Reflecting on Northern Ireland at 100 years

Commemorating 100 years of Northern Ireland evokes conflicting emotions. For those who lived through the ‘Troubles’, the Good Friday Agreement seems much more recent than 1998.The pallor of suffering and enmity still casts its shadow. The diminution, if not complete...

Welcome To The New Look …PS…!

Welcome to …PS…, an email and web discussion forum from Contemporary Christianity. Virtual and voluntary, we normally issue …PS… once or twice each month. Next week, look out for a 5 day series of blogs …. From next Monday, 21 June for five days we will be issuing a...

PS…February festivals

Fasting and feasting holidays are the events in the Jewish calendar around which life is orientated.  Many of these ‘festivals’ have their origin in the laws which God gave to the people of Israel after they left Egypt and were on their way to the Promised...

‘Fake news’

In my early years as a professional Geologist and a Christian, I was dismayed and puzzled by the defence of the literalist interpretation of Genesis 1 stating that scientists were in a conspiracy of deception. Why scientists might do this was never articulated, as the...

How many too questions are too many questions?

Like a good evangelical Christian, every morning my day starts with quiet time. The Lord’s prayer, then other prayers, setting my day up, giving it over to God. And from prayer I go to Scripture, helped in that discipline by Bible Reading notes. A verse or a question...

Every little helps

It’s November and I’m sad.  Over the years I have come to dread November, because if anything goes wrong, it goes spectacularly wrong in November.  Perhaps this was a self-fulfilling prophecy, perhaps it’s SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), but it always seemed to...