#nuakh.uk

[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...

[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 | 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...

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by T.M. Suffield | There comes a point in the Christian life when you brush the sugar-coating off your Bible. I pray it comes early, it makes things easier. That moment or series of moments when you realise that the faith is not supposed to make your life easier or more comfortable, and that the Bible never promised it would...

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by T. M. Suffield | I’ve been reading through Ezekiel recently, with Robert Jenson’s commentary as a guide. The commentary is idiosyncratic and moves from flashes of brilliance to Jenson’s seeming admission that he doesn’t know what’s going on chapter by chapter. I haven’t been able to shake Jenson’s surprising conclusions...

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

by T.M. Suffield | To be a disciple is primarily to live and to have our course corrected by the Lord, often in the voice of disciples who are a little ahead of us. Which means we need to be receptive to ‘feedback,’ and we need to realise that means we need to be...