Seven up…
1) How To Have a Gentle Answer – Always enjoy reading Scott Sauls – and this is timely.
2) 50 Countries Affected by Covid-19 Sing Amazing Grace – It’s always moving to hear Christians from different countries and languages expressing our unity in Christ. Thanks to my father-in-law for sending me this. I think he and my mother-in-law are actually having a secret competition as to who can send me the most links that I actually share here over the course of a year… what he doesn’t know is that my mother-in-law bribes me with M&S Yum Yums…
3) 10 Thoughts on Evangelism in Lockdown – Jeremy Marshall is always worth listening to on sharing our faith, because he just does it – and so creatively and ‘outside-the-box’ too.
4) 5 Bad Morning Habits You Should Quit Right Away – Yeah, so a lot of (simple) wisdom here! Hadn’t come across this site before, but looks great.
5) The Habit Podcast – If you’re a Christian and you enjoy books, then I think you’ll enjoy the Habit Podcast. I’m particularly looking forward to listening along to Michael Ward on Narnia, Karen Swallow Prior and Leif Enger.
6) A Thinking Person’s Checklist by Alan Jacobs – This is very interesting. When it comes to thinking, genuine discussion & debate, or understanding each other, I don’t think many of us would say we’re exactly rolling in an abundance of them in 2020. So this a helpful and perceptive ‘checklist’.
7) Until This Shadow Gives Way – Scraping the barrel here, but for something a little bit different, this is my once-a-decade public display of affection for Mrs H, to mark our ten-year wedding anniversary! As part of our marriage prep, we read a book called This Momentary Marriage, which unpacks how human marriage has been created by God to be a little picture of the stunning eternal grace-soaked commitment of Jesus to his people – and one day the ‘shadow’ of human marriage will give way to the Reality. So, ten and a half years ago, as I prepared to ask Zoe to marry me, I thought it’d be fun to write her a little song, which I called ‘Until this Shadow Gives Way’. Thankfully she cared more about the sentiment than the voice! Ten years on, we’re very aware we’re but novices at living out the wonder of grace amidst the messiness of life and the murkiness of our human hearts. But by God’s grace, it’s been such a privilege to get to try and display the gospel to each other and to the world in these early years. Oh for five more decades! So, to celebrate I had fun digging out some old video clips and freshening up the song with a new bridge and verse, reflecting on a decade – with no small musical help from the legendary Ewan Jones. Of course, these are just a ‘highlights reel’, rather than ‘warts & all’, but the point of the song to say isn’t to suggest a human marriage can satisfy, but to say that human marriage was made to point beyond itself to a divine relationship that can. So whether you’re single/married, and whether you wish you were/weren’t/somewhere in the middle, I’d love it if it helped lift your eyes to the ‘eternal romance of heaven’ and the God who says, ‘My life for yours’.
Quote of the Week:
“Those days when I feel like my day was just so unproductive, more often than not I look back and find that I never made a plan for the day. Just taking 10 minutes to look ahead at your calendar, write down one or two things you need to get done, or just having a goal for the day will do wonders for making your days more successful.”
Hello, my name is Robin. Welcome to That Happy Certainty, where I write and collate on Christianity, culture, and ministry. I’m based in Barrow-in-Furness in South Cumbria, England, where I serve a church family called 
