Daily Bible Verses by Book

Heavenly father
give us grace to pray faithfully today

¹⁶ The insistent prayer of a righteous person is powerfully effective. 
¹⁷ Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain,
and it didn’t rain on the earth for three years and six months. 
¹⁸ He prayed again, and the sky gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.

Heavenly father
give us grace to help those who have wandered from the truth today. 

¹⁹ Brothers, if any among you wanders from the truth and someone turns him back, 
²⁰ let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God….  All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. —John 1:1, 3 

What was God up to in those first moments of creation? Was God totally invisible before the universe began? Is there even such a thing as “before”? Why did God create at all? What was God’s purpose in creating? Is the universe itself eternal, or is the universe a creation in time as we know it—like Jesus himself? 
Let’s admit that we will probably never know the “how” or even the “when” of creation.…

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ² The same was in the beginning with God. ³ All things were made through him. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. ⁴ In him was life, and the life was the light of men. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness hasn’t overcome it. 

Happy Christmas

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 
² The same was in the beginning with God. 
³ All things were made through him. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. 
⁴ In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 
⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness hasn’t overcome it. 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.   The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

As John’s Gospel opens, we have no mention of a birth,…

 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it 

There is a part of the soul that stirs at night, in the dark and soundless times of day, when our defenses are down and our daylight distractions no longer serve to protect us from ourselves. What we suppress in the light emerges clearly in the dusk. It’s then, in the still of life, when we least expect it, that questions emerge from the damp murkiness of our inner underworld…. These questions do not call for the discovery of data; they call for the contemplation of…

⁹ The true light that enlightens everyone was coming into the world.
¹⁰ He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world didn’t recognize him. 
¹¹ He came to his own, and those who were his own didn’t receive him. 
¹² But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become God’s children, to those who believe in his name: 
¹³ who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 
¹⁴ The…

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

I cry at Christmas adverts.
Wait! Can’t I see that they are weapons-grade emotional manipulation, deployed by the capitalist superstructure to manipulate me into spending money, in turn fuelling a system that not only exploits me, but the very cultural heritage it purports to celebrate?
I absolutely can.
Can I allow adverts to move me anyway?
I absolutely can.
The season’s first…

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

In 1963, C.S. Lewis wrote an essay entitled ‘The Seeing Eye’. It was a response to Nikita Krushchev, the Russian politician who famously declared of the first man in space, ‘Gagarin flew into space but didn’t see God there’.

Krushchev considered the fact that God wasn’t spotted up there to be proof of his non-existence. And Lewis was having none of it. By way of response, he wrote:

‘…