Good Hymns Take Time

As part of this morning's devotions, I decided that I would sing a Christmas hymn that (a) I don't often sing, (b) is still appropriate on the 11th day of Christmas (i.e. not of the "this night/morning" variety), and (c) is really, really good. Alas, such hymns are not so easy to find. Not chiefly…

Putting s back into Christmass

Here's a brief article I wrote for the Christmas issue of the magazine of a local Baptist church. It's distributed to hundreds of homes in the area where our congregation worships. What’s missing from Xmas? The answer: the second ‘s’. Get it? If not, bear with me, and I will explain. It’s coming up to…

Losing the reason for the season

Christmas is prime time for Christian hand-wringing at the state of the world, more so it seems than Easter. It's at Christmas that we find ourselves lamenting most loudly, persistently and at length at just how far secularisation has advanced. Not a single Christian carol at Tescos, no manger scene at Debenhams, cards galore with…

A Season of Receiving

I was planning to write a short post on why it is better to receive than to give at Christmas. However, a far more professional and prolific blogger beat me to it. Read it.

St. Augustine Christmas Sermon

Sermon 185 "It is called the Lord’s birthday when the wisdom of God presented itself to us as an infant, and the Word of God without words uttered the flesh as its voice. And yet the hidden divinity was signified to the wise men by the evidence of the heavens, and announced to the shepherds…