The plan is to produce one final inspires this year, and use this as an introduction to the future online facility. It is hoped that this will be published in early May. We will be contacting current subscribers to the magazine regarding all of this.
Scottish Episcopal Institute launches new Journal
The new Scottish Episcopal Institute Journal is an outreach of the Scottish Episcopal Institute. The Journal highlights the thinking of clergy and laity on living lives of holiness and service as Episcopalians in Scotland in the twenty-first century.
The Scottish Episcopal Church has a breadth and depth of theological acumen, liturgical expression, pastoral life and ministerial experience. The Journal hopes to share these riches in its new quarterly, peer-reviewed, open-access, online journal. Please see its first issue here.
The Journal – electronic and free to all – welcomes previously unpublished contributions from those who write to advance the Good News of Jesus Christ. The Scottish Episcopal Institute hopes the Journal will be a catalyst for prayer, thought and reflection at the heart of the Scottish Episcopal Church. For details on submitting an article or book review, please look here. For more information, please contact the Rev Dr Michael Hull by email dos @ scotland. anglican. org or call 0131 225 6357.
GOD IS GREAT
This was the title of a newspaper article in a German paper for Christmas. Not that at that time of the year we would find it strange to read this in a newspaper, but instead of joy, this call somehow sends a shiver on one’ s spine. The Islamic‘ Allahu akbar’, which means‘ God is great’, the call from the minaret and which those praying sing also, has been connected to terrorism, especially that linked to the so called‘ Islamic State’. This has been recently shown when a German schoolboy, meaning to do a prank, threw his rucksack into a café and called‘ Allahu Akbar’, whereupon those in the café panicked and called the police. So, the call for God’ s greatness is causing panic these days.
Not so much in St Oswald’ s, however, where Lesley-Ann let the Sunday school children sing:’ My God is so big’- well, it means‘ tall’ but also‘ almighty’. Christians tell you, that at Christmas God does not only shows Himself as a little child, but also as the all-embracing, we pray to Him‘ For all your children’, especially those afflicted by war and disaster, but we say:‘ God is good’, rarely we say:‘ God is great’.
That hasn’ t been the case always. During the Middle Ages crusaders called‘ Deus lo vult’, God wants it, when they killed unbelievers. Muslims already at that time had as a battle cry‘ Allahu akbar’. God wasn’ t great, nor small, and did not work silently hidden, but clearly on the side of those with the right
StOM Page 15