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“Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you...” ( 1 Peter 5:6 ) This blog post is proving difficult to write. That is not because there is nothing to say. It is because the middle finger on my right hand is currently out of use. A few weeks ago I decided to pick up an old hobby and whittle swords and whistles out of sticks for the children to play with. Of course when you are learning mistakes happen and mistakes with a knife can be painful and disabling. Choosing the wrong tool for the job is a novice error and it was a painful lesson. The cut is not too bad but it will probably take a while to heal and there is no way to short-cut the process. All I can do is accept my limitation until function is restored and determine not to err in this way again. To suggest that suffering is sometimes a necessary part of learning is not a popular idea. However, it is something that resonates with many people who have expe...

The Christian  God is not a genie who will answer our demands just because we go through the motions of praying. God is not a mechanical vending machine in the sky. There is nothing ‘automatic’ about calling for a Day of Prayer. We cannot judge President Trump’s heart but God can and it is up to Him to respond as He sees fit! This begs another question: why should God listen to any of our prayers? This is a really good way to explain one of the most important things Christians believe about prayer. You may not be so interested in that but I would ask you to stick with me because it is, in turn, essential in exploring how Christians understand the idea of a ‘Day of Prayer ’. One of the ways God is portrayed in the Bible is as a great King. If you have ever been to visit Buckingham Palace or the White House you know that tourists are kept at a safe distance by multiple layers of fences, walls, and well-armed security guards, both uniformed and in plain clothes. You ca...

In response to the coronavirus pandemic, President Trump announced a national day of prayer in America but it is not clear if or how God answered those prayers. What do we make of this ? Chatting it through whilst preparing to write this blog I received the tongue in cheek reply "Well, would you listen to him?" Joking aside there is a very good question implicit in this comment. Why should God listen to Donald Trump? Does calling a 'day of prayer' compel God to listen and do whatever people ask him? It is easy to imagine God as a vending machine: press the right religious buttons and put the right spiritual coins in and whatever we want falls into our laps. It is also easy to imagine God as a kind of genie in the sky: use your prayers to rub His lamp the right way and He pops up to give you your three wishes. Sadly, some people claiming to be Christians are deliberately encouraging this view of God promising that He always gives healing and prosperi...

In mid-March President of the USA Donald Trump called for a national day of prayer . By early April he was confident there was light at the end of the tunnel . Yet a BBC report dated 29th April states that "The United States alone has more than one million confirmed cases - four times as many as any other country". So what does this mean for religion? Was God able to answer but didn't? Was God unable to hear? Did God create the coronavirus? Should all this cause Christians to question their faith? These sincere questions, asked respectfully by an long-term friend who is not a Christian, have had me thinking hard for several days. Rather than attempt a single answer which could get quite lengthy, I hope to explore this over a few shorter blogs. I want to start by turning the whole thing inside out, on its head, and flipping it around ! Inside out: these are  very important questions. The existence of suffering is something for which every religion an...