Sandra McCracken has served as Nashville A Rocha Arts Director since 2013. She has lead numerous songwriting retreats and workshops, drawing together fellow artists and songwriters to reflect upon what it means to know, love, and care for God’s creation – for the people and places – around us. Sandra is a prolific singer-songwriter and modern-day hymn writer; her music has been featured by All Sons And Daughters, ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy, Audrey Assad, Indelible Grace, BiFrost Arts, Caedmon’s Call and others. She has also been a guest contributor for The Gospel Coalition, Christianity Today, She Reads Truth, Art House America Blog, Relevant Magazine and other publications. At home in Nashville, with her two young children chiming in, Sandra contributes to Rain For Roots, producing timeless, gospel folk-songs for God’s children of all ages.
Miranda’s faithful habit of letter writing was part of her gift for bringing others into her life. So was the Harris’s family table. In the early days of the couple’s ministry, Miranda famously spent their first earnings on a large dining room table.
Do you remember the early weeks of lockdown, the ‘great pause’ when there was no road traffic and very little human noise? Taking a walk along a usually busy road. I felt like I was walking back in time to the days before motorized vehicles.
David Attenborough’s latest BBC documentary, ‘Extinction: the facts’ makes shocking but deeply compulsive watching. Viewers have spoken of being so overwhelmed as to switch off and return later, and being moved to anger and sleeplessness. I wasn’t as depressed as many, and will come back to why.
Between 1 September and 4 October, churches around the world will be participating in the Season of Creation. Our Director of Theology, Dave Bookless, has been on the global planning group for the past couple of years, and here he explains more about the concept and this year’s theme, ‘Jubilee for the Earth: new rhythms, new hopes.’
Our mobility, freedom and security put on hold… Our health and our lives threatened… Our wealth plummeted… Our temples of consumerism closed. All because of an almost invisible virus. Amidst very real fear and grief, this gives us an opportunity to rethink ‘flourishing’, and how our economic systems can be regenerative and restorative rather than unstable, unjust, and unsustainable.
COVID-19 has stopped us in our tracks. It is as though the whole globe has been put on a time out. We could fill the unnerving silence with bread-baking, Zoom meetings and Netflix bingeing. Or we could take this rare opportunity to reflect, reconsider and reboot.
As the COVID-19 coronavirus makes its relentless way across the world, it is not the only thing that is going viral. Fear, panic-buying, stock-market slumps, and fake news stories are also infectiously spreading like viruses, making the situation so much worse. In this context, I want to ask two key questions.
