On this Christmas Day, I sit with a too‑hot mug and the smell of pine and sprouts, reflecting on how our fast, clever world meets the fragile story of a baby in a manger. I ponder John’s words about the light that still shines in the darkness, even as wars rage and loneliness deepens. I explore how technology connects us but cannot rock a crying child or mend a broken relationship, and why it matters that God chose ordinary, vulnerable human flesh. I end by praying for Gaza, Ukraine, the lonely and the overworked, and by wondering how tiny, tender acts might let the Word become flesh again through us.

In this episode, I sit with the tension of a noisy world where headlines shout of violence while quieter stories of goodness slip by almost unnoticed. I reflect on Malachi’s image of God as a careful refiner, Luke’s tender scene of Elizabeth and Zechariah naming John, and the meaning of “God is gracious” in a bruised but still breathing world. I weave in stories of a blind pitmaster in Dallas, a Secret Santa in Idaho, and communities in India restoring hundreds of lakes, to explore how holy discomfort and restored tenderness can make our hearts able to hold water again. I end in prayer, asking to be gently shown the next small step on God’s path.

In this episode, I sit with the jarring contrast of a news bulletin: the death of a nine‑year‑old girl alongside a story of derelict land in Chicago being turned into flower farms. I reflect on Zephaniah’s fierce warning and tender promise, and on Jesus’ parable of the two sons who say very different things and yet reveal themselves by what they actually do. I share a memory of Arthur, an old miner who came to chapel in dusty boots, and explore how real repentance looks like small, embodied yeses. I end by inviting you to notice just one place today where you might quietly, concretely turn up.

Today I sit at the kitchen table with the kettle on, watching a sky that can’t decide between bright or brooding, and thinking about how “partly cloudy” fits both our weather and our world. With flu wards under strain and budgets tightening again, I turn to Mary’s hurried visit to Elizabeth and the quiet miracle that happens in an ordinary doorway. I reflect on Immanuel, God-with-us, showing up in small acts of brother-and-sister kindness: in hospitals, supermarkets, and at the kitchen table. I remember my mother’s instinct to put the kettle on whenever there was a “knock in the wind”, and I wonder how each of us might gently warm one small corner of the world today.

In this episode, I invite you in from a grey, overcast day at the cottage and reflect on how easily we can feel small, lost, or forgotten amid heavy headlines and personal regrets. A quiet news story about a truck driver who’s driven five million accident‑free miles becomes a doorway into today’s scriptures about God as a gentle shepherd who notices the one who’s wandered off. I share a memory of getting lost on the hills above the village and the farmer who walked me back to the gate, and explore how God’s steady, searching love calls us to notice those around us who seem “a bit turned around” and walk them home, a few steps at a time.

In this Advent episode, I invite you into a quiet, in‑between Sunday where Isaiah’s peaceable kingdom meets John the Baptist’s sharp call to change. I explore the “inner menagerie” of wolves and lambs in our own hearts, and what it really means to repent—not by grovelling, but by turning around and letting our apologies grow visible fruit. We look at tiny, ordinary choices: a returned wallet in a shop queue, a retired officer running a mobile laundry, the decision not to send a sharp email. Together, we listen for the God of perseverance and encouragement, and ask where, today, we might let the lamb lead instead of the wolf.

In this Advent episode, I sit with the quiet tug of the new Church year and the gentle witness of St Andrew, the apostle who simply said, “Come and see.” From Isaiah’s vision of swords turned into ploughshares to a child sharing a candle from her Advent wreath, I reflect on what it means to stay awake in a world that’s both aching and beautiful. I talk about ecological responsibility as a spiritual conversion of tenderness, the call to notice who is hurting nearby, and how God so often comes to us in small, ordinary acts of shared light, presence, and hope.

This episode began with an old memory that surfaced while I was making breakfast. I found myself back on a cliff edge as a child, half in sunlight and half in shadow, standing beside my father as the weather argued with itself. That strange borderland between brightness and storm set the tone for everything else I read and prayed through today.