Come and take a walk with me
June 30 2015 Emma Pritchard was an Ecumenical Accompanier serving with Group 56 in the West Bank. She wrote this song based on her own experiences and those of her team, and she sang it as a solo in the handover service in St Andrew’s Scots Memorial Church on Monday, June 15. Come and Take …
Thank you Jesus
May 28 2015 Driving between Jerusalem and Tiberias through the Jordan valley in my church car – something I’ll be doing more often this summer, now that my colleague Colin Johnston has left St Andrew’s, Galilee – I play CDs to keep me focused. One of these is a praise band album gifted to me …
Not strangers but pilgrims
May 19 2015 Vraiment, cela peut paraître bizarre, mais j’ai entendu dire que le plus long des pèlerinages est celui qui vous emmène… « depuis le cerveau… jusqu’au cœur ! » [1] Ten years ago, my Savoyard friend Pierre Angleys set out from his home in Veigy-Foncenex, just across the border from Geneva, to walk 1,896 km to …
In memoriam
May 15 2015On Tuesday this week, I presented the following report at the AGM of the Friends of St Andrew’s, Jerusalem, in St Cuthbert’s Church, Lothian Road, Edinburgh.[1] Friends of St Andrew’s AGM Minister’s report, April 16 2015 Kiss me, Hardy? Well, perhaps not. One of the first events I attended since arriving in Jerusalem …
On a very fertile hill
May 11 2015 At the end of April, I caught a train from Edinburgh to Forres to visit congregations in the Presbytery of Moray and to speak to the presbytery on May 5 – my wife Vivien’s birthday, as it happens. Below is the sermon I preached in St Laurence Church, Forres, on May 3. …
States of Palestine
March 30 2015 I got off the plane in Ben Gurion last September to begin a new life as minister of St Andrew’s Scots Memorial Church, Jerusalem. With characteristic Irish insouciance, I planned to spend the first month settling in before getting on with the job. Now I realize I’ll still be settling in when …
A hand and a name
January 29 2015 I first visited Jerusalem in March 1992. I’d just become convener of the Middle East and North Africa committee of the Board of World Mission and Unity, not long before the Kirk divided the board – an irony that seemed lost on most people – and as a reward I had been …
A hand and a name
January 29 2015 I first visited Jerusalem in March 1992. I’d just become convener of the Middle East and North Africa committee of the Board of World Mission and Unity, not long before the Kirk divided the board – an irony that seemed lost on most people – and as a reward I had been …
What is the point of interfaith dialogue?
January 21 2015 These are the remarks I made at a Christian-Jewish dialogue-in-the-making in Jerusalem this week. Turned out to be somewhat tangential to our discussion, but I share them with you anyway. What is the point of interfaith dialogue? Over breakfast this morning, my wife Vivien gave me a one-sentence answer: “We are all …
Who´s that knocking on my window?
Christmas Day, December 25 2014 Isaiah 52.7-10; Psalm 98; Hebrews 1.1-12; John 1.1-14 St Andrew’s Scots Memorial Church, Jerusalem How are we to understand ourselves and our world? What story can we tell to make sense of it all? Well, there is, to begin with, the secular story we tell ourselves, using the sciences and …