Category: Life Lessons
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30 Years Old: What Lies Ahead?
This week I turn 30. I’m not really one for birthdays. Dee and I have been together for 15 years (yes, I know, too young… moving on). The first year of our childhood romance we enthusiastically bought each other presents… and that was the last time. We are both terrible present buyers, poor celebrators in…
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Our Feet Shall Tread This Place Again
Recently Dee and I have been watching some David Attenborough documentaries. The last set that we watched were focussed on migration. Sharks that travel to a remote Hawaiian Islands to attack fledgling albatross chicks attempting their first flight, salmon turning bright red, and braving Alaskan bears, to reach their spawning grounds, lay their eggs and…
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The Blessedness of Kind Mother-in-laws
Mother-in-laws (MILs) can be the recipients of some bad stereotyping in the West. I’ll say it clearly at the start for the record: My Mother-in-law is great! And for a lot of people in the Western world, the stereotype doesn’t have as much bearing as perhaps it did at some point in time. Recently, we’ve…
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The Bridling of Death
Why are we, in the West, so uncomfortable with death? Last year Dee and I took a short break in Portugal. It was outside of tourist season, so it was easy to relax. In this Atlantic coastal area, there was plenty to do and see. One day we hiked along the cliffs, as the sun…
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The Master of the Nets
On a lakeshore in Northern Israel stood two men; two experts in their respective fields. One, a fisherman who could mend a net with his eyes shut, who could stand in his vessel on choppy waters without losing balance, who knew the feeding times of the many shoals hidden beneath the surface, whose calloused hands…
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A Smog-Filled City and a Murky Pond
This is (finally) the first guest post from my insightful wife, Dee. Hopefully lots more to come! – Dónal I sit on a swing in the park, as I do every morning, gently rocking back and forth. I look out through the grey haze and through the tree branches, towards the murky green lake in…
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Bearing Our Father’s Name
I remember my first visit to South Asia. Travelling around the various cities of the country, we visited church after church, house after house, conference after conference for a solid twelve days. Throughout those dusty days and humid evenings, I was introduced to many of my brothers and sisters whom I had never met. Some…
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The Extraordinarily Ordinary Spirit
I place a high value on the ordinary means of grace. The ordinary means of grace are those things that God has given as regular, often non-spectacular, rhythmic events that form and shape our spiritual lives. They are the slow dripping of water to erode a rock, the steady flywheel of an engine that keeps…
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Caught Before Taught
A sunny Friday afternoon in April 2011 found me sitting on the lawn at the back of someone’s house, quite bewildered. It was a youth weekend away, or at least, it was meant to be. I had arrived at the house of those organising it along with some friends. To be honest, at this point…
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The World As I’ve Seen It
Dealing With Doubt – Part 3 I’ve seen too many facesAll shining like the sunI’ve seen too many skies on fireLike the face of the Holy One I’ve seen too many eyes wide openThat once were so blindAll burning with the beauty of the same loveThe same love that opened mine. This is the final…
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The World as Best it Could Be
Dealing With Doubt – Part 2 When John Bunyan, writer of The Pilgrim’s Progress was facing an intense mental struggle, a verse came to his mind that comforted him immensely. For over a year he tried to find this obscure little verse, until at last he realised that it was not in fact from the…
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The World as it Ought to Be
Dealing With Doubt – Part 1 The three loads of ammunition that I will lay out in these next posts touch on three different aspects of doubt, for it is a multifaceted beast. We will look at “The World as it Ought to Be”, “The World as Best it Could Be“, and “The World as…
Imitators of Those 