Living with Purpose

Living with Purpose

Many years ago, work as a Quantity Surveyor took me to Cullipool on the beautiful Island of Luing (If you’ve never visited Luing – then when we are able to travel more freely, I’d thoroughly recommend it). Having completed my site inspection, I headed to the slip to...
Calling a City to Life

Calling a City to Life

Living in a global pandemic has presented us all with many challenges and living with lockdown restrictions is hard. Yet lockdown has also brought us unexpected gifts, such as connecting with neighbours in ways we’ve been praying about for years and rediscovering that...
Light Breaks In

Light Breaks In

Light Breaks In I have a confession to make…I’ve always been a little ‘bah humbug’ about Christmas. (Please don’t stone me next time you see me!) I manage to put out a few extra candles and fairy lights and have a nativity scene that fits in a matchbox, but I’ve...
A New Relationship With Our City

A New Relationship With Our City

Reset / Refresh – A New Relationship With Our City I once heard someone refer to the Psalms of the Old Testament as “the Prayer book of Jesus”. What this person was getting at was that most probably Jesus prayed the Psalms – he used their words and themes to express...
A new Relationship with One Another

A new Relationship with One Another

How can we “build back better” relationships? “Can I hug my granny on Christmas day?” was the frustrated question a journalist asked the Prime Minister at a press conference this week. Many of us would like an answer too. Social distancing has removed so much of the...

Canopy

“… over everything the glory will be a canopy.” (Isaiah 4:5) Back in March, discussions at the Baptist Council around what it means to be a union of interdependent churches, led to sharing of a picture… “It’s like a forest, where the roots underground are intertwined,...

Sadness

It reveals what really matters to us Cheer up! Put a smile on, be happy! We so easily imagine the good life to be a pain-free, sorrowless existence of wall to wall happiness. So, we seek to medicate, eradicate, or simply dodge sadness. Yet so often our sadness is a...

Plant that Tree!

“The new normal”. It’s a phrase which has become widespread as people try to predict what a world upturned by COVID19 will look like. It contains a real tension as we find ourselves caught between the desire to return to normal life as we knew it and the opportunity...

The social network (part 1)

The Social Network. There was much in last Sunday’s QPLive to provoke deep reflection and repentance. Not least how we heal divisions, treat one another with dignity and celebrate our racial and cultural differences. I am deeply aware that it is no longer enough to be...

Waiting (part 2)

He’s in the waiting Well one way to think about waiting and what it does to our souls is to practise it. I want to begin today by thanking everyone for their patience yesterday as we dealt with technical issues when trying to go live. Contrary to what some of...