#T.M. Suffield

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by T.M. Suffield | The great writer on joy and longing, C.S. Lewis, tells us in a famous passage from The Weight of Glory that we are far too easily pleased. We do not know what the Lord is offering us, what joy is available to us in God. Lewis argued, especially in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, that we find our...

[wisdomfish]

True godly joy and true godly sorrow are always experienced together to some extent. Joy with no place for sorrow, and sorrow with no place for joy, are not from Jesus. We can choose joy without eclipsing our sorrow. Sing the gospel, sing victory won and hold out to the Lord your litany of loss and in your singing pray with Habakkuk, “How Long O Lord?” Take your sorrow and if you’re brave enough open your heart and paint your pain on your face with a salted brush. Cry your eyes out while you sing that the Christ has conquered death. Remind your soul that it is true that God is good, and Holy, and beyond your ken. Speak to your friends that the cross has paid the price and scoured the stain so that you can go free. And do this not to gain perspective, though you might, and not because your loss was false or fake or fades but do it because it’s true. As is your pain. Sing when you’re losing. These are prayers too.

T.M. Suffield 

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by T. M. Suffield | Son of Man is the bigger and grander title, and we should read it in two ways: one as here in Psalm 8, the Son of Adam, the Serpent-slayer. The other as in Daniel 7, where Daniel extends the promise of the new Adam to show us that he is God come himself. Son of Man, after...

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by T. M. Suffield | So much of the faith is weirder than we’re used to thinking, not just the sensational stuff like angels and Nephilim, but ‘simple’ concepts like Union with Christ. It’s the heart of the Christian view of salvation, yet I rarely hear it talked about in our churches. It’s weird, it’s enchanted, it makes us much...

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by T. M. Suffield | The fact that what time is amounts to a philosophical question that is notoriously tricky and nevertheless vital to any sense of trying to live a good or harmonious or flourishing or blessed (delete as appropriate) life, is a fact that passes most of us happily by...

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by T. M. Suffield | How do we face up to the silence of God? Alain Emerson says we do so in prayer, as we learn to sit with God in the midst of pain. We learn this in Gethsemane, where Jesus asked for the cup to go from him and was answered...

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by T. M. Suffield | For all there is pain in having lovingly crafted prose torn up, there is purpose to it. We can rarely see our own faults, and since churches tend to work well for their leaders, we can rarely see our church’s faults either. Work with “editors,” be they trusted outsiders or those within the church. Trust...

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by T.M. Suffield | With our souls fogged by sin we are natural hypocrites; knowing ourselves is like trying to drive in a steamed-up car. Knowing the world is about as difficult. We see what we expect to see. Matthew Lee Anderson puts it like this: “We will not see if we do not want to see—and we will only see…

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by T.M. Suffield | What does our discipleship crisis look like? Our lives look the same as our neighbours and they shouldn’t. We don’t all have to be radical, but we do need a small number of radicals among us to help us see that our lives could be different…

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by T.M. Suffield | Hard won wisdom engenders humility. The wise aren’t naïve about what they’ve gained, but some of what they’ve gained will be a healthy sense of the limits of their own wisdom. This is similar to the way that those who truly understand a topic are much more aware of the limits of their knowledge, but…

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by T.M. Suffield | It doesn’t really matter whether you think the day starts as your head hits the pillow or when you wake but recognising that we start with sleep and that joy comes in the morning can profoundly reshape the way you visualise your weeks and years. This is the view of life of the Bible: hope...

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by T.M. Suffield | In Revelation 21 the church (the ‘bride’) is described as a city, a new Jerusalem, in intricate detail. John is referencing from all over the Bible, he has the later part of Ezekiel and Genesis 2 in particular view, but liberally references elsewhere…

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by T. M. Suffield | I’ve yet to talk to a Christian who doesn’t think community is inherently good for us. We’re meant to be a people. The local church is supposed to be the household of faith—something different to our modern concept of family but in the same broad arena—where everyone fits and is loved and is able to...

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by T.M. Suffield | The pandemic has damaged our friendships. There was a recent Atlantic Op Ed that opined that all but the closest friendships we might have are slipping away. But things were broken before that, back in 2018 the US Surgeon General announced a “loneliness epidemic”, especially facing middle-aged men...

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by T. M. Suffield | Early on in the Torah we find “land” referring to all that God has made unless it is modified, for example, the “land of Egypt.” Later the “land” without reference is more likely to refer to Israel as originally given to the Hebrews by Yahweh, “The Land” as though it has capital letters. It’s almost a proper name...

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by T. M. Suffield | Assuming you’re with me, and convicted that we don’t build anything, but that we also live at what feels like a civilization ebb, what can we do about it? I think it’s helpful to start by looking at others in the Bible who sat at a similar point in history. Take, for example, the Sons of the Prophets in 2 Kings. Elijah functioned as a solo prophet who despaired of there...