A TIME TO BE INSTRUCTED BY OUR HEARTS

A few weeks ago I went to church on Sunday evening. The format of the service was different from the usual pattern insofar as instead of a conventional sermon, there would be an open time of sharing. Anyone could get up and speak about what God was doing in their...

Grace in the cracks

The last time I contributed a PS blog was in June 2016. Back then, I wrote about how the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland had appointed a Task Group to look at how the denomination had responded to the troubles. One thing led soon to another. The...

Finding Brexit Hope

EIGHTY YEARS ON On the evening of Monday 2nd September I met a group of Christian friends for a teatime meeting. On our way there we’d been listening to drive time news as we inched through Belfast traffic, with the breaking story being that the Prime Minister was to...

Seventy Times Seven

Do you remember learning your times tables at school? ‘Two times two is four, three times two is six, four times two is eight…’ In the days before electronic calculators took the strain, the combination of daily classroom sing songs and homework repetition rooted the...

NEW DAYS COMING OR MORE FALSE DAWNS?

There have been at least three very significant events in the past month that, taken together, may – repeat may – prove to be a watershed in the current quagmire that is politics in Northern Ireland.   The first was the brutal murder of Lyra McKee in Derry...

PS Extra: Lord have mercy on us; Lord hear our prayers…

  On Sunday a couple of   hundred people walked the hill to Stormont and then spent a short time in prayer. Alain Emerson from 24/7 Prayer Ireland   and Peter Lynas from  Evangelical Alliance (NI) led the short act of worship with a reading of  PSALM 85  and then...