tregallion

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  • devices and desires

    Here’s a thesis for you: infinite scroll apps are the opposite of Christian meditation. I’m talking about Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and the Shorts tab on YouTube. Any app where you can swipe up, and up, and up, and up, forever. Psalm 1.2 speaks about the blessedness of the man whose delight is in the…

  • Thomas Goodwin on the reason for Christ’s incarnation

    Hereby is held forth an evident demonstration (and the greatest one that could have been given unto men) of the everlasting continuance of God’s mercies unto men, by this, that God is for everlasting become a man; and so we thereby assured that he will be merciful unto men, and that for ever. For as…

  • What does Psalm 8 mean?

    Open up your Bible to Psalm 8. It’s a well-known psalm, written by David, but the title gives us no information about the occasion for writing; nothing like the amount of context you get in the title of Psalm 18, for example. We don’t know — but I imagine the young David, anointed but not…

  • A yew tree was planted in 1136 in the grounds of Dryburgh Abbey, the same year as the first stone was laid in the abbey itself. We had walked once round the abbey, had climbed the spiral staircase, had sung the Gloria Patri underground in the echoey chapter-house. I thought about the yew. The old…

  • Bane-fyres and the theology of the body

    I read this very odd little book, Hydriotaphia, or Urne-Buriall. Thomas Browne was an eccentric English polymath who wrote an extended reflection on cremation and other burial practices, after a number of pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon burial urns were found in Norfolk. I really recommend reading it — Browne has this style that’s built on allusion, constantly…