‘Always Winter… Never Christmas’ (No 7)

It seems that the Beatles did sing about ‘Please!’, my bad, but there is a saying that after they’d sang about love they then broke up! You could say the Beatles understood something of how the next phase of our journey, Perplexity, looks and feels like. Like the other phases

April 18, 2021 by Andy Gore

‘Always Winter… Never Christmas’ (No 6)

The Beatles may have sung about ‘Help!’ but they never sang about ‘Please!’ We cry ‘Help!’ because we recognise in the complexity that is our daily life that we cannot do this alone. But, when our prayer life itself grows and becomes thus more complex we realise that prayer is

March 27, 2021 by Andy Gore

‘Always winter… Never Christmas.’ (Part 5)

You might think me simple in saying this, and I know it is very obvious, but life is complex. This is why learning to say ‘Help!’ matters. But who reading this likes to ask for ‘Help!’? We may like to be asked to help but are you as slow as

March 20, 2021 by Andy Gore

‘Always winter… Never Christmas.’ (Part 4)

We move from the heady days of Spring into the long and lovely sun-drenched days of summer and the first word of summer we come to is ‘Sorry!’ This may seem a word that is out of place, since it is the word we use to begin the life of

March 13, 2021 by Andy Gore

‘Always winter… Never Christmas.’ (Part 3)

The final part of this Springtime trio is the word ‘O!’ This energetic and high-spirited word describes the practice of worship and amazement when we are awakened to the beauty and joy of God. It describes the overwhelming sense of awe and wonder at God’s goodness and majesty such as

March 1, 2021 by Andy Gore

‘Always winter… Never Christmas.’ (Part 2)

Last week we began to think about the nature of our relationship with Jesus using two complementary themes. The first was the idea of the four seasons and the other was 12 key words. We began with the Springtime of faith and the word ‘Here’. For me ‘Here’ is all

February 18, 2021 by Andy Gore

‘Always winter… Never Christmas.’ (Part 1)

This is one of my favourite CS Lewis phrases. The description of Narnia locked into just one season with no prospect of joy, or relief, or hope describes wonderfully the bleakness of life under the rule of the White Witch. When Aslan returns, the grip of winter is broken and

February 13, 2021 by Andy Gore

‘Six days invisible; One day incomprehensible’ (Part 6)

Family businesses have a very distinctive feel to them, and I understand something of what Peterson means when he talks about his dad’s butcher’s business. It’s not that he is applying a business model as such to the church, instead he the values that mattered to his dad contributed to

February 8, 2021 by Andy Gore

‘Six days invisible; One day incomprehensible’ (Part 5)

Our dogs have always been ‘intently haphazard’; well almost. The only time we ever saw them not so was either when it was time to be fed or, if on a walk, they come across climbers and their packed lunches. I love the phrase ‘intently haphazard’. It’s not that I

February 3, 2021 by Andy Gore

‘Six days invisible; One day incomprehensible’ (Part 4)

Last week’s quote may not be the sort of language you’d imagine finding in one of my blogs, though of course you might, but I found its very colourfulness hard to resist! Peterson writes comparing the gathering for worship with people’s daily lives through the lens of sermon texts found

February 1, 2021 by Andy Gore