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Jeremiah for everyone - The Promise of a Future
Jeremiah for everyone - The Promise of a Future
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Promise of a Future It’s been a year since I became priest-in-charge at our church, when we could no longer afford a paid pastor. That fact was a sign that the church is getting smaller, and it wasn’t clear how long we’d be viable at all…
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs for Everyone - The Secret of Life Is...
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs for Everyone - The Secret of Life Is...
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Secret of Life Is… We were in a bar last night to listen to a band playing blues. Behind and alongside us were people who at 8:30 were already rather the worse for wear. My wife commented that you could find some of these same people here every night…
Jeremiah for everyone - The Prophet Who’s Forbidden to Pray (1)
Jeremiah for everyone - The Prophet Who’s Forbidden to Pray (1)
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Prophet Who’s Forbidden to Pray My first Old Testament mentor once told us about his first visit to the new cathedral in Coventry in the center of England. The old cathedral, like much of the city, was devastated by bombing in the Second World War…
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs for Everyone - The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs for Everyone - The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's A couple of years ago, when we were planning to get married in the month of December, I initially assumed we would honeymoon somewhere tropical like Bali…
Isaiah for everyone - The Servant's Servant
Isaiah for everyone - The Servant's Servant
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Servant’s Servant A few weeks ago I had to preach at the ordination of a friend. She asked me to choose a passage as a Scripture reading from which I would preach. She laughed when I told her it would be the first of these two paragraphs, because (she commented) everyone knew…
Isaiah for everyone - The Unexpected Fall of the Superpower
Isaiah for everyone - The Unexpected Fall of the Superpower
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Unexpected Fall of the Superpower I was born when the British Empire was about to fold. The tide was turning in the Second World War as Britain and its allies were about to defeat Nazi Germany and its allies. Yet in another sense Nazi Germany won, because war left Britain and…
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs for Everyone - The Way of a Man Can Be Strange
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs for Everyone - The Way of a Man Can Be Strange
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Way of a Man Can Be Strange A newly married couple came to talk to us about a tension within their marriage (as if we were experts, being married for only a year ourselves). The husband is a lively, young man whom his wife regards as handsome…
Jeremiah for everyone - The Wicked Play on Words in a King's Name
Jeremiah for everyone - The Wicked Play on Words in a King's Name
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Wicked Play on Words in a King's Name Names often matter. When we married eighteen months ago, I encouraged my wife to keep her name as it was so that in seminary and church circles it signalled that she continued to be a person in her own right and not simply my wife…
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs for Everyone - Things Complicated and Back to Front
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs for Everyone - Things Complicated and Back to Front
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Things Complicated and Back to Front The time of our move to the United States in 1997 happened to be the moment when my disabled first wife, Ann, became totally wheelchair-bound. When I had been offered a job here a few months previously, she could still get about a little with …
Jeremiah for everyone - Things Can't Get Worse (Can They?) (1)
Jeremiah for everyone - Things Can't Get Worse (Can They?) (1)
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Things Can't Get Worse (Can They?) (1) News reports as I write (and over the past year or two) manifest a strange kind of naiveté about changes of government. A series of Middle Eastern countries have seen civil conflict and the overthrow of totalitarian regimes…
Jeremiah for everyone - Things Can't Get Worse (Can They?) (2)
Jeremiah for everyone - Things Can't Get Worse (Can They?) (2)
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Things Can't Get Worse (Can They?) (2) There’s a story about a man who falls over the edge of a cliff but manages to grab the branch of a small tree and thus stop himself from falling hundreds of feet to his death. The tree saves him, but only temporarily, because he can’t get ba…
Jeremiah for everyone - Things can only get worse
Jeremiah for everyone - Things can only get worse
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Things Can Only Get Worse As a newly ordained minister I was required to take part in “post-ordination training,” irreverently known as “potty training.” It’s no criticism of it that decades later I remember little about it, but I do have one vivid memory…
Isaiah for everyone - There Is to Be No Forgetting
Isaiah for everyone - There Is to Be No Forgetting
by SPCK - John Goldingay
There Is to Be No Forgetting Yesterday we dropped by a bakery and coffee shop because we were early for a meeting. I was confused by there being two counters and lines, one for coffee and one for pastries, and asked one of the servers what the system was…
Isaiah for everyone - Three Ways a Prophet Speaks