WelshRev's Podcast

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

When every route is blocked and your own strength runs out, sometimes the most important thing you can do is let someone carry you.In this Super Short Thought, we look at one of the most dramatic moments in the Gospel of Mark: four friends who refused to give up on a man who couldn't get to Jesus by himself. The crowd was too thick. The door was blocked. So they carried him up onto the roof, broke through it, and lowered him down right in front of Jesus.And when Jesus saw what they did? The Bi

Standing in a field close to the site of the 13th-century Battle of Llandeilo Fawr, Simon Bowkett opens Revelation 5:9 and asks a question that cuts right to the heart of contemporary debate: where is the line between loving your nation and making an idol of it?In this Word for the Week, Simon works through one of the most theologically loaded words in the New Testament: the Greek preposition ek, used in Revelation 5:9 to describe the Lamb purchasing people "from" (ek) every tribe, language, p

Filming outside the RNLI lifeboat station in Penarth, with their flag flying behind me, a question came to mind.What would Jesus make of Y Ddraig Goch, the Welsh Red Dragon?What does He think about national identity, language, culture, and the fierce pride people feel about where they are from?Jesus was Himself rooted in a particular place, people, and language. He was from Nazareth, a tiny town in an occupied land, and that location mattered to Him.But He kept refusing to let that identity

Standing on Penarth esplanade, beside an Italian Garden that marks a century of welcome, WelshRev asks one of the most pressing questions facing Wales today: can a nation be both genuinely open and genuinely honest?Wales has declared itself a Nation of Sanctuary. That is a noble instinct. But good instincts face real complications. Some of those who come through an open door bring ideologies that are not content to coexist, that treat the host culture not as a home to share but as a territory t