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‘Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David.’ (2 Timothy 2:8). This month we remember the story of St George defeating the dragon. Although this is the stuff of legend, we face our own dragons today. We are engaged in a spiritual battle against the powers of sin, Satan and death. In this...

This month starts with Easter, which is a lovely thought. Whatever else, Easter speaks of new life, of fresh starts and the return of hope. The whole traditional story is about darkness defeated by a light which can never be extinguished. That’s why, in our hemisphere, Easter seems to fit in well with the changing...

“For the message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18) Jesus died on a Cross.  So what?  That is the reaction of most people today.  They have seen crucifixes, and vaguely know the story of His...

Easter is the most joyful day of the year for Christians.  Christ has died for our sins. We are forgiven.   Christ has risen!  We are redeemed!   We can look forward to an eternity in His joy! Hallelujah! The Good News of Jesus Christ is a message so simple that you can explain it to someone...

How do you make sense of the Resurrection?  Dead men don’t rise, so why believe that this particular dead man did rise? At the end of St Luke’s Gospel we read that: “they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement” (Luke 24.4).  This is highly significant.  The Gospels do not show us...

This beautiful event (Luke 1:26-38) took place in Nazareth, when Mary is already betrothed to Joseph. The Archangel Gabriel comes to Mary, greets her as highly favoured, tells her not to be afraid, that she will bear a son Jesus, and that her elderly cousin Elizabeth is already pregnant (with John the Baptist). The church...

Zeno of Verona (d. 371) should be the patron saint of all ministers who suspect that the more things change, the more they remain the same. For instance:  ethnic diversity…church-planting… teaching…. concern for the poor… women’s ministry in the church… sound like modern-day Christian concerns?   Not a bit of it – this was the life...

In the month of Christ’s ultimate sacrifice of Himself for us, the martyrdoms of Carpus, Papylus and Agathonice are well worth remembering.  What they said as they died could be said by the many thousands of Christians who are facing persecution all over the world today. Carpus, Papylus and Agathonice lived in Pergamum (Asia Minor)...

Anselm is a good saint to remember next time someone asks you to prove that there is a God.  His brilliant and original Proslogion, written 1077-8, sets out the ‘ontological’ proof for God’s existence.  Nearly ten centuries later, it is still studied by theological students as one of the great philosophical ‘proofs’ of God’s existence....

It’s perhaps typical of the English that they should have a patron saint who isn’t English, about whom next to nothing is known for sure, and who may not have existed at all. That didn’t stop him being patriotically invoked in many battles, notably at Agincourt and in the Crusades, and of course it is...

Have you seen the film How to Train your Dragon? It’s set in a Viking village under attack from dragons, who steal livestock and burn down houses. Hiccup, the village Chief’s son, invents a machine to capture dragons. However, when he catches one of the most dangerous dragons, he cannot kill it, when he sees...

The Saint of an English Army before he was Patron Saint of England, St George may have been a soldier, but he was no Englishman.  He was an officer in the Roman army under Diocletian, who refused to abandon his faith during the Terror, and was martyred at Lydda in Palestine about the year 300...