDY THURSDAY Matthew 27.1–32 27 A few years ago there was a great railway disaster. Two trains, approaching London, speeded on to the same bit of track. Many were killed, several injured. There was a long official enquiry. At the end of it, after countless hours of a…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Saturday after Ash Wednesday Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Saturday after Ash Wednesday Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
SATURDAY AFTER ASH WEDNESDAY Matthew 4.1–11 It starts with a flicker of thought, a tiny little idea that darts across the mind while you’re doing something else. It seems harmless, just one of the millions of things that the human brain comes up with. But then it returns, a minut…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Thursday after Ash Wednesday Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Thursday after Ash Wednesday Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
HURSDAY AFTER ASH WEDNESDAY Matthew 3; focused on 3.1–12 1 When a couple get married, there is so much to learn. Not so much the immediate and obvious things – favourite foods, musical tastes, good ideas for holidays, and so on. There are deeper things that make each one of us m…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Wednesday: Second Week in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Wednesday: Second Week in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 2: WEDNESDAY Matthew 11; focused on 11.1–19 Jesus is here being put on the spot. Today, when interviewers try to force politicians to say things they didn’t really want to let out, they tend to prevaricate, to ignore the question, or even to tell downright lies. We have pri…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Thursday: Third Week in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Thursday: Third Week in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 3: THURSDAY Matthew 16; focused on 16.21–28 The unique city of Venice is now mainly a tourist destination. People come from all over the world to be amazed at its canals, its tiny side-streets, and the wonderful churches, mansions and art galleries. But in the days before ai…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Wednesday: Fourth Week in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Wednesday: Fourth Week in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 4: WEDNESDAY Matthew 21.1–22; focused on 21.1–17 We reach Palm Sunday in Matthew’s story ten days before we get there in our own Lenten journey. It’s just as well. There is so much packed between Palm Sunday and Good Friday that it’s important to get advance notice of what’s…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Saturday: Week 5 in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Saturday: Week 5 in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 5: SATURDAY Matthew 26.14 —27.66 It isn’t me, is it? The great story, well known yet little known, bursts upon us in a deeply disturbing scene: friends at the table discovering that one of them is to be a traitor. We often wonder what it was that made Judas do it. Perhaps w…
Lent for Everyone Year A - Sunday: Week 5 in Lent Year A
Lent for Everyone Year A - Sunday: Week 5 in Lent Year A
by SPCK - N T Wright
WEEK 5: SUNDAY Psalm 130 The deep distress we sense as we read this Psalm has, paradoxically perhaps, given great hope to millions down the years. No matter how deep we have sunk, no matter what sorrows or tragedies we may encounter, the Psalms have been there before us. Not only…
The Things He Carried - 8. A Broken Heart
The Things He Carried - 8. A Broken Heart
by SPCK - Stephen Cottrell
THE THINGS HE CARRIED 8. A Broken Heart He carried a heart that was about to be broken. That was how he eventually died. He carried his heart, open and vulnerable, from Jordan to Jerusalem, from Gethsemane to Golgotha. And then it was broken: broken by the savagery of the death h…
The Things He Carried - 5. The Hopes of God
The Things He Carried - 5. The Hopes of God
by SPCK - Stephen Cottrell
HE THINGS HE CARRIED 5. The Hopes of God He carried the hopes of God. This is how he had come to see it – searching the scriptures, sucking the marrow of wisdom from the very bones of his faith. That God had spent everything to try and create community with his beloved; that is, …
The Things He Carried - 7. Our Sorrows