James's Weblog

In November and December 2007, I preached a series of 3 sermons on Luke chapter 21. You can read the transcripts on this site, should you wish to.

Psalm 88 has been a huge comfort to me over the years, as I know it has to many other Christians. There is something paradoxically comforting in the presence of such a black Psalm in the Psalter. A Psalm that truly records life as we feel and experience it, without embarrasment, without contradition to the other Psalms that step back to see life from God’s perspective.

There is, of course, much debate over the title.

“A Song. A Psalm of the Sons of Korah. To the Choirmaster: According to Mahalath Leannoth. A Maskil of Heman the Ezrahite.”

Following on from my posts on reading and learning the Bible, by way of a footnote I offer some statistics.

Let’s suppose you want to set out to read / learn a book / some books of the Bible. How big an undertaking are you taking on?

Here are the books of the Bible, together with how long they are:

Happy New Year, everybody!

May I take this opportunity to present to you a new website, Edible Words.

Neil Robbie and I have spent a year or so working on this. It’s not taken a year because it has been an enormous project – more because we’ve been fitting it into the time we can carve out from our other commitments. It is now at the stage where we think it is ready to roll out, go live, launch etc.

Following on from the post from two days ago, another resolution I find myself making frequently is to pray more widely. It’s all too easy for one’s prayer life to become focussed in on fewer and fewer concerns, at least that is what I find.

“But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.” (Psalm 1:2)

“The law of God is in his heart; his steps do not slip.” (Psalm 37:31)

“I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.” (Psalm 119:11)

I’m sure you end up making the same resolutions every year.

One that I make frequently is to read more of the Bible. New year is a good time to make that resolution, because if it becomes your aim to read the whole Bible in a year (or two years, or four), then January 1st is as good a day as any to begin.

Thanks, Neil Robbie, for joining the world of bloggers, even if you only post your starter post. A sobering, but fantastically helpful, quotation from Thomas Boston on how to tell when our mourning for sin might be spurious rather than real and heart-felt.

I look forward to reading more of Neil’s jottings.

(The Book of the Twelve is another name for the “Minor Prophets”, Hosea – Malachi).

Peter Leithart has an illuminating post on the unity of these 12 books entitled Book of the Twelve.

Doing some work on the birth narrative in Matthew at the moment, and enjoying the recently published commentary on Matthew by R T France.

He has a brilliant (if long) paragraph arguing that Matthew was not a poor Old Testament handler at all, but knew exactly what he was doing. So brilliant, it’s worth quoting in full (from page 45)