Well, Happy New Year everyone! Despite the holiday period I have been absolutely blogless. Not, I hasten to add, through extreme laziness – well, perhaps slightly due to that. Mostly, it is because I haven’t had a minute to collect my thoughts. Now that I am commuting again, I am able to get back into the blogging groove again. Catching my ear this week was the title of a book featured yesterday on Andrew Marr’s Read more…
Recent interventions by senior politicians in the decisions of the established religious organisations in the UK are beginning to give Christians, and others, cause for serious alarm. Even those of us who do not adhere to traditions that involve ecclesiastical law and hierarchies cannot but be concerned at the freedom with which Governmental leaders in the UK feel free not only to advise in matters of moral and Church practice, but to put forward legislation Read more…
Edinburgh’s Christmas fair ground and German market are being constructed in Princes Street East gardens. I couldn’t help but notice the incongruity of the statue of David Livingston standing with an outstretched Bible while the chair-o-plane is carefully set out to ensure that the flying chairs don’t take his head off! I wonder what he would have made of it. It did strike me that the juxtaposition of the solemn Victorian missionary with the frivolity Read more…
Anyone who consumes news output from the BBC in any format at all cannot fail to have noticed that all is not well at Auntie Beeb’s place. The news website is screaming, “BBC needs ‘radical overhaul’”, while Eddie Mair is asking whether Newsnight is “toast” and the Director General resigns following an on-air grilling by one of his own staff. Does anyone else find this spectacle rather bizarre? The news organs of the BBC have Read more…
Following somewhat in the vein of my last post, there was an interesting discussion yesterday on BBC Radio4 between an author of romantic fiction and a computer programmer. The latter has developed software that can produce readable works of prose and poetry using a complex mathematical algorithm. One of the key points made by the author in defending the traditional approach to creative writing was that, if it is to have any real meaning for Read more…
I recently enjoyed a You Tube video of a John Lennox lecture at Harvard on the subject of Miracles. One of his arguments on the evidence for a supernatural intelligence and the limitations of scientific explanation is, I think, particularly powerful. He tells the story of a conversation over dinner with a Biologist. The scientist had identified himself to Lennox as a reductionist and an atheist as a means of defending himself from any extended Read more…
GospelBlog has been on holiday this week. My obsession with keeping up with the latest news has been modified by the intermittent availability of wifi in the West of Ireland. Having said that, now that I am back in full communication it doesn’t appear that too much has moved forward in UK terms at least. The story that has dominated the headlines over the past few weeks continues to do so, only perhaps with some Read more…
According to the BBC News website this morning, Felix Baumgartner will attempt to parachute back to earth from nearly 40 miles above the earth. At this altitude, he will be able to see the curvature of the earth and the sky above him will be black. Air pressure will be 2% of that at sea level. As Austrian Baumgartner notes, “If something goes wrong, the only thing that might help you is God,”. Of course, Read more…
GospelBlog has discovered the WordPress app for Android! Now I can blog while travelling. It is my intention to try and start blogging a bit more regularly again – although a trawl back through my historic posts will quickly show that my best intentions have failed in the past. Hey Ho, let’s see how it goes.
Those of you living around the Central Fife towns of Lochgelly, Cardenden, Kinglassie and Ballingry and those over the border into Perth & Kinross living around Scotlandwell will have received a leaflet advertising some planned Tent Meetings. The Christians who meet at the Gospel Hall, Ballingry intend to hold meetings at two venues – the old favourite, the Milton, Crosshill (click here for a map) and, for a second time, Lochend Farm, Scotlandwell (click here Read more…