Submit! He punched her with red hot angry words, their force spitting in her face. Submit! You promised you would – so why don’t you?Submit! Why didn’t I marry a good, Christian wife? Good Christian wife…? He had sought her…
None of Sofia's pieces has been easy to read -- but this is particularly heartbreaking because it faces the discovery that some of her prolonged agonies had been known by someone close to her... So much silence. It tore at…
Sacred Treasure How many people view the recent death of missionary John Chau Emma Scrivener writes, as potently as ever, about the power of the gospel to counteract a self-harming mindset And then she followed it up with this blinder…
Here is part 2 of Sofia's story. If you've not read part 1, I suggest you start there. It is harrowing. But important. It is a testimony of experiences. This stuff happens. In our churches. Let us have ears to…
(more…)This is, I hope, the first of several posts from Sofia. Our friendship goes back a couple of decades and we’ve kept in touch for much of the time. We were invited to her wedding, although we’d been out of the country for several years and so had never met her husband. But we were excited for her.
We had no idea, of course, not least because we lived 100s of miles apart, what was happening and so never saw them interact. It wasn’t until many years later that she was able to start talking more openly about what she was going through. But I’ll let her take over from here, not least because she writes so powerfully.
Sofia’s story will speak for itself.
It's a standard question for writers (or indeed any type of artist), so E. M. Forster would often be asked who or what had influenced him. In response, he would question, perhaps surprisingly, whether 'influence' was an important category in…
Regulars will know that John Stott is a frequent focus here. I've just finished reading Alister Chapman's excellent, scholarly engagement with John Stott's legacy: Godly Ambition. A fuller review may come in time... But I will say this. Having spent 12…
HAPPY NEW YEAR! Wishing all Q readers a very good 2019! Sacred Treasure Phil Whittall has done a remarkable job amassing various links under several banners. Here is his trio of Church and Gender articles, plus a whole load of…
Shostakovich is a personal hero of mine. He walked a tightrope between the Gulag and compromise in the vortex of Stalinist Russia. But more than that, his music has brought me consolation, invigoration, provocation, and perplexity. Sometimes all at once.…
The 11th Hour. The 11th Day. The 11th Month. Evidently a contrived moment at which to end a war whose conclusion was as complex and mystifying as its commencement. But it was a moment of inspiration to exploit it. It…