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The song “North London Forever” is making me tear up today. Every time I hear it on social media, I start to lose it a little bit. In actuality, “North London Forever” is the chorus from a Louis Dunford song called “The Angel”, a beautiful song that is essentially a love letter to Islington and North London. Dunford walks through real places and people from his upbringing, portraying both the hardship and the warmth of the community. The chorus of the song is massively popul

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor"Luke 4:18-19 If the poor, the women and the dispossessed sat at the tables where theological decisions are made, there would be a different set of sins.Sister Joan Chittister At the very beginning of his ministry, Jesus is i

Praise our God, all peoples, let the sound of his praise be heard; he has preserved our lives and kept our feet from slipping. Psalm 66:8-9 There is an ongoing debate among sociologists and psychologists about generational trauma—as if it were a contest over whether the Silent Generation endured more than Gen Z, or Baby Boomers more than Millennials. The Silent Generation experienced the Cold War and geopolitical anxiety. Boomers faced Vietnam, assassinations, and d

Then Gideon said to God, “Do not be angry with me. Let me make just one more request. Allow me one more test with the fleece, but this time make the fleece dry and let the ground be covered with dew.” That night God did so. Only the fleece was dry; all the ground was covered with dew. – Judges 6:39-40 "The opposite of faith is not doubt -- it is certainty." - Anne Lamott In Judges 6, we meet Gideon at a moment of deep uncertainty. God has already called him to deliver Isra

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? – Psalm 22:1; Matthew 27:46; and Mark 15:34 From the hardwood of the cross, Jesus recites the first line from Psalm 22: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?At the most immediate level, Jesus expresses profound human suffering. It’s abandonment, pain, and isolation. He experiences the depths of human despair, not just physical agony but spiritual desolat

Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. – Psalm 42:11 Does your soul ever feel ‘flat’? Do you feel like going to worship is just going through the motions? Does it seem like prayers evaporate before they even reach the ceiling? Do you long for a time when you felt close to God, but now, not so much? Spiritual dryness can feel unsettling. And we naturally wonder: Have I done somethi

For Christ himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. – Ephesians 2:14-16 We live in fractious and divisive times. Political polarization between progressives and conserv