Falling With Style

Amazon's Kindle list of most highlighted books of all time reveals 6 bibles in the top 25, along with books from Bonhoeffer and Francis Chan. None of this should be a surprise, accumulated bible sales remain higher than any other book, higher even than last summer's blockbuster Hunger Games trilogy which also feature highly on the rundown. The ESV bible sits at number one. No surprises here either, as this version has been free to download for Kindle users since launch. For people who just want one bible, the ESV will always be the default purchase. The heavy duty study bible also comes high up the chart. Good pricing here makes it the online study bible of choice, the kindle version at only £9.49 when the doorstop hardback is a whopping £25. To see bibles in the most highlighted of all time list is obviously encouraging in our secular age. More noteworthy though is the question of what people are actually highlighting. Its fair to assume that to make the effort to highli...

Last words are powerful. They are spoken for maximum impact, when nothing else matters any more. There are pages full of them on the Internet. Some funny, some poignant, some sad, some totally fabricated! One of my favourites was uttered by the over confident General Sedgwick before his last moment in the American Civil War. Looking over the parapet, he turned to encourage his troops with these words: "They couldn't hit an elephant from this dist...!" Or how about one of the heroes of Scott's fatal race to the Antarctic? Knowing he was dying of exhaustion, hunger and exposure, Captain Oates left his colleagues in the tent, not wanting to slow down their retreat to safety, out into temperatures of-70. His brave, stiff upper lip British understatement at this moment of supreme self sacrifice? " I'm going out, I may be some time." In my last words as a preacher in the church family that we've served in for the past eight years, we are looking a...