“What wings are to a bird, and sails are to a ship, so is prayer is to the soul.” Corrie Ten Boom

Lyrics: I will not fear The arrows or the night As thousands fall To my left and to my right I will abide, in the safety of your shadow Under your wings, my heart will find its rest The wicked fall And with my eyes I see But your faithfulness Will be a shield to…

‘Friendship is a deep oneness that develops as two people, speaking the truth in love to each other, journey together to the same horizon. Spiritual friendship is the greatest journey of all, because the horizon is so high and far, yet sure – it is nothing less than “the day of Jesus Christ” and what…

HEAVENLY FATHER, Thou hast placed me in the church which thy Son purchased by his own blood. Add grace to grace that I may live worthy of my vocation. I am a voyager across life’s ocean; Safe in heaven’s ark, may I pass through a troubled world into the harbour of eternal rest. I am…

“If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them.” C.S. Lewis

It can be so easy, especially at the moment, to turn in on ourselves and just focus on our own problems. Here’s a brilliant podcast from John Piper on helpful tools to equip us in the fight against self-pity and to love and serve one another better. How do I wage war on my self-pity?

I walked a mile with Pleasure; She chatted all the way; But left me none the wiser For all she had to say. I walked a mile with Sorrow, And ne’er a word said she; But, oh! The things I learned from her, When sorrow walked with me. Robert Browning Hamilton

“God wills our good, and our good is to love Him (with that responsive love proper to creatures) and to love Him we must know Him: and if we know Him, we shall in fact fall on our faces. If we do not, that only shows that what we are trying to love is not…

“When I feel low and demotivated, stopping to ask how to use the time or task in front of me to worship God transforms my struggle. It injects purpose into the most mundane of tasks, fears fade, and a settled contentment takes hold. Whether it’s clearing the table, going to the shop, or a bit…

‘Empathy. that is,the imaginative identification with a perspective that is not my own, is not just an optional extra in our human identity and our human repertoire, it’s something without which we cannot know ourselves. Without identification with the other, I don’t know myself.’ Rowan Williams, Being Human, p.58.