Restless Wonderer

One of the unusual things about preaching in various different churches is that I find myself having to preach under a title and on a passage I didn’t choose. Sometimes when I begin my preparation, I get a wobble of thinking there won’t be anything helpful for me to draw out of this obscure story or lesser-known psalm. I really must stop that, though, as invariably when I get started in earnest I find more in there than I can fit into a single sermon. That’s certainly the case with Psalm 111, which is my assigned passage for this coming Sunday in Belfast Chinese Christian Church. I still have the challenge of working out how to preach by translation into Mandarin (morning) and Cantonese (afternoon) but I’m not short of material and I’m feeling challenged by the passage myself, which is always the best place to preach from. Psalm 111 is an acrostic poem, meaning that each line begins with a sequential letter of the Hebrew alphabet (already a challenge to explain in a non-alphabetic la...

I have a confession to make - actually three confessions!  Firstly, I am a lapsed numismatist.  Before you dig out your dictionary of theology or start worrying about what heresy I've become embroiled in (this time?), 'numismatist' is the term for a coin collector (quite possibly you knew that already).  My interest in coins began when I found a tray of assorted foreign and old coins in my dad's garage (which had enough hidden recesses to hide various long-lost artefacts - the ark of the covenant, Shergar in a horsebox and Elvis Presley in a suspended animation pod could all be there waiting to be unearthed).  I understand that those coins were collected by my maternal grandfather when he walked the streets of Belfast as an insurance agent, receiving payments door-to-door.  I was fascinated with these items of living history.  I bought coin albums, sorted out my small collection and even acquired a few additional specimens (family holidays in England i...