A word for the one whose world has just fallen in

The phone rings. The police are at the door. The hospital calls in the night. Someone you love is gone.

And it feels like the ground has given way.

If that is where you are, this is for you. I am not here to tidy it up. I am not here to give you a speech. I just want to sit with you and open the Word of God.

Answering a Popular New Argument with All of Scripture

A video by the late Dr Alan Cairns first pushed me to write on this. In March 2025 I set down a short answer: can a woman be a pastor in the New Testament church? Biblically, no. That is still my stand. This piece is the longer follow-up, because a new kind of argument is doing the rounds, and it sounds careful, humble, and Bible-loving and people are falling for it.

When the Mountains Are Carried into the Midst of the Sea

A call to prayer for Nepal

I walk the hills of Scotland and think of Nepal. This week the Himalayan wall that draws a walker’s heart has been in the news for a far heavier reason.

Well, folks, Dolly Parton went home just the other day, on Tuesday, the 25th of August 2026. She was eighty years old. A lot of us grew up with her songs in the house; some were just country songs, you know. But some were hymns and gospel songs that pointed people to Jesus. And the Lord used even that.