marriage
Ready: Developing Affections in an Adulterous World
“Listen! My beloved!
Look! Here he comes,
leaping across the mountains,
bounding over the hills.”
He’s leaping and bounding towards us. He’s coming over the horizon. He’s walking up the road. He’ll be here any moment. What do you do? Tidy the house? Hide?
Run out to meet him. And he says: Arise, come with me… (more…)
Into the Pray – Marriage
If you’ve read the other 5 posts in this blog series, you’ll know that it’s a series that’s been born out of a deep distress with how a lot of church (fundamentally) functions today compared with how we see the Church (fundamentally) functioning in the Bible. It is also a blog series that’s been born out of a deep love for the church and a longing for her to be all that she is meant to be.
Before I write the final post in the series next week, I wanted to flag up a uniquely distressing aspect of the ‘schmorgers board’ of church life that I referred to in one of the earlier posts a few weeks ago. (more…)
For If You’re Married, Or Would Like To Be
Mairi and I have been married for just over three years now so we are by no means marriage experts. Month by month, year by year, we’re working lots of things out as we grow in love, learning to trust Jesus more and more and, rather than trying to figure everything out on our own, continue surrendering to Him as the One Who makes all of this work in the first place!
Back in 2013 in the run-up to getting married, one of the pieces of advice we heard time and time again was that the first year of married life would be the hardest. I understood what the advice was about – i.e. preparing us for the reality of living together and doing life well every day as a couple, rather than only dating and being engaged – but the advice also bugged me because it sounded a lot like the joy and wonder, mystery and celebration of marriage was being reduced to degrees of ‘hardness’ – a fait accompli that we needed to accept that this excitement and joy that we were experiencing was quickly going to be smashed to smithereens by the hard slog that married life actually was.
I didn’t buy that for our marriage and I really hope you don’t either. (more…)
Canonically
In 2008 I graduated from St.Andrews University with a slightly random degree in Biblical Studies and French. I had spent four years studying several different books of the Bible including their history, authorship, historical and cultural contexts and linguistic challenges that exist with them. (more…)
We Are Gomer
This is the seventh and final post that I’m going to do on the book of Hosea. But seventh in the series though it may be, I want to treat it as though it is the first and the last.
Layered over the timeless theology of this minor Prophet’s book, and this series, has been a certain amount of poetic thought. I hope it’s been clear; I hope it’s been helpful.
But, in just a few paragraphs, what is the message of Hosea? (more…)
Hewn Husband: “Come back!”
It’s impossible to journey through the book of Hosea in a casual way. You would never slip into your favourite flip flops to start an ascent of Arthur’s Seat and neither can we receive from this book what we’re meant to receive without the serious footwear of meditation and prayer.
There are many lows in this book. Imagine the lows from Hosea’s perspective as he discovers that his wife, Gomer, has been unfaithful to him yet again. Imagine his heart sickness.
But God has also been on display as the One moving behind the scenes and also the One moving the scenes He’s behind. He’s in the grandeur and He’s in the infinitesimal.
