There were three small incidents that occurred over the Christmas period that I would like to share with you. Christmas? Do you remember that?

The first was at the beginning of December when I had finished a course about the big story of the Bible with a group of churches outside Derby. Silly time to hold it of course, with cold, dark nights and Christmas looming. So there wasn’t a large attendance. It was a family affair, with daughter Anna adding thoughts on corporate prayer and wife Sue supplying delicious scones to bolster flagging attention at the half way mark. The significant moment came at the end of the final session when a number of people expressed how eye-opening it had been to see the Bible as a connected story of salvation and how it had created within them a desire to explore further. 

Then, in those lovely quiet days between Christmas and New Year I read some words that disquieted me:

Our judge meets us at every step of our way, with forgiveness on his lips and succour in his hands. He offers us these things while there is yet time. Every day opportunity shortens, our scope for learning our Redeemer’s love is narrowed by twenty-four hours, and we come nearer to the end of our journey when we shall fall into the hands of the living God, and touch the heart of the devouring fire.

Thirdly, on the first Sunday of 2026 I was preaching at our local (St Werburgh’s Derby) on the story of the Epiphany. Matthew tells us that when the Magi were ready to return to their own land, they were warned to avoid Jerusalem and King Herod’s murderous intentions so ‘they returned home by a different route.’ (Matt. 2.12)

I was suggesting, as far as I can remember, that each of us has the opportunity at the start of a New Year to return home by a different route, and indeed to return different people, having encountered the babe of Bethlehem. I found myself saying that one route I wanted to explore was to improve my fragile writing skills as a means of proclaiming Jesus as Lord.

Now these simple events in my rather ordinary life have come together in the following way. The words of that wonderful theologian, Austin Farrer, struck home and because my growing passion is to explore Scripture as the connected story of our salvation as well as to keep writing, a theme for the 2026 blogs emerged. So, here’s the plan.

Over the next 10 months (February to November) I want to divide the Bible into 10 large chunks, picking out the main events in God’s unbreakable purpose to redeem his lost world. A story that runs from Genesis to Revelation, from the garden of Eden to the holy city, from disobedience to reconciliation, from death to life.  And crucially, to find our place within that salvation story, to find, as Eugene Peterson says, ‘that we are not being led to see God in our stories but to see our stories in God’s. God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves.’  The chunks may prove to be more than bite sized and I may be running the risk of giving you indigestion, but I’m willing to risk it. If you stop reading, I shall never know. Three factors urge me on.

First, my observation is that many Christians claim to know and love the Bible, probably have multiple editions to hand, and can reference many well-known verses and stories, but are, shall we say, a trifle hazy about the details and how it all fits together.

Secondly in uncertain and troubling times we need to have clarity about the Faith, and our faith, because people need to know, and are actively searching for, what is true. Some solid ground on which to stand in earth shaking times.

Thirdly, whilst there are many, many books by proper authors who deal with this theme, this will be my personal take on it through the lens of having preached the Bible for 60 years. The Bible doesn’t address a nice, ordered world but one of suffering, injustice, and violence. Nor does it expound lofty principles and ideas and theories, but deals real people in real situations in all their glory and their shame. People like you and me!

So, this is an invitation to journey with me in this year. Who knows what it may hold for our troubled world, or what may be in store for each of us, but we do know that the Word of God will be a light to guide our path.

Here’s the first verse of an ancient hymn (Well not that ancient, written 160 years ago)

O Word of God incarnate,
O wisdom from on high,
O truth unchanged unchanging,
O light of our dark sky;
We praise Thee for the radiance
That from the hallowed page,
A lantern to our footsteps,
Shines on from age to age.

Sunday 23 November Malvern, Worcestershire

Morning service at a local church. Holy Communion with prayer for healing. The preacher was a retired clergyman. Mid-80’s with a wonderful combination of fragility and energy. He spoke of the power of remembering, and how that God remembers us, putting together lives that have been dis-membered through the toils and troubles we have faced.  Such re-assembling is an act of love. He quoted, from memory, George Herbert’s poem. ‘Love bade me welcome’.  I asked for prayer and was anointed with oil on behalf of a dear friend who is battling cancer.

Tuesday 25 November St Clements Horsley

A beautiful, ancient church in a group of five churches in Denby, on the edge of Derby. It was the third of four meetings I was leading with our daughter, Anna, exploring the big story of the bible with reflections on the importance of prayer. (They were happy enough to listen to me, but they loved Anna, which was just a bit irritating!) There weren’t many of us, about a dozen, but it was so good to learn together about how the bible is one connected story and about the comfort and challenge of a life of sustained prayer.

Thursday 26 November Allestree, Derby

A zoom meeting scheduled with two retired clergymen Gerald and John, one in Scotland the other in Liverpool, both in their 90’s, and both former curates with my father in Lancashire in the mid 1960’s!  90+ and meeting every weekday to say Morning Prayer and pray together. What an inspiration. Technical issues (now there’s a surprise) prevented me joining them, but I was with them in spirit and will try again to meet with them.

Saturday 29 November Carlisle Cathedral

We joined the congregation on line to watch the enthronement of the 68^th Bishop of Carlisle, Rob Saner-Haigh. There was much pomp and ceremony, as such occasions require, but then some wonderful music and rousing hymns as well. But best of all Bishop Rob climbed the pulpit steps and with disarming directness and passion told us all what the agenda was for the Diocese in the coming years. It was, he said, ‘to help people know and follow Jesus…because there was no one like Jesus who could bring hope and healing and renewal to broken lives. He comes with longing in his heart to lead back home all who are lost.’

As we listened our hearts were strangely warmed.

Sunday 30 November St Luke’s Loscoe

Another church in the Denby group where the congregation was made up of people from each of the churches. The purpose was to commission those who had offered themselves, after appropriate training, to lead occasional worship. I didn’t count, but I think there were about 20. The vision is that worship could be offered in every church in the group on every Sunday.

Monday 1 December St Werburgh’s Derby

Our local. At 11am on a wet Monday morning I discovered the Operations Manager and the Social Action leader parcelling up 100 ‘bags of kindness’ to be distributed over the coming days to people across the city. 

Our world is dis-membered, broken in so many ways, our society walks in the darkness that descends when God is forgotten, and our church in many places  marked and marred by division 

But, no matter. There is so much light in the darkness. In Malvern, in Denby, in Carlisle, in Derby, in Liverpool in Fort William the light is shining, the light of the Lord Jesus reflected through the love and faithfulness of his children. And no darkness can put it out. We never lose hope.

Hope! Yesterday was Advent Sunday. We are overwhelmed with hope because Jesus came in great humility to a world every bit as broken as ours, and will come again at the end of the Age in glorious majesty to renew the whole universe, and now comes to all who turn to him, day by day by day. We never lose hope!

Keep us, O Lord,
while we tarry on this earth,
in a serious seeking after you
and in an affectionate walking with you,
every day of our lives;
that when you come,
we may be found not hiding our talent,
nor serving the flesh,
nor yet asleep with our lamp unfurnished,
but waiting and longing for our Lord,
our glorious God for ever.  (Richard Baxter)

So, the 47^th President of the United States and his wife, and a small army of fellow travellers, have visited our ‘sceptered isle’ and, forty-eight hours later, left to a corporate sigh of relief that nothing embarrassing happened.

A good friend of mine who I suspect is a bit partial to Mr. Trump warned me against making judgements when not knowing the full facts, and I do take that point. However, there are a few things we can say about the President on good evidence. First, he is narcissistic to a remarkable degree. Praise him, and he positively glows. But the converse is true. Cross him and the glow instantly becomes a glower and it is time to run for cover. And then there is the issue of his unsettling unpredictability. Who knows what pronouncement a day may bring forth, and how it may or may not relate to earlier pronouncements on the same subject. Narcissism and unpredictability is a toxic mix, and Trump has it in spades.

As I watched the news of the visit, I longed to know what was going on in the minds of those taxed to welcome him as he made his progress from Stansted to the Ambassador’s home in Regents Park,  to Windsor Castle and finally to Chequers. What was in the mind of the King, who stives so hard for the well- being of the planet, as he walked into the banqueting hall alongside a man who thinks climate change is a hoax? And what was our beleaguered Prime Minister thinking as perhaps he looked back to that moment last February in the Oval Office when he reached into his pocket and with a dramatic flourish and a conspiratorial grin he handed over the ‘unprecedented’ invitation to a second state visit? And what about the thought processes of the Dean of Windsor in his splendid scarlet cassock as he graciously led the President and his wife to their seats in the chapel?

 We shall never know of course. But the questions raised by the visit linger, and one in particular: ‘How do you relate to, and do business with, a leader whose opinions and actions may be anathema to you, but whose power to shape the course of events is undeniable?’ So, for instance, in our own country we would really like to avoid crippling tariffs that the President has the power to apply. On a world stage, we ache to see the wicked violence being perpetrated by vicious leaders in Gaza and Ukraine curbed by American intervention. Watching the meeting of the UN General Assembly, it was so frustrating to see the empty seats where the American delegation were meant to be sitting. In all these areas, and many others the President holds most of the trump cards and we need his help.

More recently he has been straying, in the wake of bizarre statements made by his health secretary, Robert Kennedy, into dangerous medical territory. Autism can be cured?  Pregnant women need to stop taking Paracetamol. Really? It is all so alarming. And then, earlier this week there was his blistering speech at the United Nations in New York. No one escaped his censure.  European nations are going to hell, Britain is about to adopt Sharia law, global warming is the biggest con ever perpetrated, the President has ended 7 wars (but not in Gaza or Ukraine) and deserves the Nobel peace prize. Depending on your perspective this was, as one commentator said, either Trump unleashed or Trump unhinged. I know which I would go for! His performance was a joke, or at least it would have been if he did not hold the keys to unlock many of the intransigent situations we are all facing. So we watched with incredulity the ending to his speech as the European leaders applauded the man who had just told them that their countries were going to hell!

But back to our question. How are our leaders to relate to the President? You won’t be surprised to hear that I don’t know. But we must keep praying for those who have to find an answer whilst maintaining truth and integrity.

St Peter, writing to Christians scattered through Asia Minor early in the 60’s AD, urges them to submit to the authorities set over them (1 Pet. 2.13f.) as does Paul writing to the church in Rome (Romans 13.1) And it is arresting to note that they were writing when the Emperor was the godless, brutal Nero! (Just to be clear, I’m not wanting to equate Trump with Nero) Properly constituted authority is necessary for the right ordering of society, and as such it is instituted by, and under the control of God. It follows that Christians are obligated to obey legitimate rulers; a sustained attitude of being ‘agin the government’ is not an option, even in the current mood of prevailing cynicism about politicians. Even in the most abusive systems, the desire for justice remains fundamental and it is our Christian duty constantly to seek it out. But it is, of course, a bit more complex! Obedience to leaders must never be in the face of violation of God’s laws (Acts 4.19) There may be moments when active resistance is necessary (one thinks of Dietrich Bonhoeffer joining the plot to assassinate Hitler in 1942) but more often wise and godly living in the face of oppression is the most revolutionary way. Our God does reign, he is in control, his purposes will not be finally thwarted and he will bring all people to account.

But where does that leave you and me in our day by day lives? I sometimes worry that these little blogs tend to say the same thing month in month out: a description of the woes of our world, followed by an exhortation to trust God! Maybe this is just an old man repeating himself. And yet the call surely is to keep coming back, again and again, to the sovereign will of God, and to go on developing a passionate desire to follow that will by doing what is right and true in my own back yard.

We live with daily gratitude for what God has done for us, and for the world, in the death and resurrection of Christ pour Lord. We lift high the cross of Jesus, the symbol that love will triumph over evil, and will one day finally be seen to triumph. We offer that love in our daily dealings with those we meet, and in our prayers for those who have authority over us. We express our unbounded joy in the faithfulness of Jesus and the promise of the hope stored up for us in heaven. I love to read the pieces that come to me across the Atlantic from the heart and pen of the Bishop of Minnesota, Bishop Craig.  Writing about a recent school shooting he says that we cannot force the fulness of God’s reign into being, but we can point to what that reign looks like in each situation and we must ‘go on shouting our defiant Allelulias into the darkness.’

May our Lord Jesus give to each of us, love in our eyes, hope in our hearts, courage in our wills and joy on our faces as we keep on keeping on in his name.

Lord Jesus, divine Son and eternal priest,
inspire us with the confidence of your final conquest of evil,
and grant that daily on our way
we may drink of the brook of your eternal life
and so find courage against all adversities;
for your mercy’s sake

ps. If I had any influence on the strategy of Diocesan Bishops I would urge them to write a weekly passionate blog to their clergy in which they reflect on these turbulent times and encourage those over who they have pastoral care to keep th Faith. (No chance, Bracewell. You are only ecclesiastical pond life)

So, I’m sitting in the lovely Derbyshire town of Bakewell in a coffee shop -where else – with a fellow retired clergyman. Bob has had a far more illustrious ‘career’ in the Church than me, but in retirement we are both still working, he giving advice to the Church of England nationally, me pootling around on the local scene. Over lunch these two old codgers  were reflecting on the ‘ages’ through which they had lived.

First, the age of austerity. Growing up in post war Britain, things were a bit spartan I seem to remember. My father was a clergyman and  we lived in rambling old vicarages where in winter the rooms were like ice boxes, the cold only alleviated slightly by a central, spluttering coal fire around which the whole family crowded. At times, the draught coming under the door would cause the central piece of carpet to levitate. My mother’s abiding dream, never realised until well into her old age, was to have a ‘fitted carpet.’

So to the sixties, and the dawn of the age of affluence. Now it was fitted everything: carpets, gas fires, bedroom furniture, fridges (no more stone slabs in the outhouse) washing machines (in our case a tiny twin tub). And a TV set that had colour, a car that wasn’t black, and didn’t have running boards and trafficators and even occasional holidays abroad, as we turned our backs on our beloved Blackpool and headed for Spain. These of course were only the first green shoots, and over the next 50 years our standard of living soared beyond my parent’s wildest dreams. Until 2008 and the financial crash!

Welcome to the age of anxiety. The transition was gradual. For a few people anxiety struck overnight with unimagined financial loss, but for the majority it was a creeping realisation that we couldn’t go on having it so good for ever. The amenities, the affluence, the freedoms, the comforts came with a price tag. So we can still jet across the world for exotic holidays, but the delight is undermined by guilt as extreme weather conditions signal a growing crisis, to which our holiday is adding fuel!

But within this age of anxiety, something else is stirring, something tiny and fragile but hope- filled. One day it may grow into a new age, the age of awareness or wisdom, or hope or renewal. Time will tell.  The bridge into this new age is the mood of longing.  A longing driven largely, I believe, by the widespread failure of our rampantly secular age, turbo charged by the Pandemic, to deliver any sense of overarching meaning, any grand story that makes sense of our fragmented lives. This generation, and probably the one before it, has been driven into the arms of a merciless philosophy of individualism, and many young people living with this heavy load are in turmoil and despair.  On the one hand, encouraged to be what they want to be, and on the other hand urged through social media to conform to what their contemporaries expect them to be. It is a nightmare to which the expanding mental health crisis bears witness. And these personal anxieties are played out against a much bigger background of political turmoil, economic uncertainty, global warfare and climate change.

An age of awareness, which is also a kairos moment of opportunity. Enter the Church! Philip Larkin’s perceptive poem. ‘Church Going’ speaks of the church as

‘This serious house on serious earth,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
And, recognised, are robed as destinies
And that much never can be obsolete
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious…’

Larkin was an atheist, but with the poignancy that often characterises those who write about a faith they profess to deny, he catches the sense of longing and the hunger for something better.

So, yes- enter, the Church! Not the Institution which appears to be having some sort of mental breakdown, but the local church which remains, we dare to believe, the hope of the world. The local church is the guardian of the fragile, life-giving truth, embedded in the Bible, of a God who created the world in love, has redeemed it through the sacrifice of Jesus, and will one day consummate it with joy when ‘the kingdoms of this world will become the Kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever.’ Here surely is solid ground and soaring hope for all who will turn and believe. Here, surely, is a narrative to live by. The recent synod of the Church of England talked about ‘cuts in stipendiary posts, clergy stress, low morale, collapse in vocations, all adding up to an existential threat to the life of the Church. Well, if the CofE doesn’t soon pull up its corporate socks, that may well be the case, but fortunately Jesus said ‘I will build my church.’

I was talking very recently, to a vicar who oversees three churches in rural Derbyshire, and I asked her how things were going. Not unexpectedly, she told me that it was hard, but then she smiled and started to tell me two stories. The first was of a child of 6 who had asked to be baptised. Her mother explained that she had been passionate about Jesus for as long as she could remember, always wanting bible stories as bedtime reading and now they were beginning to pray together.  Wisely, the vicar said she would spend time with mother and daughter together so that together they might go through the door of baptism into the Faith of Christ and the fellowship of God’s people. The second story was of a man aged 28 who had appeared one Sunday morning in church and who, many weeks later was still attending and growing in faith and understanding. He had attended an event in the Cathedral when he was a child and had been given a bible which had been consigned to the back of a drawer, until the day when his grandmother. To whom he had been very close, died. In his sadness he dug out the bible and decided to explore the local church. Again, wisely, the vicar had said to him that once he felt secure in his faith, he might want to move on to join a larger and younger congregation. ‘Why would I do that?’ he replied. ‘Here in this place and among these people, I have found welcome and new hope. Why would I leave them?’

Recent research from the Bible Society suggests that there is a significant upward trend in church going, especially among younger people, aged 18-24. It is happening mainly in the Pentecostal churches and in larger city centre Anglican churches and in the Roman Catholic church, which is wonderful news. But when it puts in an appearance in a small, elderly, rural community of Christians, it really is time to sit up and take notice.

So we will go to our local church next Sunday expecting to meet the living God, praying for the Holy Spirit to descend on those who lead and preach, believing that there is a quiet renewal underway, and searching the pews for anyone who appears just to have turned up out of the blue so that we can offer them a gentle and honest welcome. Hopefully, over a cup of quality coffee! (Humanly speaking the renewal of the church -in my humble opinion- might hang on the banishment of instant coffee and rich tea biscuits to be replaced by something a little more exotic. In this respect, the Church is still in the age of austerity) So, one by one, local church by local church person to person, the quiet renewal of the Church will take shape and God will visit us again with his salvation.

We must take heart in this emerging age of awareness and opportunity. GK Chesterton once said that ‘on five occasions in history, the Church has gone to the dogs, but on each occasion, it was the dogs that died.’ Well, if we are entering a sixth age I wouldn’t put any money on the dogs.

Finally – finally (apologies for the length) I think I can hear someone saying, ‘What about the Christian calendar we are supposed to be following?’

Well, I haven’t forgotten. The calendar invites us in July (on the 14^th) to remember John Keble.  Keble was a scholar, poet and priest. He was Professor of poetry at Oxford and then, for 30 years, vicar of a rural parish in Hampshire. In 1833 he preached the Assize sermon in Oxford. It was entitled, ‘National Apostacy’ and was a passionate calling to the nation to return to God, and a chastising of the Church for being an institution of society rather than a prophetic voice. That sounds so familiar. It caused a sensation and marked the start of a religious renewal known as the Tractarian movement. So much of this speaks into our current situation. ‘Thank you, John Keble.’ Here, finally and at no extra cost, is one of his lovely hymns

Blest are the pure in heart,
For they shall see our God;
The secret of the Lord is theirs,
Their soul is Christ’s abode.

The Lord who left the heavens
Our life and peace to bring,
To dwell in lowliness with men
Their pattern and their King

Still to the lowly soul
He does himself impart,
And for his dwelling and his throne
Chooseth the pure in heart.

Lord, we thy presence seek,
May ours this blessing be;
Give us a pure and lowly heart,
A temple meet for thee.