Fresh from the Word: the Bible for a change

Fresh from the Word: the Bible for a change A new book of Bible reading notes for every day of the year from top writers and scholars, edited by Nathan Eddy.

It's for Christians in social activism, Fresh Expressions, new churches. . . on sale Sept 2013 from the International Bible Reading Assoc.

'The wolf shall live with the lamb… the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.'...
15/06/2026

'The wolf shall live with the lamb… the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.' (Isaiah 11:6)

This is one of Scripture's most beloved visions, the peaceable kingdom, where ancient enmities dissolve and the natural order is reordered by the Spirit of God. We know it from carol services and Christmas cards. But Isaiah wrote it to people living under the threat of Assyrian invasion, for whom peace was not a sentiment but a survival question.

Today's Fresh from The Word 2026 reflection from Robert Draycott invites us to hold the vision in its original weight. This is not poetry about a distant future, it is a claim about what the Spirit of God actually produces: wisdom, understanding, counsel, the fear of the Lord, and a world reordered by justice and faithfulness.

A little child shall lead them. It was always going to be this way.

📖 Encounter the vision that holds - read Fresh from The Word 2026 > www.ibraglobal.org.uk

🙏 Where are you being called to live out something that looks impossible — wolf and lamb — in your own relationships or community?

A new week in Fresh from The Word 2026, and a new voice.Robert Draycott is a Baptist minister who has served in England ...
15/06/2026

A new week in Fresh from The Word 2026, and a new voice.

Robert Draycott is a Baptist minister who has served in England and in Brazil, taught biblical studies in a seminary in Campo Grande, spent eighteen years as a school chaplain, and was a Gamesmaker at the London 2012 Olympics. He brings a lifetime of crossing cultures to this week's Isaiah readings.

Theme this week: The Trumpet Sounds. Isaiah 11–22, with visions of peace, warnings to nations, and the call to listen when God speaks.

'The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding.' (Isaiah 11:2)
📖 Read this week: ibraglobal.org.uk

🙏 Ask God for a spirit of wisdom and understanding this week - for yourself, and for the leaders and communities you'll pray for.

'For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders, and he is named Wonderful Coun...
13/06/2026

'For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders, and he is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.' (Isaiah 9:6)

After days of prophetic judgment and darkness, these words arrive like a shaft of light through storm clouds. And notice how God answers: not with a powerful army, not with a political settlement, not with an overwhelming show of force. With a child.

Today's Fresh from The Word 2026 reading from Raj Bharat Patta reflects on this stunning reversal. Isaiah's original hearers were living under threat, under shadow, under the weight of what was coming. And the word of hope they received was: a child is given. Authority will rest on small shoulders. Peace will come from an unexpected place.

We know who that child is. The weight of the world rested on him, and he carried it.

📖 Encounter the one Isaiah was pointing toward https://bit.ly/4aR3iQF

🙏 Read Isaiah 9:1–7 slowly today. Let the names - Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace - be more than words.

'Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.' (Isaiah 6:7)In the year that...
12/06/2026

'Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.' (Isaiah 6:7)
In the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah saw the Lord. High and lifted up. The train of his robe filling the temple. Seraphim crying Holy, holy, holy. And Isaiah's immediate response: I am ruined. I am a man of unclean lips.
The holiness of God doesn't produce pride in those who genuinely encounter it. It produces awe, and then honest self-knowledge.

Today's Fresh from The Word 2026 reflection from Raj Bharat Patta notices what happens next: a live coal touches Isaiah's lips - not to destroy him but to commission him. The encounter with holiness that undoes us is also the encounter that sends us. Purified not for retreat but for mission.

Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?

The question is still being asked.

📖 Encounter the holiness that sends us with our free guide https://bit.ly/4aR3iQF

🙏 Sit with Isaiah 6 today — the whole chapter. Let the holiness, the undoing, and the commission do their work.

'He expected justice but saw bloodshed; righteousness but heard a cry!' (Isaiah 5:7)Isaiah sings a love song about a vin...
11/06/2026

'He expected justice but saw bloodshed; righteousness but heard a cry!' (Isaiah 5:7)

Isaiah sings a love song about a vineyard — tended with every care, given the best soil, defended, worked, waited on. And the harvest is sour grapes. The image is of a God who has invested everything and received nothing in return. Not anger first. Grief first.

Today's Fresh from The Word 2026 reflection from Raj Bharat Patta draws out the social dimension of Isaiah's metaphor. Justice and righteousness were not optional extras in the covenant relationship — they were the expected fruit. When they failed, it wasn't a private religious matter. It was a broken relationship with the God who planted and tended and waited.

He expected justice. He expected righteousness. He still does.

📖 Let the prophets shape your social conscience: Be guided through their words https://bit.ly/4aR3iQF

🙏 Where are you expecting to produce fruit but offering something sour instead? Be honest with God today.

After chapters of judgment, Isaiah turns: a branch, a remnant, a canopy.'A shade by day from the heat, and a refuge from...
10/06/2026

After chapters of judgment, Isaiah turns: a branch, a remnant, a canopy.

'A shade by day from the heat, and a refuge from the storm.' (Isaiah 4:6)

The hope that grows where everything else has been cut down.

Find hope https://bit.ly/4aR3iQF

'For Jerusalem has stumbled, and Judah has fallen, because their speech and their deeds are against the LORD.' (Isaiah 3...
09/06/2026

'For Jerusalem has stumbled, and Judah has fallen, because their speech and their deeds are against the LORD.' (Isaiah 3:8)

Raj Bharat Patta writes about severe floods in his hometown in India — water rising, families stranded on rooftops, the church building becoming a refuge for a community that had nowhere else to go. Life came to a standstill. Systems failed. Leadership faltered.

Today's Fresh from The Word 2026 reading uses that experience to illuminate Isaiah's warning to Jerusalem: what happens when the structures a society depends on — leadership, justice, community trust — begin to collapse. Isaiah is not gloating. He is grieving. He loved the city he was warning.

The question the passage leaves us with is both political and personal: what do our speech and our deeds say about what we actually believe?

📖 Read the prophet who loved the city he warned. Will you understand his words? https://bit.ly/4aR3iQF

🙏 Pray today for places where systems are failing and communities are being left without support. Name one specific situation.

'The haughty eyes of people shall be brought low, and the pride of everyone shall be humbled, and the LORD alone will be...
08/06/2026

'The haughty eyes of people shall be brought low, and the pride of everyone shall be humbled, and the LORD alone will be exalted on that day.' (Isaiah 2:11)

Isaiah speaks into a culture saturated with self-reliance — a people whose sense of privilege and power had become their identity. They had forgotten who had given them everything they had. And Isaiah announces what happens when the scaffolding of human pride meets the reality of God's justice.

Today's Fresh from The Word 2026 reflection from Raj Bharat Patta draws the connection to our own moment. The language of pride and self-sufficiency — personal, corporate, national — is not hard to find in contemporary life. Isaiah's word is not primarily about punishment. It is an invitation to a different kind of standing: the humility that looks up rather than around.

The LORD alone will be exalted. Everything else — every achievement, every status, every empire — finds its proper scale.

📖 Let Isaiah's vision reorder your priorities. Let us guide you https://bit.ly/4aR3iQF

🙏 Sit with this phrase today: the LORD alone will be exalted. What in your life is competing with that?

A new week begins — and this week in Fresh from The Word 2026, we step into one of Scripture's great prophetic voices.Th...
07/06/2026

A new week begins — and this week in Fresh from The Word 2026, we step into one of Scripture's great prophetic voices.

This week's notes come from Raj Bharat Patta — a Methodist minister, theologian, and proud bearer of multiple identities: Dalit, Christian, Asian, immigrant, academic, husband, father, friend. He writes from the UK, with a life shaped by India, Manchester, and decades of cross-cultural ministry.

He's guiding us through Isaiah 1–39, one of the Bible's most towering books, full of judgment and breathtaking hope, written to a people who had forgotten what faithfulness looked like.
This week's theme: Rescued from Judgment.

'The LORD alone will be exalted on that day.' (Isaiah 2:11)

📖 Read this week's Bible commentary https://bit.ly/4aR3iQF

🙏 Ask God this week to show you something in Isaiah you've never noticed before.

'His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life.' (2 Peter 1:3)He was crossing the street quickly, he...
06/06/2026

'His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life.' (2 Peter 1:3)

He was crossing the street quickly, heading for the chapel. Someone called out. He turned - a recycler with a cart full of bottles, cardboard, the accumulated small salvage of a hard day's work. I don't have any cash, he thought, reaching for his wallet. But the man wasn't asking for money.

Pastor, would you pray for me?

Today's Fresh from The Word 2026 reading from Dafne Plou closes the Grace week with this moment and with Peter's extraordinary claim: God's divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life. Not most things. Not enough to get by. Everything. The recycler knew what he needed. A prayer. The presence of God, offered through another human being.

We have more to give than we realise.

📖 Discover what you've already been given by God https://bit.ly/4aR3iQF

🙏 What do you have today that someone else needs — not money, not impressive resources, but presence, prayer, attention? Give it.

💗 Partner with IBRA in sharing God's word globally: https://bit.ly/4qXSXrj

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