St Francis Webguy

Why?

Why do bad things happen to good people? seems to be the question asked of Jesus.
This is an age-old question, isn’t it. I suppose to ask “why” is to be human. We can’t help ourselves; we want to understand. We want to make sense of the world. We want our lives to be logical, reasonable, orderly, sane. Of course, not all the whys of the world are bad; some can lead to really positive outcomes – an example being Sir Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin. … [To read more, click on title]

Our citizenship is in heaven

These are troubling times, and if you’re anything like me you’ll have a heightened sense of anxiety about just what is going on in the world. Not anxious, not fearful … maybe just a bit unsettled. This is not the world we were living in ten years ago. I don’t need to list things, really, but – you know – Ukraine, the threat of a third world war, oil prices and inflation, Covid, global warming, divisions in society, violent protests, fake news … what is going on, and how should we be reacting?… [To read more, click on title]

Wesley Day

Let us try to go back to 24 May 1738, to the City of London, where we discover an anxious young clergyman called John Wesley, aged 35. He has just returned from a two-year appointment as a missionary in the American colony of Georgia. For various reasons, this placement had ended as an embarrassing failure and caused him, John to question his vocation as a minister and indeed whether he was truly a Christian at all. [To read more, click on the title]

The Glory is in the Struggle

I think it was at the end of a cricket tour by a Pakistani cricket team. The team had started badly but finished well, and a media interviewer, seeming to want to get at the emotion and relief of hard-won success, asked a senior Pakistani player how he felt at winning a game at last. Long after I’ve forgotten the actual question he asked, I easily recall the cricketer’s answer: …. [to read more, click on title]