WelshRev's Podcast

Lovely weather today. Wouldn't want to change it.But what if you did?In Mark 4, Jesus is in a boat on the Sea of Galilee, caught in a violent squall.He speaks two words in the Greek: σιώπα, πεφίμωσο (siōpa, pephimōso), "be silent, be muzzled." The wind stops.A great calm falls.The disciples ask the only question that matters: "Who is this, that even the wind and the waves obey him?"(This account was circulating while people who could check it were still alive, and it kept circulating any

"Teacher, don't you care that we are perishing?"It's the sort of question we've probably all wanted to scream at God at some point: in the hospital waiting room, in the middle of the night, in the silence after the prayer that didn't seem to get us anywhere.Mark doesn't soften the disciples' question.He records it raw, honest, almost accusing.And Jesus doesn't answer with a theological lecture.He answers with an action: He stills the storm.In this Super Short Thought, Rural Chaplain Simon

Burry Port, West Wales. There's a gap in the land formation here that funnels the wind straight through. It's the perfect place to ask a question: if you were on a boat in a storm and the most experienced person on board was fast asleep, would you wake them up?In Mark's Gospel, the disciples face exactly that situation. Professional fishermen, men who knew this lake all their lives, are terrified. And Jesus is asleep.That sleep isn't negligence. It isn't indifference. It's the settled rest of

If you're going to challenge somebody with the question "who do you think you are?", you'd better make sure it's not the person Mark has just introduced as Jesus Christ, the Son of God.In this Word for the Week, Simon works closely through the Greek text of Mark 2:1-12, tracing what this extraordinary passage reveals about the identity and authority of Jesus, why the scribes' charge of blasphemy was theologically correct, and why the miracle at the end of the story is not the point but the proo

What happens when the thing that defined your helplessness becomes the evidence of what Jesus has done?In this Super Short Thought, filmed at Llandeilo Mart, Simon looks at one of the most striking details in Mark chapter 2.A paralysed man is carried in on a mat by four friends.Jesus heals him.And he walks out carrying the mat himself.He doesn't just get back on his feet.He walks out with the proof.That mat went from being his prison to being his testimony.And that raises a question wort

Jesus looked at a paralysed man lowered through a roof by his friends, and said something nobody in the room expected. Not "be healed." Not "get up." He said: "Child, your sins are forgiven."He went somewhere deeper first.In this Markine Super Short Thought, Rev Simon Bowkett reflects on Mark 2:5 and what it reveals about how Jesus sees us, not just the problem we know we have, but the need we didn't even know we were carrying.You might come to Jesus with something specific on your mind. He m