Viewing all items in Resource Category: Editorial

A friend of mine was diagnosed recently with breast cancer. A bright, vivacious lady in her fifties, she took the devastating diagnosis really well, but when the time came for her mastectomy, she understandably began to feel very nervous. Sitting with her husband in the hospital cubicle awaiting the operation she experienced for the first...

All in the month of December How Silent Night first began – 200 years ago Peaceful Praise on a silent night The Conversion of Ebenezer Scrooge How A Christmas Carol first began – 175 years ago The legacy of Miss Potter The podcast phenomenon Expensive Christmas cracker The great ‘Takeaway’ take-over  ** Editor:  We continue...

One in five people over the age of 70 in the UK eat all of their main meals alone.  This can have a detrimental effect on their health, as they tend to skip meals, or eat erratically. The survey was carried out by the Royal Voluntary Service (RVS), one of Britain’s largest volunteering charities.  Now...

Everyone knows that it was on the feast of Stephen that ‘good king Wenceslas looked on’.  After all, it’s in a Christmas carol – but why? There’s nothing about Christmas in it: a splendid young page who rustled up some flesh, wine and logs, an old man out in the snow (’deep and crisp and...

by Sean Stillman, SPCK, £11.99 ‘Zac’s Place’ is a church in Swansea. It is a small chaotic community of Jesus followers where the most fragile of life’s walking wounded try to work out their faith, because they quite simply wouldn’t fit anywhere else. It’s also the spiritual home for the local chapter of the motorcycle...

Thoughts on the Incarnation The Son came out from the Father to help us to come out from the world; He descended to us to enable us to ascend to Him.  Anthony of Padua Christ became what we are that He might make us what He is.  Athanasius I hope your Christmas has had a...

We all like a good story. When God wanted to grab our attention, He gave us a book of stories. The Bible is full of God’s encounters with people.  At Christmas, we remember the story of Jesus born in Bethlehem. But this story begins back in Genesis and as we go through the Old Testament...

It was 200 years ago, on 24th December 1818 that the popular Christmas carol ‘Silent Night’ was performed for the first time, at midnight mass at a parish church in Oberndorf bei Salzburg, Austria. It had been written just a few hours earlier by teacher and church organist Franz Xaver Gruber, to lyrics by priest...

After Christmas, when you begin to think about the New Year, who are you planning to go on holiday with in 2019? It seems that more of us are opting for solo holidays, in order to get away from everyone.  In the past seven years, the proportion of people going on holiday on their own...

One of the most popular Christmas carols, Silent Night, was performed for the first time 200 years ago this month, on 24th December 1818, at midnight mass at a parish church in Oberndorf, near Salzburg, Austria. The carol was originally a poem, written in six verses by priest Joseph Mohr two years earlier. Because the...

by Jessica Jess Komanapalli, Authentic, £9.99 This autumn saw the 25th anniversary of the outbreak of the Burundian civil war. This is one man’s amazing story of how God protected and provided for him in the midst of the Burundian civil war and brought him to a place of grace, forgiveness and restoration. Theodore Mbazumutima...

If you are taking pictures of yourself while out and about this Christmas season, please be careful where you take them.  Bizarrely, more than 250 people have died that way in the past eight years. Most selfie-related deaths were of young men, aged on average about 23.  Now the US National Library of Medicine is...