International Women’s Day 8th March 2026

It’s 7am, and I’m on a walk. A cold mist is soaking through my t-shirt. Despite this, my attention is taken up by the Sermon of the Week from Bethel Church, Redding.

The title is Love Looks Like Action, and the speaker is Gabe Valenzuela.

At this point, I have no idea it is International Women’s Day. I don’t find out until after I’m back home, showered, and listening to R4 getting my standard cuppa and cereal breakfast organised.

I’m drawn into the talk. Gabe is combining serious points with disarming humour. Sometimes I’m laughing, hoping no one’s too close to wonder why this man walking along the Strawberry Line path is laughing to himself, early in the morning.

His text is the familiar parable about the Good Samaritan. After about 30 minutes happily agreeing with his conclusions, I find myself taken off in an unexpected direction, unrelated to any sermons or commentaries on this parable, in which the punchline is ‘Go and do likewise’.

A new punchline? Not one that is written down, but one that came from the heart. Of course, Jesus can be thought of as the Samaritan, come to bind up our wounds and pay for our recovery. A beautiful picture of God’s love and grace. This is wonderful and true, but I saw something quite different.

Jesus could tell this parable because He also experienced being the man left by the wayside, battered, bruised, wounded and robbed. Yes, on the cross, but also in life.

As Gabe Valnzuela pointed out, we have all been the person beaten up at times.

Also true of Jesus. The question is, who was he thinking of who had shown him kindness and poured healing oil on Him?

First, though: the wounds.

1. Early childhood fleeing to Egypt as a child refugee, an outsider. Think of the hostility in our society, spoken or unspoken, towards refugees…in the school playground.
2. Biting, continual criticism and accusations from the Pharisees
3. Direct opposition and temptation from Satan and evil spirits
4. His own family accuses him of madness
5. Peter disowning him, Judas betraying him, the other apostles abandoning him

Throughout his public ministry and before he was ministered to, received kindness from, gentleness from, love from…women.

Martha and Mary, Mary Magdalene, Mary his mother, Joanna, Susannah, and Salome. In very different ways, they all ministered to him. Maybe you know how. But I want to mention one woman in particular, the Samaritan woman at the well. Maybe she was the inspiration for the parable? The story is related in John chapter 4.

Why this woman? In part because she is unnamed, and a Samaritan, considered to be unworthy. Not only that, but had lived such a tragic life, living with a man but not married, having previously had four husbands. And yet, when Jesus was weary, tired, incapable of taking another step, ground to a halt in the shade by a well…it was this woman who gave the Saviour a cold, refreshing drink of water, when he had no means of getting the water up from the well.

If you’re a man and reading this, perhaps you are thinking back over your life and how particular women have shown you kindness, gentleness, and love just when you needed it and, perhaps, when you least deserved it.

Even in anticipation of Jesus’s ultimate suffering, the indignity of betrayal, arrest, illegal trial, and undeserved execution on trumped-up charges leading to crucifixion, death and burial, it was women who knew what to do…and did it.

First, Mary, the sister of Lazarus, anoints Jesus's feet with very expensive perfume, filling the house with the scent. Jesus knows why. He says, ‘Leave her alone, she has kept this for the day of my burial’. An act of devotion and love, knowing that he would soon suffer and die.

And lastly, the women who went to the tomb with spices to roll the stone away and enter to anoint his dead body: Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and Salome are named.

Why this woman? In part because she is unnamed, and a Samaritan, considered to be unworthy

What do you think Jesus felt knowing these women had done all that even for him in death?

After all this came from nowhere and tumbled into my thoughts and made tears fall, I walked along the road back to my house, showered, and flipped on Radio 4.

The Morning Service. A programme I usually switch off, as it often feels too stiff and formal. But not this morning. It’s a service from Zion Temple Celebration Centre, in Rwanda, and the stories of, I think, five women in rich Rwandan accents are celebrating International Women’s Day and their faith and love for Christ and telling how He has transformed their lives and is at work today in His risen power, are being told.

That stopped me in my tracks. It’s one thing to be ambushed whilst listening to someone else’s sermon, quite another to be arrested by Radio 4.

So, yes... it’s not only worthwhile to celebrate International Women’s Day, but also important to remember and honour the women who ministered to the wounds Jesus received during His life and in His death…and to give thank God for this reality in our own lives. And not just to ‘give’ thanks, but to pour it out — just like Mary poured her ointment on Jesus’s feet.

The Servant Girl & the Prodigal

In case you didn’t know
My name is Miriam
My apron is filled
With dry thistle heads,
Slivers of bark, and
Desiccated dung

And my flints

Today, I am honoured
Brought to the Master’s house
To fire up the cedar wood
Piled under an oval bath
A hot soak for the prodigal

Everything for him

Steam and sweet smells
Unlike the submerged one,
Him with the matted hair
Dirt-packed fingernails
Cracked, parched lips
And blackened feet

I washed his head
With lye and scented oils
Until his skin
Taut with worry and weather
Yielded its hidden colours
And forgotten warmth

I saw his lips curl, the
Crease of an early smile
And tears drop silently
Onto the water.
His soul retrieving
Its long-lost peace

On a peg, a fine silk robe
Flowed down to meet
New leather sandals

With my eyes closed
I saw all his history
Slip away and sink,
Claimed by the water.

His fragrance followed me
To the music and the feast

I watched the other son
Loiter in the shadows
My smile, my scent
Only hardened his final gaze
As he stood alone
Before joining the night

Beloved Tehran

Slack-jaws slung low
Stomach knots
Tightening their grip

My passport lost
I’m losing connection
With citizenship

All my antennae
Their anxiety exposed
No false alarm

Tension is rising
On the city streets
Of my beloved Tehran

A Persian beauty
Unwilling to be defined
Hatred of Israel declined

Seeking a partner
In pursuit of peace
Began to sing

A song that carried
One heart then many
Into the courts of heaven

But not before
Bullets made of lead
Had painted in blood

And laid low
The courageous choir
Of the silent dead

And so…I hold my breath
My prayers?
Inaudible groans

As lives, once more, are
Reduced to the rubble
Of temporary loans

The Two Moors Walking Challenge – post #3, 25th February 2026

Was this a ‘training walk’ or simply an early morning walk that won’t hurt the prep for the Big One in late May/early June?

I’m not sure it matters. What would matter is not walking.

4th Toe, Left Foot Report

Yesterday’s walk was from home to The Crown and back, trudging through heavy mud at times in glorious sunshine. You should know that the psychosomatic effect of approx. 40 days of rain and 2 days of sun is profound. Physical health has suffered in many, and the dull days have had a hibernating effect on the inner being. Psychobabble? Maybe, but consider how you feel when the sun is up after its long exile, and you are outside…tell me your mood and sense of well-being isn’t turned up a notch?

I digress. Yesterday, after 5 minutes, I was afraid that I’d have to tell my walking partner that I’d have to stop, but the pain faded - thankfully. And today? No problem. No pain. How random.

Shute Tunnel, Shute Hill, Sidcot

This is a beautiful walk, and I was up early enough to avoid all but a few humans and well-trained dogs. It was nature and I. It was blackbirds, robins, crows and jackdaws, unidentified small singing birds balancing on the upper blackened branches, and sheep emerging from the still mist, and, unexpectedly, a few lambs already. Two black ones, and a few very muddy cream versions and their mud-infested mums. And a dead black lamb, left lifeless, lying on the muddy soil; ignored by the others.

It’s beautiful, but Shute Hill is not one that I could run up. Small steps only. Slow. Deep breaths. But the reward, not today in the mist, is a panoramic view across to Crook Peak and over to the run up The Severn towards Portishead, and a lovely view over Winscombe.

Stats

8.92km; 1hr45min; 205m gain; Av heart rate 91; Max 131; 11,302 steps

Spiritual

No comment at the mo. But we’ll go there soon, I’m sure. The pneuma (spirit) as opposed to the psyche (soul) and the soma (body)

Book Review: The Wizard of the Kremlin Guiliano Da Empoli Pushkin Press – 2023

And soon to be released as a film under the directorship of Olivier Assayas

‘Politics has just one goal: to address man’s terrors’

Guiliano Da Empoli has created a masterful fiction that reads like a documentary, deftly squeezing in his own characters between well-known contemporary Russian leaders, mainly Putin, government ministers, and oligarchs.

The setting, which I found faded into the background as the story took hold, is an interview conducted by a French intellectual with Vadim Baranov, a retired advisor to ‘the tsar’ (ie Putin).

Baranov, therefore, becomes the main narrator. Through his revelations, we are taken into the heart and mind of the Russian psyche. How Putin emerged as the strong man ‘to address Russia’s terrors’ – the disaster of the free market unleashed in the aftermath of the collapse of the USSR and the encroachment of NATO as its former territories, such as Ukraine, flex their newly acquired independence muscles to buddy up to Europe rather than ‘mother Russia’.

As you might expect, there are unexplained deaths of would-be opponents to Putin’s regime, wonderful Russian names, a beautiful love interest, Ksenia ‘a woman who would burn down a whole city to spare herself a moment of tedium’ , Gary Kasparov, and a brooding sense of the depth of the Russian soul and yet a lingering sense of oppression, or suppression, through enforcing a strict communist-based ideal of frugality and equality, ‘you only have to flip a single switch for the entire room to be bathed in the same brutal and uniform light’.

Baranov is portrayed as a hardened and cynical spin doctor and yet Da Empoli invests a critical chink of light in this machine-like personality in the form of his tender feelings for his daughter Anya, ‘each moment that he lived in her company, represented a small miracle…in those moments gratitude flooded through him like a hit of vodka’.

Whether the film version, in which the narrator is an American, I suppose to elicit a further taught string to the underlying menace of Moscow, is a match for the novel remains to be seen…but I will certainly join the queue at the cinema to find out.

A disturbing and yet compelling read. Thoroughly recommended.

Friday’s Irregular Poetry Corner – a day late

Guest poet: Kimberley Johnson
Featured Poem: Golf
Collection: Uncommon Prayer, Persea Books, 2014

Golf

Glory be to God for bungled things, for the early frost, for the miscarriage the land mine sunk forgotten in the wheatfield, the liger. For all things marred and misbegotten, praise Him – hamfisted, hamstrung, and never else so like us. So comforting a kinship that we hymn it constantly: “OGod!” at the carpenter’s hammered thumb, “O God!”, at the failed marriage, “God damn!”, on the fourteenth green. The chorus amens; cue the responsory:

Versicle: Why in lightning should you hold up a one iron?

Antiphon: Because not even God can hit a one iron

Two Moors Challenge post #1 (b)

Walk 1: Winscombe – Axbridge – Cheddar – Axbridge – Winscombe

19th February 2026

A full Cheddar Reservoir

Later, yesterday, perhaps as a result of writing blog 1, and a favourable weather forecast the boots went on and I set off to walk to Cheddar, intending to hop on the 126 for a (free) bus ride home.

In the end, I overshot Cheddar slightly, walked back in from the east, plonked down in a café (needed the loo and to rest my left foot), before retracing my steps through Axbridge to the Strawberry Line tunnel and home.

What was planned to be a 5-mile walk turned into a 10 miler.

The left foot fourth toe was complaining. Had to stop every 30 mins to take boot off, let blood back into toe/nerve and set off again.

Nevertheless, the training is underway.

With the longest walk at 20 miles and walking each day, I’ll need to get the boots on regularly.

Noticed:

• Cheddar reservoir was full and looking good in the sunshine, hence photos. 

• Early signs of spring, some tiny flowers alongside early daffs and snow drops, some fresh leaves poking out.

• Blue plaques in Axbridge…a future photographic collection. Plus a public loo…Hallelujah!

The Two Moors Walking Challenge post #1

Bare Bones: Dartmoor to Exmoor, Wembury to Ivybridge to Scorriton to Chagford to Morchard Road to Yeo Mill to Withypool to Lynmouth. Approx. 115 miles

Dates: Tuesday 26th May to Wednesday 3rd June

Days to go: 96

The truth is, I’m not sure if I can do this. To help, I’ve slotted in a day-off in Chagford, so the walk is chopped up into two halves: 3 days to Chagford, followed by 4 to Lynmouth.

I have two reasons for doubting my ability to complete the challenge. First is a toe problem. Second is my failed attempt to cross the North York Moors a few summers ago.

However, with 96 days to go, I can do some prep. The problems in the North York Moors were (a) the toe (b) heatwave (c) carrying a heavy load…and realising I’m not 25 anymore. This time, I have sherpas (!) in the form of luggage transfers, so will only need to take a daysack on the hikes. That should alleviate undue pressure on neck, shoulders, back and most importantly the fourth toe on my left foot which loves to complain if it’s overworked.

But, man, am I looking forward to this! I’ve been pondering the Two Moors Challenge for a few years and last year’s few days on the Camino has given sufficient push to get it done.

I’m looking forward to the scenery, mist and fog permitting, taking photos, sharing the walk with fellow travellers as on the Camino, and maybe some friends who join in for a day or two, and the full moon that should accompany the evenings and nights. And the physical challenge. The longest day walk (given that I don’t get lost) is 22 miles. The furthest I’ve walked for probably a year is not much more than 5 miles, so I need to put that right.

And, if I may, the spiritual challenge. But more of that in subsequent posts.

Kit: My trusty leather uppers and Vibram soled walking boots are showing signs of aging. A split is developing between sole and upper leather…so…yesterday I purchased a new pair. A lighter variety, more for moors than mountains. Other than that, I think I have sufficient kit.

Today: a cold Northerly, diagonal cold rain, and a dull overcastness that has seemingly deposited itself like a beached whale, over much of the UK refusing to move on, all add together to keep me indoors, two jumpers and a scarf on, until the house decides to pay attention to the central heat.

Heart of flesh

Oh God, please don’t make me
Remove the wrapping paper
It’s the thought that counts

But He said, ‘But if I hear you
Pleading with Me,
The gift is already given’

I felt the gift like a child
It was knock-hard and
A chill ran through the paper

I held it and looked
Into His eyes
But He reached out

‘Look at the label’, He said
So, I did
‘In remembrance, only’

Floored, as so often
My tears, the overflow
Of a heart of flesh, ran free

The Last Supper ‘You are clean, but not all of you’ John 13

Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. And supper being ended, the devil having already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him, Jesus…rose from supper and…took a towel, poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet…And Peter said to Him, “Lord, are You washing my feet?”

These opening verses are a beginning-to-end summary of events that the subsequent verses flesh out.

1. Before Passover…John reports Jesus’ state of mind and spiritual understanding, from deep in his relationship to and with God, the Father. From this well of knowing, which included knowing his suffering was imminent, he orchestrates the supper in the upper room,t he feet washing, the betrayal, and the arrest.

2. And supper being ended…after the Passover meal (some details of the meal are contained in the other gospels) John records Jesus washing the disciples' feet. We will come back to this. I do not believe the text supports the notion that Jesus washed Judas’s feet. This is key.

3. The devil having already put it in the heart of Judas to betray him…note the past tense. That is, before supper, the devil had done his work. This is supported by other texts e.g. Luke 22v3. Judas left midway through the meal as he and Jesus dipped bread together. The feet washing was after supper. As it says later, ‘Having received the piece of bread, he (Judas) then went out immediately. And it was night.’

4. Jesus said to Peter, “You are clean, but not all of you.” During the foot washing, Peter challenges Jesus to wash him from head to toe, not just his feet. But Jesus disarms him with this typically enigmatic comment: ‘He who is bathed needs only to wash his feet’.

What does this mean?

I can only share my ponderings; this morning’s ponderings, in fact.

Jesus was talking figuratively, not literally, although his statement works in the real world of baths and stepping out of the bath onto an unclean surface.

Spiritually, Jesus saw Jesus and the eleven as clean. When Jesus whispers to us through the gospel ‘You are clean’ we hear perhaps the most profound three words we will ever hear. Those three words contain complete forgiveness and an unshakeable restoration. It is heard in other forms littered throughout Jesus’s parables e.g. Luke 15’s triple set of ‘I was lost but now I’m found’ parables.

Judas only heard ‘unclean’ and ‘woe unto him who betrays me’ and ‘what you are about to do, do quickly’ and ‘it was night’. He left with his feet unwashed into the night.

But what of the eleven, and Peter? Peter who denied Jesus. The eleven who ran away? Did Jesus’s words ‘You are clean’ last only a few hours before being dismantled in failure and regret?

No.

The chasm between ‘You are clean’ and Jesus’s prediction of Peter’s denial seems unbridgeable, unfathomable, and yet it is contained and dealt with in Christ through the cross when he took upon himself all our iniquities, moral failures, sin, and broken-heartedness.

It is always this. When we fail – and we do as believers – we come back to those three words ‘You are clean’.

In Peter’s experience, his denial proved to be a stepping stone through which his love for Jesus and Jesus’s love for him would not only be revealed but taken deeper, into a new dimension.

Equally, for Paul, who had arrested and harassed believers, he wrote these words.

‘He made Christ, who knew no sin, to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God’ 2Cor5v21

Perhaps in some way you feel you have denied Christ, or are walking away from him, having been lured away. May Christ come to you and may you hear those three words once more, ‘You are clean’ and once again, like Peter on the beach, confess ‘You know that I love you’, and leave your nets to follow Him.

Book Review: ‘Surrounded By Idiots’ Thomas Erikson Penguin – 2019

‘When I was 25, I met Sture…one of the first comments Sture made was that he was surrounded by idiots…I asked him if he really believed that he was surrounded by idiots. He glared at me and explained that few of his employees were worth having…his definition of idiocy was anyone who didn’t think or act like him…I have one thing to thank Sture for – he awakened my interest…without him this book would never have been written’

What follows are approximately 250 pages of distilled wisdom as Erikson studied human personality types and explored how we might do better than Sture and learn how to function well in mixed-personality teams.

From the cover and on through various diagrams throughout the book, Erikson has colour-coded the four main personality types as Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue.

Sture was a Red.

Reds are quick to react, take control, and lead, unconcerned for the impact on decisions on others. Decisive and confident.

Yellows are impulsive, talkers, involve others, team players, enthusiastic, optimistic, and charming.

Greens are calm, stable, avoid conflict or change, thoughtful, patient, loyal team players.

Blues are slower, analytical, meticulous planners, relate better to spreadsheets and data more than people, well organised.

Erikson contends that ‘about 80% of all people have a combination of two colours that dominate behaviour’, but the aim of the book is not simply to enable readers to self-analyse or identify others’ colours, but to learn how to relate better with individuals with different colours.

The style of writing is factual without being too technical and laced with humour.

In an interview with a Red, he asked ‘What advice would you give to people who meet you?’ The red lady, a CEO, answered ‘Put your energy into the task at hand. You can socialise at the weekend’.

To a blue economist, he asked, ‘Do you ever hang out with yellows?’. He replied ‘No. I tend to avoid them. I wouldn’t be able to stand all that talking…about everything and nothing…five minutes with a yellow I’m at my wits' end.’

Towards the end of the book is a useful quiz to test how much you have understood, and a comprehensive index so you can quickly refer to any main points.

I enjoyed Surrounded by Idiots. Some similar systems, for example, the Enneagram, are more complex. I prefer simplicity; having four main types worked for me. Of course, analysing others and oneself using any similar tools is quite good fun, but the real value of the book is to go beyond self-awareness to learn how to ‘love one’s neighbour as oneself’ even when wired completely differently.

My L-plates are firmly fixed on.

It always comes to this

Curious how subtraction
Weighs heavy
Like cold cement
On an old fire

Or loss sharpens
The appetite
Like the blades
Of hail on unkempt hair

Or how distances that
Cannot be bridged
Drag on the memories
Of private maps

But maps have
A power of their own
To clothe the feet
In hours and miles

And lift the eyes
To the unexplored
Crevasse, col, or cwm,
And down to laces untied

It always comes to this
Squinting in the morning sun
A stretch, a sigh, then
To add one small step

Stripping Away Familiarity Proverbs 3 v 5&6

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
And lean not on your own understanding
But in all your ways acknowledge Him
And he will direct your paths

Yes, of course, this can read like religious mumbo jumbo to agnostics or atheists, and an over-familiar verse to Christian believers.

Is there any need for comment? The words are plain enough. It’s not a parable or a prophecy. It’s not written poetically (although I do like the two words ‘lean not’…for me, that’s poetic). Putting it bluntly, it’s a radical challenge: the question is not whether it’s true, but whether, having believed the bible is God-breathed, you have found it to be true in your experience?

This morning, I read this verse for the umpteenth time and nodded with approval. Like an old friend, it possesses a comforting familiarity, but before I could sit back and relax, I was taken back to school for two further lessons.

I have never been to a striptease joint, but one is blessed with an imagination! And to be fair, don’t we all strip at least once a day, if not twice, minimum?

One piece of clothing followed by another is taken away, revealing the truth.

Truth 1. Heart. Trust in the Lord with the core of your being. It’s deeper than emotion, or thought, or motivations. Those are the surface waves of the soul. The heart is like the deep. It ignores thoughts that may conflict with the heart. It relegates raging emotions or numbness to a lower division. It stills the will, the terrible need to do something. The heart is trusting in the Lord when and only when, as in Psalm 23, He has made me lie down. ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down…’

Truth 2. In all your ways, John. ‘I have ways, Lord?’ ‘Yes’. I sense a divine chuckle. He’s taken almost 68 years to show me this. I have ‘ways’. Here are some of them: Loud and confident people make me shrink. I have a multitude of ways of avoiding them, finding quieter places, going to the loo, sitting quietly, waiting for the storm to pass. I’m not a party animal. Almost as a contradiction, I have an instinct for leadership and form teams to accomplish a task. I make a cup of tea in a certain way; pronounce scones correctly (!); prefer to run into the sea than step in, toe by toe. Observational self-deprecating humour makes me laugh. I love Billy Connolly, but I also have a poetic/prophetic streak that demands some inner switch to flip – some might say left to right brain. I’m not sure. I have my ways.

Two pieces of familiar clothing stripped away.

It’s not simply that ‘acknowledging the Lord in all your ways’ means His direction comes first, even if it takes us beyond our comfort zones, but that the Lord has been with us all, in the formation of all of these things. ‘Our ways’ are what make us ‘us’ and not the next person. Our uniqueness. And, in Christ, there is a new ‘us’, a new creation…the essential you formed in the core of our being, our new hearts, being formed as the Spirit of Christ witnesses and communes with our new spirit, given to us in the New Covenant.

And he will direct our paths.

This is not some SatNav divinity, a guidance system from above the earth, from heaven as if heaven is a long way off. Or via a set of commands that we gird ourselves up to follow, come what may.

No, we are being discipled to live like Jesus. Relying on His voice within: ‘My sheep know My voice’, so that we end up being able to say to family, friends, work colleagues, neighbours, and a watching world ‘I only do what I see my father doing in heaven’. Well, we might not put it quite like that, or we’d appear to be religious nutters only capable of quoting scriptures like automatons or cult-like clones!

To any agnostics and atheists reading this, I challenge you to ask a believer or two about their experience with this verse. You may discover some intriguing stories! To any believer reading this who’s struggling, I struggle. I fail. I go off-piste. I’m often like a dog that hasn’t learnt to heel. But I know who has bought me and who is at work in me. It’s all grace. He calls me back, and on we go.

Last point. Trust is trust. It never changes. It’s standing at a bus stop waiting for the bus. It’s believing that what God has spoken is trustworthy and will come to pass. It’s swimming, knowing the water will support you. It’s believing the seasons will continue, or that tomorrow the sun will come up. ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart’ when He says ‘He will direct your paths’.

Rolos

In the winter playground
The boy delves
In his pockets
Grey shorts over
Pink chapped thighs
As had all the others

December: break,
Ice and snow
Toggles and duffle coats
And bare shins
His thin gloves
Locates the target

A packet of Rolos

He unfurls the silver foil
Exposing dark brown circles
And, hand thrust out,
The Rolos are offered
To scraped knees
Footballs and wellington boots

In return
Impenetrable silence

No matched fingers
Extended to the silver foil
No swaps for sugar cigarettes
No words, no nods
A rebuff so irreversible
And dense as a vacuum

His first taste
Of estrangement
Of invisibility
Of finding the others
The shunned ones
Made rich with less

The Rolo lovers, those of
The Cave of Adullam
Dwellers to the East of Eden
Lepers with perfect skin
A kingdom of includers
Thawing the ice

Longing for Snow

January

A month to long for snow
Empty blue skies
And fierce cold
Sharp, virus-killing cold

Snow drops
And crystal-clear air
Short days
To compress an excess of joy

February

To rob Christmas
Of Rosetti’s bleak midwinter
Here is grey shadow
And cold to be avoided

A shudder that no scarf
Can repel

Unless January’s prayer
Is answered in
Blizzards blasted
To the waiting Earth

And a new generation
Learn how to spell toboggan
And frozen hands
Launch endless missiles

A month that demands
An open fire
That scorns the industrialness
Of ugly rectangular radiators

Deep cries for dancing flames
The crack of logs
Of wet gloves, and scarves
Steaming their way to Tomorrow

All is quiet
Cars are hibernating
Just the trudge
Of boot on snow

Let no one wish for dirty slush
Eliminate ‘thaw’ from the lexicon

March

March can stay away
Its unwelcome longer days
A threat to…this
Enforced Sabbath

More Than a Barber

Booking the barbers online?
Feels vaguely feminine
Am I having my hair ‘done’?

Arrived on time
Pushed on the door
And sat down, alone

A silent one, his head
Still as a barn owl
Is in the chair

The absence of talk
Of footy, or Trump, or carburettors
Is an unusual interlude

And the silence
Like invisible honey
Circulates the room

Looking for anyone
Who wishes to
To enter in

Into the unknown.

In the background
The circumcision
Of surplus hair

Continues, the squeak
Of the barber’s shoes, the
Schink of blades

The inane radio
Saying nothing, oblivious
To the moment when

Confessions are made
Clues to some inner world
Left scattered on the floor

Forebodings, snip
Longings, snip
Hopes and dreams, snip

The barber,
Waterlogged
With our words

Like a priest,
Unburdens himself
Sighing into the night

Gifts

Become like little children?
Infants? Really?
So, on with the shorts
Sit cross-legged, for hours
Or lie on your back, feet
Up on the sofa
Pick your nose if you must
And daydream

Make faces
And odd noises
Plop your cheeks
And play hide and seek
Try so hard
To stay quiet and hidden
For five long seconds
Become three again

At the sight of wrapping paper
Be bubbly with excitement
And use your perfectly-formed
Three-year-old fingers
To prise up and away
All that Sellotape
Let your eyes
Grow larger than the Moon

And learn joy, learn love

Learn Amazing Grace
Learn that sweet sound
The music of heaven
That longs for you
Not to be stiff-necked
But let the tears fall
As you collapse

Back through the griefs
The broken-heartedness
The shields
That have not saved you
Hold your hands out
And see you are three again
Three at last! Three at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are three at last!

John the Baptist – a reset for 2026 Part 4: Prison

John the Baptist is often overlooked. The warm-up act before the entrance, stage-left, of the Messiah: Jesus of Nazareth, and eclipsed, as we all are, by the Word made flesh.

He is mentioned in all four gospels, but here’s Luke’s account, which is the fullest.

John said to the crowds coming out to be baptised by him, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.’

The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might be the Messiah.

John answered them all, ‘I baptise you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.’

But when John rebuked Herod the tetrarch because of his marriage to Herodias, his brother’s wife, and all the other evil things he had done, Herod added this to them all: He locked John up in prison.

Part 4: Prison

John, of course, was beheaded. But this was only made possible due to his arrest and imprisonment. So it is the cause of his arrest that we end this short series.

The authorities kept a watchful eye on John the Baptist. They sent Pharisees and Sadducees to spy on this growing movement, but did not make any move to thwart his ministry.

Spiritually, though, their position was quite clear, ‘The Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the purpose of God for themselves, not having been baptised by John’ Luke 7v30

The domestic political power structures in Israel existed within the framework of the Roman Empire, headed by Pontius Pilate. Under Roman rule, the Jewish ruling council, the Sanhedrin, consisted of chief priests, elders, and scribes belonging to one of two religio-political streams: the Pharisees or the Sadducees.

Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, had jurisdiction over part of Israel, and it was Antipas who arrested John. John was permitted to preach to the people in general about sins and forgiveness and carry out baptisms. The promise of a Messiah to arise was somewhat disturbing, but this wasn’t the first time a Messiah figure had been heralded. None of this unduly moved Herod, or the Sanhedrin, or Pilate.

However,

‘Herod arrested John and bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother’s wife, for he had married her; John had said to Herod ‘It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife’’ Mark 6v17,18 

The general morals in Roman and Jewish society at the time may have excused Herod, or they may have turned a blind eye, or shrugged and said quietly, ‘the rich and powerful make their own rules’, and so on. Divorce was commonplace. It happens. Why object?

Is good judgement formed around the prevailing moral fashions of the age we live in, or by the law of Moses?

What is the basis of our sense of right and wrong? Our moral standards – where do they originate?

Paul, when considering the Law of Moses, wrote ‘the law is holy…and just, and good’ Romans 7v12

This is not the place to write at length about the replacement of the law with the ‘newness of the Spirit’ v6. Suffice to say, however, the law is good, but it can’t produce the righteousness it demands of us; it really serves to highlight our inability, through sin, of keeping to any moral code, especially the law (of Moses).

In Britain, for some years, the phrase ‘British values’ has been used as a precis of our uncodified constitution built around ‘fair play, common decency, free speech, democracy’ and so on. This is a mirage. Those elements of our unwritten constitution have been forged over centuries in the fire of the Law of Moses and the Commandments as summarised by Jesus in the New Testament. ‘British Values’ is a misnomer. If we have any values, they are enshrined in the Ten Commandments and other laws contained in the Law of Moses as written mainly in Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

Even the avowed atheist Richard Dawkins has, in recent years, acknowledged the role of Scripture in shaping his moral outlook, what he considers right and wrong. Now he calls himself a ‘cultural Christian’, recognising the debt he – and all of us - owe to the Bible.

When John applied the moral standards of the Law to Herod, not the moral standards of the day, and called him to repentance, it cost him his freedom - and his life.

As we meditate on the Law, it will challenge us whenever we attempt to take the throne away from Christ. I have sometimes likened the Christian life as losing every argument with Jesus. Thank God.

In matters of money, sex, and power, our faith will be tested and we may fail. But our faith cannot be in ourselves, our ability to obey the law – that is the flesh again attempting to be in charge. No, we must walk in the Spirit.

‘But now, we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter’ Romans 7v6

John the Baptist – a reset for 2026 Part 3 (i) baptism of fire (ii) judgement here and now

John the Baptist is often overlooked. The warm-up act before the entrance, stage-left, of the Messiah: Jesus of Nazareth, and eclipsed, as we all are, by the Word made flesh.

He is mentioned in all four gospels, but here’s Luke’s account, which is the fullest.

John said to the crowds coming out to be baptised by him, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.’

The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might be the Messiah.

John answered them all, ‘I baptise you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.’

But when John rebuked Herod the tetrarch because of his marriage to Herodias, his brother’s wife, and all the other evil things he had done, Herod added this to them all: He locked John up in prison.

(i) Baptism of fire, and (ii) Judgement here and now

Really, these subdivisions can be run together. I’ve only separated them because the phrase ‘baptism of fire’ is so well-known.

There is, of course, some validity in co-opting this biblical phrase for impending trouble, but it is sharper than that. Far sharper. We are talking about judgement. Not a universally popular subject. Immediately, when we hear the word ‘judgement’ within the scope of religion, our minds migrate to The Day of Judgement, or eternal resurrection or damnation. I am certainly not objecting to this - except in this way: God is eternal, and therefore His judgement is eternal. From our temporal space and time perspective, that means that whatever eternal judgement is, it affects the past, the present, and the future.

John the Baptist Part 3 is a look at eternal judgement through the biblical notion of ‘today’.

John the Baptist foresaw that the ministry of the Messiah would be characterised by two baptisms – not in water like his, but in the Holy Spirit and also in fire. That in the future believers would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and would walk through life ‘saturated’, ‘wet through’, ‘baptised’ in the Spirit. No longer would they have to make a pilgrimage to the temple; they would be temples of the Holy Spirit. Temples on the move.

But he also said they would be ‘baptised with fire’. On the Day of Pentecost, of course, there were flames of fire. Signs that each believer was alive with the judgement that is found in Christ.

We’ve already seen how Simeon prophesied the manifestation of this judgement through Jesus: ‘…this child is destined for the fall and rising of many in Israel…that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed’ Luke 2v34,35

Jesus himself spoke about the sword of judgement: ‘I came to send fire on the earth…do you suppose I came to bring peace on earth? I tell you, not at all, but division…’ Luke 12v49-53

One example of this division was at Nazareth in the synagogue that he attended from childhood. When he was handed the scroll and read from Isaiah, it says ‘the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him’ Luke 4v20 nevertheless, when He confessed his Messiahship and when he reminded the congregation that in Elijah’s day it was the Gentile widow who had welcomed him, the congregation rose against him ‘they led him to the brow of a hill…that they might throw Him down over the cliff’.

During the Day of Pentecost, when the crowd gathered due to the sound of a rushing wind and the sight of flames of fire on the believers’ heads, despite hearing the newly baptised in the Spirit believers ‘speaking in our own languages about the wonderful works of God’ some mocked, ‘they’re full of new wine’, in other words drunk. But Peter replied, ‘These are not drunk, as you suppose, it is only 9 o’clock in the morning’ Acts 2v11-15.

Division. The account goes on to say that 3000 were baptised that day. But opposition also grew.

John prophesied about this baptism of fire as a present-day divisive fire of judgement and the consequences of accepting or welcoming Christ or rejecting Him.

‘His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.’

This agricultural picture would have been well-understood until the era of mechanisation with combine harvesters. The wheat grains are heavier than the husk around the grain, so when a winnowing fork threw them both up into the air, any wind would blow the chaff away, leaving the grain to fall to the ground, where it could be collected and stored in a barn. The chaff is also collected and burnt.

The separation is therefore a picture of judgement.

We can see this in action through the apostles, for example, with Paul and Barnabas. In Acts chapter 13, they had been preaching in Antioch on the Sabbath but ‘when the Jews saw the multitude, they were filled with envy…and opposed the things spoken by Paul (v45)

‘Then Paul and Barnabus grew bold and said, ‘It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken to you first: but since you reject it, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life…we turn to the Gentiles’

In John chapter 5, Jesus deals with ‘judgement now’ in tension with ‘the day of judgement’.

‘Truly I say to you, he who hears my word and believes in Him who sent Me, has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgement, but has passed from death into life. Truly I say to you, the hour is coming and now is when he dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live’ v 24,25

This is both a NOW and a THEN resurrection to life or condemnation. Once we believe we experience a ‘resurrection’ from death to life. It’s not the complete work of resurrection, but it is the irreversible start.

Charles Wesley caught hold of the immensity of this transformation in And Can It Be?

Long my imprisoned spirit lay/Fast bound in sin and nature’s night/Thin eye diffused a quickening ray/I woke, the dungeon flamed with light/My chains fell off, my heart was free/I rose, went forth and followed Thee

So, it is an awesome thing to be a Christian. To carry within us the baptism in the Spirit and fire. Just as John prophesied, as we give witness and tell our story, some believe and some will not. Division. It is not that we are seeking opposition and division; we are only too aware of how receiving Christ has been an act of mercy, and receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit has nothing to do with our worthiness. But John warns us, as Jesus did later, that we are sheep sent out among wolves. The wolves howled against Jesus in Nazareth, despite their synagogue attending religiosity. But he walked free. It wasn’t his time.

As we continue in Christ, Christ living out His life in our form, we will see the chaff blown away and the grain gathered into His barn. We cannot have one without the other.

John the Baptist – a reset for 2026 Part 2 - Baptism in the Spirit

John the Baptist is often overlooked. The warm-up act before the entrance, stage-left, of the Messiah: Jesus of Nazareth, and eclipsed, as we all are, by the Word made flesh.

He is mentioned in all four gospels, but here’s Luke’s account, which is the fullest.

John said to the crowds coming out to be baptised by him, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.’

The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might be the Messiah.

John answered them all, ‘I baptise you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.’

But when John rebuked Herod the tetrarch because of his marriage to Herodias, his brother’s wife, and all the other evil things he had done, Herod added this to them all: He locked John up in prison.

Baptism in the Spirit

Baptism, typically, requires three components: the person administering the baptism, the baptismal candidate and the element into which the candidate is to be baptised.

John prophesied that the Messiah would baptise not with water, but with the Holy Spirit – in other words, true Christianity has nothing to do with outward actions such as prayer, or hymn singing, church attendance, being born in a ‘Christian nation’ or being related to a Christian believer, or bible knowledge. What John foresaw was something radically new; men and women baptised in the Holy Spirit.

True Christianity, therefore, is all about being immersed, soaked in, plunged into the Holy Spirit, God Himself.

When Peter preached to Cornelius’s household, he summarised Jesus’s public ministry as:

‘God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him’ Acts 10v38

He demonstrated the life of a man baptised in the Spirit, but we don’t read of Jesus baptising the disciples and His followers in the Holy Spirit until after the resurrection.

‘And being with the disciples. Jesus commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, ‘Which,’ he said, ‘you have heard from Me; for John truly baptised with water, but you shall be baptised with the Holy Spirit not many days from now’ Acts 1v5

The disciples – who numbered approximately 120 by this time – did as they were commanded; they waited, men and women.

Ten days later, Luke records, ‘When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place…flames of fire sat on each of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them’ Acts 2 v1-4

A large crowd gathered to hear and see what was going on, and Peter stood up to preach the first sermon of the New Testament after the resurrection and ascension of Christ. At the end of which he said: ‘Repent, and let everyone of you be baptised in the Name of Jesus for the forgiveness of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit’ Acts 2v38

I think we all know instinctively what repentance looks like. All excuses exhausted, finally we admit what we’ve done and ask for forgiveness, so that the breach in the relationship can be mended, and the tension and strain can drain away. Here, the principal relationship is between us and God, who is holy. We know that God knows, there is no hiding place, and we admit our need for cleansing, for forgiveness, and redemption.

The baptism (in water) is a sign that Jesus has indeed forgiven us, and our sins have been washed away.

But Peter doesn’t stop there. True Christianity is not limited to the forgiveness of sins, as wonderful as that is, it involves receiving a gift - the gift of the Spirit. We come to Jesus for Him to baptise us with the Holy Spirit.

Before John the Baptist, Ezekiel had foreseen this day and prophesied:

‘I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you, I will remove the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, Ezk 36v26,27

Paul put it like this:

‘If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His’ Romans 8v9

True Christianity, therefore, is wholly dependent on receiving the gift of the Spirit. Everything we do after receiving the Spirit of Christ (worship, prayer, church, loving our neighbour) flows from this. Later in the same chapter, Paul writes: ‘for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God’ v14

The repentance-baptism-gift of the Spirit is ideally a fay one experience for every new believer. In practice this is not always the case.

As I write this, a remarkable example of a Southern Baptist pastor receiving the baptism of the Spirit many years after believing is described in an interview. It transformed his ministry.

The link is below.

Revival Radio TV: North Georgia Revival