Week 4 miscellany: gambling, blindness, death

We were in The Netherlands last week, doing loads of great things. Here's Amsterdam looking good in the early evening.

I hate gambling adverts, and so does Barney Ronay.

Blindness has forced J.I. Packer to retire from ministry. Is he bitter or angry at God? See for yourself in an interview that's like a window into another world.

My friend Jennifer Rawson has written another poem of great power and weight, in response to a death in the family.

Chris Giles wants you to take Oxfam's claims about global inequality with a pinch of salt, or at least several footnotes and chart-related caveats.

Simple living is fashionable but for Christians it cannot be an end in itself. John Piper's comments about expensive conferences make this point brilliantly.