Devotions

David Holdsworth

Simple Christian messages, offered without the noise often associated with some styles of preaching or sharing of the good news. This podcast includes a merging of various podcasts, preachings and messages by David Holdsworth. ​If you are neurodivergent, navigating family life with complex needs, carrying hurt from past church experiences, or simply tired of the pressure to perform—this space is for you. For anyone who has ever felt they didn't quite fit into traditional pews: you have a place here. ​Pax et Bonum — Peace and the Good

  1. Sep 15

    Brother Sun, Sister Moon: Learning to See Creation Again

    There's an old idea, one that St. Francis of Assisi made famous in his Canticle of the Sun, that the sun and moon aren't just distant objects lighting our days and nights — they're kin. Brother Sun. Sister Moon. Family, in a sense, part of the same created order we belong to. It's a small shift in language, but it changes something. When the sun is just "the sun," it's background noise — something we barely register on our way to the car. When it's Brother Sun, it becomes a presence. Something worth noticing. Something worth thanking God for. Ask the Animals Job 12:7 puts it simply: ask the animals, and they will teach you. It's a strange invitation on the surface — what could a bird or a beast possibly have to teach a person? But Scripture keeps returning to this idea that creation itself is a kind of instructor, quietly demonstrating things about dependence, trust, and design that we're often too busy to notice on our own. That raises a few honest questions worth sitting with: What have I decided isn't worth my attention? What's shaping me without my even realizing it? What ordinary beauty have I stopped seeing because I've seen it so many times before? What might change if I approached the created world as someone still learning from it, rather than someone simply in charge of it? Sanctifying the Everyday None of this requires a mountaintop or a dramatic sunset. It might just mean pausing on a walk, looking up at the moon on an ordinary Tuesday, or noticing the sun on your face for three seconds longer than usual. Gratitude for creation doesn't ask for grand gestures — it asks for attention. Maybe that's the whole invitation: to stop treating the world as scenery, and start treating it as a gift. Reflection inspired by themes of wonder, gratitude, and creation — prompted by Stillmere Contemplative Reflections Cards, Vol. 4: "Brother Sun, Sister Moon."

    Brother Sun, Sister Moon: Learning to See Creation Again
  2. Sep 15

    On Not Needing a Reason

    A wildflower doesn't apply for permission to bloom. It doesn't calculate whether the ground is fertile enough to be worth the effort, or whether anyone's walking by to see it. It just grows — toward light, toward water, toward whatever small mercy the season offers — and that's the whole of its work. Jesus points to this in Matthew 6:28, and it's a strange thing to hold up as instruction. Not a parable with a moral to extract, not a lesson to file away — just an invitation to actually look at something that exists without justifying itself. Most days don't leave much room for that kind of looking. There's a logic to how attention gets spent: on what needs doing, what needs answering, what needs fixing. It's not a wrong way to move through a day. But it does tend to flatten the world into a checklist, and things that can't be checked off — a colour, a shape, a bit of unplanned beauty — get filed under "later" and quietly forgotten. Here's what's worth turning over, maybe on a walk or in a quiet moment before the day picks up speed: Is there anything that delights you that serves no purpose at all? What's grown too familiar to actually see anymore? If perceived usefulness stopped being the filter, what would stand out? What might be delighting God right now, unnoticed? That last one is the one that stays with me. It suggests delight isn't a mood we're chasing — it's something already happening, on God's part, toward things we've stopped registering. The wildflower isn't waiting to be admired before it counts. It's already loved into existing at all. Maybe the practice, then, isn't about finding something spectacular to marvel at. It's letting one small, unremarkable thing be enough — not because it earns the attention, but because it doesn't have to. Reflection inspired by themes of delight, attention, and grace — prompted by Stillmere Contemplative Reflections Cards, Vol. 4: "Brother Sun, Sister Moon."

    On Not Needing a Reason

About

Simple Christian messages, offered without the noise often associated with some styles of preaching or sharing of the good news. This podcast includes a merging of various podcasts, preachings and messages by David Holdsworth. ​If you are neurodivergent, navigating family life with complex needs, carrying hurt from past church experiences, or simply tired of the pressure to perform—this space is for you. For anyone who has ever felt they didn't quite fit into traditional pews: you have a place here. ​Pax et Bonum — Peace and the Good