Sandyknowes Blog

Living beside the busiest roundabout in Northern Ireland gives plenty of opportunity for watching the world go by. Sandyknowes Blog is the personal blog of Niall Lockhart (minister of Ballyhenry). Pull in and have a read…

Psalm 4 - In Peace I Lie Down

19 March 2020

Music is a very powerful thing and it has the ability to connect with us in a deep way. We know from the titles that many of the psalms were written originally not just to be read but to be sung. Psalm 4 (the second of David’s Psalms) was written to be played ‘with stringed instruments’.

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Starting this Sunday (22nd March) - Ballyhenry On-Line

18 March 2020

This coming Sunday (22nd March), following Public Health Agency Advice, we will not be meeting for church in Ballyhenry. (It is anticipated this will be the situation for some time.)

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Psalm 3 - A Shield Around Me

18 March 2020

We don’t know who wrote all the Psalms, but we know that half of them (73 out of 150) were written by David. The story of David’s life is told in the Old Testament books of 1 and 2 Samuel. It’s an amazing story of ups and downs, success and failure, love and war, times of blessing and moments of judgment. David was a great King and yet at the heart of his story lies a tragic and painful episode where his own son Absalom turned completely against him. Absalom plotted to overthrow his father and steal the throne from him.

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Psalm 2 -The One Enthroned

17 March 2020

There is something very personal about the book of Psalms. Many individual Christians have their own stories about how words from this book have brought comfort or encouragement at all kinds of significant life moments.

However at the same time as being personal, there is also something very big about the canvas on which the writers of the Psalms paint. Psalm 2 begins by talking about ‘the nations’. Immediately we are reminded that the God of the Bible is not just a ‘personal God’ (though He is) but He is also the God of the nations. 

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Psalm 1 - Blessed is the one

16 March 2020

For generations, Christian people have read and sung the psalms. Jesus knew and loved the Psalms and He often quoted from them. There’s a depth, a rawness, a realness, about the words that we find in this book. 

The Psalms show us what it looks like to live in this world as a person of faith. The Psalms engage not with the world as we would like it to be, but with the world as it is.

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