Blogs

1120 of 226 items

A day of reflection

by Andy Robinson

One year on. It is a year to the day since the Prime Minister told us that we must stay at home. We still live under the same command. In the meantime the equivalent of the non-student population of Oxford has died of coronavirus in the UK. At noon the nation will fall silent to […]

Lockdown Lessons- “This is not good”

by Andy Robinson

Most of the blogs I’ve written this year have tried to be positive. Many in the last few weeks have been about how to cultivate an inner life of thanksgiving in the midst of the hardest times. But I fear I have been a touch unbalanced- there are times you have to acknowledge that this […]

Lessons in lockdown: Thanksgiving

by Andy Robinson

Let me be honest- I am decidedely fed up of lockdown. The way to get me muttering under my breath (or sometimes out loud) at the moment is to get somebody on TV telling us how essential it is to prolong restrictions even beyond the time when the vulnerable have been vaccinated. Lockdown is dehumanizing […]

Jesus lover of my soul

by Andy Robinson

In my last couple of posts I have suggested that lockdown is a time for us to see the importance of the inner life. In our sermon series in January we considered Jesus’ invitation to come to Him- and I know a number were struck by the image of drinking deeply of Jesus from John […]

Singing in Lockdown

by Andy Robinson

On September 17th 1939 Martyn Lloyd-Jones- two weeks after war was announced- preached on Acts 16:25. Paul and Silas have been flogged and imprisoned in Philippi. And yet we read- “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.” Lloyd-Jones wrote to his wife […]

Lessons from the war

by Andy Robinson

Over the weekend I was reading Iain Murray’s biography of the great 20th century preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Now that wasn’t just because there wasn’t a great deal else to do! Rather I wanted to focus on this question- how did his church, Westminster Chapel in London, cope with the war? After all, there may be […]

The year of the video

by Andy Robinson

I have been very aware that the blog part of the website has looked rather dormant since September. That’s largely because 2020 has become, amongst other more important things, the year of the video. So let me flag up various resources over on our YouTube channel. In the autumn a number of our small fellowship […]

Through darkness into light

by Andy Robinson

I spent a fair chunk of February and early March announcing that disaster was on the way. This wasn’t special insight- the pandemic was as much of a suprise to me as the next person. But in the early part of the year as a church we considered the first few chapters of Jeremiah- looking […]

Abide with me

by Andy Robinson

A couple of Saturday afternoons ago I sat down to watch the F.A.Cup Final. I’m not entirely sure why- given that it was between Arsenal and Chelsea I wanted both teams to lose. But shortly before the match that strange old tradition took place- the singing of Abide with Me. Except this year there was […]

Rejoice with those who rejoice…

by Andy Robinson

A couple of weeks ago I was able to stay with my parents. Because I live on my own, the Government’s support bubble system kicked in and I was allowed to visit them. As I did so, I was very conscious of those who were not in the same position. At that point those living […]