The Sunday Refill – 7 Links for Your Weekend (16/6/19)
Seven up…
1) This last Sunday, John Piper turned up to church – and I was preaching… – Funny and encouraging!
2) Professor Brian Cox: ‘I can’t be sure there is no God’ – Interesting little interview snippet from Brian Cox, acknowledging uncertainty and the limitations of science.
3) Abortion Statistics – The UK Department of Health & Social Care released 2018’s abortion statistics this week and revealed that there were 205,295 abortions in England & Wales last year. Ross Clark in The Spectator this week called it the “tragedy of Britain’s abortion epidemic,” happening right under our noses. This is the highest figure on record and up 4% on 2017. 97.7% of these were carried out under ‘ground C’ (“the pregnancy has not exceeded its twenty-fourth week and that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman”). That equates to 196,083 abortions, with 99.9% of these noted as being specifically due to risk to the mother’s mental health. Only 2% of abortions were due to the risk the child would be born seriously handicapped. This piece on the UK abortion industry is a few years old, but worth a read. This is, of course, a sensitive area, but one that should surely drive us to lament as we all cast ourselves on the mercy of God.
4) 20 Quotes from the Book Your Pastor Wishes You’d Read – Here are some gems from Christopher Ash’s new book on how to care for your pastor.
5) What It Was Like to Be David Powlison’s Friend – Last week David Powlison, Executive Director of the Christian Counseling & Educational Foundation, died and entered glory. David’s impact through the biblical counselling movement is increasingly being seen in the UK church. The above article is a precious tribute as it illustrates that the kind of ministry Powlison advocated was what he practiced in his own friendships. I had the joy of briefly meeting David in 2013 when he spoke at Oak Hill and gave this short interview with Steve Midgley introducing the concept of biblical counselling.
6) A Liturgy for Changing Diapers I (read by Sally Lloyd-Jones) – The concept of Every Moment Holy, by Douglas Kaine McKelvey, is to craft a set of prayers for every moment of life, believing that every moment, task and activity is an opportunity to glorify God. (By the way, if you want to buy me a copy and cover the US postage, then I won’t say no…) Here beloved children’s author Sally Lloyd-Jones (The Jesus Storybook Bible) voices the prayer for changing nappies.
7) How to Turn Yourself Into a Morning Person, Backed by Science – For something different, well, this sounds good!