Before getting stuck into the meat of what Kingdom living is all about Jesus does something profoundly loving: he affirms the very people he calls into this new lifestyle. The demands of that life will be great. Maintaining those choices will not be easy. And so before going into the detail Jesus tells his hearers that the Kingdom is for people just like them. If they are broken, if they are small, if they are do...

One of the most powerful criticisms of Christians in the West today is that we seem no different to anyone else living in society. Our values, lifestyle, choices are pretty much the same as those who have no faith or a different faith. ‘You’re no better than the rest of us,’ is a common refrain. Is it true? Take a few seconds to think about that before reading on.

If we followed Jesus and his teachings the...

Blogging through Mark’s gospel took me 60 posts over some 18 months. When I have time (or rather, when I make time) I will gather all those posts together and see whether they make any sense as a whole, for I wrote them post by individual post – in micro rather than macro. But the theme I was trying to draw out of each passage was that of the emerging Kingdom of God in and through the life of Jesus.

The two ...