Author: jmarkloughridge

As a kid my favourite TV programme was Record Breakers. I loved watching the attempts to see who could lift the most, eat the most, balance crates on their chin etc. And I loved browsing through the Guinness Book of World Records. I found an old edition of it recently in my dad’s house –…

You’ve seen the horrendous footage from Nepal and Tibet. People running for their lives. Tiny little figures down on the valley floor. And the camera pans to an awful, cataclysmic stampede of water hurtling down the valley towards them. Sweeping everything in its path—roads, bridges, heavy-duty machinery, and people—to oblivion. The footage reminded me of…

I’m just back from holidays and a little late getting to Mayo’s All-Ireland win. (Adapted from an article by my friend Pastor Warren Peel in Galway) There can’t be anyone left in Ireland who doesn’t know that Mayo won the All-Ireland. 82,300 in Croke Park, a million more watching on TV, the green and red…

I’ve just spent the last few days clearing stuff at my father’s house. He was a man who collected stuff, kept things, endless things. For him, everything had a purpose. He was gifted with his hands and blessed with an inventive mind. The house and yard were bunged because he saw genuine purpose even in…

In the news recently a Church of England minister was found guilty of indecent assault. In Ireland, we know the cost of clerical abuse of power all too well. We could add to the list the prosperity ‘preachers’ who fleece the vulnerable with their mega-ministries on TV. There’s a passage in Malachi (chapter 2) addressed…

I came across an interview with Leonard Cohen recently. It was towards the end of his life, and he spoke about preparing for death—and it was strangely pragmatic for such an enigmatic poet! I was struck by a couple of things he said: “I am a tidy kind of guy. I like to tie up…

As I sit down to write this column, news is coming in of tragedy in the Donegal International Rally. It’s utterly heart-breaking—a sunny summer’s day of laughter and excitement closes wrapped in the dark clouds of numbness and grief. Storms come uninvited and unexpected into our lives—three Sundays ago, as I came out of church,…

Sometimes on holidays we find ourselves in interesting places by accident. Last year we were in Austria and took a bit of a detour just to avoid a tunnel—not much scenery to be seen in a 13km tunnel! At the summit of a mountain pass we noticed, off to the side of the road, a…

On Saturday 18th April the National Archives made freely available over 700,000 individual household returns from the 1926 Census of Population—the first census conducted after the foundation of the Irish Free State. Within hours, four million hits had flooded the site. Across Ireland and the diaspora, people leaned into their screens, searching for grandparents, great-grandparents,…

Easter is just past. An annual reminder that evil does not have the last word—even when it looks to have had it. Jesus Christ rose from the grave, conquering death and having paid the price for sin. But it is not simply a past event. It is a picture of now and a promise for…