Do you feel like darkness is your 'closest friend'?
Mitch Chase
Date posted: 25 Dec 2025
Near the end of Book Three in Psalms (which is from Pss. 73–89), things grow dark. In fact, when you enter Psalm 88, you feel like you’re in a room so dark that you can’t see your hand in front of your face.
Suffering can feel like that. Some trials feel so overwhelming, so disorienting, that the language of Psalm 88 fits them. The psalmist embodies the agonies and despair that a believer can experience in a fallen world. Don’t let anyone tell you that a real believer would never feel overwhelmed and despondent. Psalm 88 would beg to differ!
A familiar sight, an overlooked story
Lydia Houghton
Date posted: 24 Dec 2025
Did you know that one of London's most famous Christmas landmarks is rooted in a deeply Christian story of sacrifice, peace, and reconciliation?
I'm talking about the Trafalgar Square Christmas Tree. Each December, the Norwegian Pine stands, at an impressive 65 feet tall, in the heart of London . Its lighting ceremony takes place on the first Thursday of December, featuring carols and performances, and the tree continues to grace the UK's capital city until early January. Many people know that the tree comes from Norway, but few pause to ask why.
John 1: 'A rich and beautiful tapestry of the Triune God'
James Cary
Date posted: 24 Dec 2025
I’m a professional writer (believe it or not) but was one of the few in my school year who did not choose English to study at A-Level.
Back then, reading fiction felt like hard work to me. For my GCSE, I had to read Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy. It’s a classic. But it’s long, sad and contains an awful lot of dense and wistful description of the Dorset and Somerset countryside. I now live on the border of Somerset and Dorset – in the heart of Hardy’s Wessex. I love Wessex. It’s where I live. I enjoy seeing the hedgerows, oak trees and starling formations. I am still not hungry for lengthy verbal descriptions of all of the above.
Jesus' birth: The fulfilment of ancient promises
Mitch Chase
Date posted: 24 Dec 2025
The Gospel writers boldly associate Jesus’ birth with David’s name. And they do this in order for us to learn about Jesus’ birth as a fulfilment of ancient promises.
In 2 Samuel 7v12–13, God had promised David that a future son—the seed or offspring of David—would rule forever on the throne.
Nunc Dimittis - 'let your servant go in peace'
Tim Chester
Date posted: 24 Dec 2025
Nunc Dimittis, in the New Testament is "a brief hymn of praise sung by the aged Simeon, who had been promised by the Holy Spirit that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah."
"Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:
Look to the One who broke the stone table
Pod Bhogal
Date posted: 23 Dec 2025
Christmas has a way of unlocking old memories.
My first real exposure to the Christmas story didn’t come through church or Christmas carols.
earth watch
The beginning of the end of the polycrisis
Paul Kunert
Date posted: 23 Dec 2025
We will have been thinking about the coming of the true King. Through the Advent season, we’re sure to have looked back with joy to the announcement of His birth. We’ve likely looked, also, to the future with longing for the day of the return of the King, when all things will be put right. And perhaps we’ve had the space, held between joy and longing, to lament the darkness.
Advent and Christmas are annual reminders that we are uniquely placed as Christians to see both the beauty of creation and its brokenness. Celebrating the One who came to redeem and who will come again to restore all creation, we share both the Creator’s joy and His lament, in the sure expectation of a world-made-right.
pastoral care
Planks and self-awareness
Steve Midgley
Date posted: 23 Dec 2025
Some of the teaching of Jesus can be so familiar that it doesn’t land nearly as richly, and forcibly, as it should. Our familiarity can mean we distil Jesus’ words to an abbreviated version which, while seeming to capture the essence, is missing much of the point.
Jesus teaching about specks and planks (or logs if you prefer) is a case in point. When He first spoke these words, one might imagine the reaction was rather mixed. Some, envisioning the ludicrous picture Jesus was conjuring up, may well have enjoyed the humour of the imagery. But this imagery had an uncomfortable punchline. Thoughtful hearers would soon have been wrestling with the deeper meaning.
defending our faith
Holy Land historicity
Chris Sinkinson
Date posted: 21 Dec 2025
On tours of the Holy Land over the years, I have found visitors captivated by archaeological ruins but often repelled by churches. Particularly if still in use, they can have all the trappings of religion but lack authenticity. Many evangelical Christians lack enthusiasm for such religious buildings.
This is a shame, as some of the oldest churches in existence have great apologetic value for the historicity and credibility of the Christian faith. Here are my top five, in no particular order, from the Holy Land.
The importance of rest and reset in a frantic world
Lydia Houghton
Date posted: 18 Dec 2025
Have you ever stopped to wonder why so many Christian retreats and holiday organisations exist? What is it about the concept of “rest and reset” that leads countless evangelicals to conclude that the “best” holidays are those with an intentional spiritual element?
Rest: What does it look like?
This month, I interviewed individuals who spend their working lives creating spaces for others to rest; they emphasised that rest isn’t optional, it’s essential – and it’s spiritual.
Trusting God when your children walk away from Jesus
Paul Mallard
Date posted: 17 Dec 2025
Rick and Julie have three children. They all grew up in the same home with the same Christian atmosphere. They all went to the same school, the same church youth group and the same Christian camps. All three of them professed faith and were baptised in their late teens. But now the contrast could not be more stark. One of their sons is following Christ and serves in the church; their daughter attends church but is only nominal in her faith; their second son has drifted away from the faith entirely and lives with his girlfriend.
How do you explain the difference? What went wrong?
In a divided world, what does unity look like?
Jason Roach
Date posted: 16 Dec 2025
One of my cousins was killed by a stray bullet. He was not part of a gang but got caught in the crossfire of gang warfare. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time, in areas where postcodes have a kind of protected status, can be lethal.
The council estates my church serves have similar challenges: one area will be home to some but an exclusion zone to others. One significant factor is an inordinate loyalty to a certain place; when place gives you your ultimate sense of security, you’ll go to surprising lengths to protect it.
The virtue of slowness in ministry
Dan Steel
Date posted: 15 Dec 2025
In today’s fast-paced world, where productivity usually reigns supreme, the notion of slowness - or of slowing down - can seem countercultural. However, in pastoral ministry, slowness is not a weakness; it is an essential virtue.
Jesus often used agricultural metaphors to explain the Kingdom, not simply because that resonated with the people of His time (though it would have) but also because it explains something of how God is slowly at work in His world; tiny mustard seeds grow into huge trees.
defending our faith
Archaeology is really going down the drain
Chris Sinkinson
Date posted: 15 Dec 2025
Tony Robinson, the Time Team presenter, wrote a book called Archaeology is Rubbish. He wasn’t disowning the discipline that had given him a career after Blackadder. He was making the observation that most of the artefacts pulled out of the earth are the debris and detritus left behind by those who have gone before us.
That’s why drains and dumps are treasure troves for archaeologists. A recently announced broken piece of rubble from just such a drain in Jerusalem may be the find of 2025 for Bible archaeology!
Why is being a pastor ‘a noble task’? Could you be one?
Alasdair Paine
Date posted: 14 Dec 2025
In December 1926, a 27-year-old doctor, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, left a London medical career in which he was making stellar progress to become pastor of a small church in a steelmaking town in South Wales. His move provoked public astonishment, even reaching the papers. Headlines included this: “Leading Doctor Turns Pastor: Large Income Given Up for £300 a year.”
One result of his move was that he was sometimes asked to give his testimony about the sacrifice he had made. He always refused. On one such occasion, he said: “I gave up nothing. I received everything. I count it the highest honour that God can confer on any man to call him to be a herald of the gospel.”1
'Prisoner 951': Hope amid horror in Iran
Rebecca Chapman
Date posted: 11 Dec 2025
If the Christmas season is leaving you feeling like you’ve overdone it on festive-themed, saccharine-filled shows, and you want something with more substance, then the BBC has just the thing for you.
Prisoner 951 is a four-part drama based on the upcoming book A Yard of Sky, dramatizing the harrowing six-year struggle to free Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and allow her to return to the UK from Iran.
Music for the last moments of life
Andrew Drury
Date posted: 9 Dec 2025
In the midst of our sadness, when we sit beside a dying person, we encourage the person, and ourselves, with the words of hymns and songs that point the way to heaven and the inheritance that we have in the Lord.
Music not only alleviates distress, calming the soul and giving a sense of normalcy [1] but, for the Christian, it also points the way to heaven and, more importantly, to our Saviour.
