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The Comfortable Words is a space to slow down and allow the words and way of Jesus to comfort us, strengthen us, and reorient us to the care and keeping...
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The Comfortable Words is a space to slow down and allow the words and way of Jesus to comfort us, strengthen us, and reorient us to the care and keeping of Christ. The phrase comes from Thomas Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer. Cranmer's "comfortable" didn't mean cozy or comfy — it comes from the Latin confortare, meaning "with strength." These are words meant to give fortitude in uncomfortable times. Each episode offers a reflection on words spoken by Christ or about him, with room to be still. More at pickerill.casa
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Episodes & Posts
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13 SEP 2026 · Julia reflects on Jesus' parable of the wheat and the weeds (Matthew 13:24-30), sown together in the same field and left to grow until the harvest. Rather than reading the weeds as other people, she turns the parable inward: the roots of pride, discord, and fear are tangled with her own faithfulness, which is why the sorting isn't hers to do. She turns to the spiritual "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" as a model for holding real trouble and real praise together without letting one erase the other, and to Paul's charge to a young, pressured church to make it their ambition to lead a quiet life (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12). She closes with the Aaronic blessing over anyone doing ordinary, faithful work in an unsettled season.
Includes brief quotations from C. S. Lewis's 1948 essay on living under threat of the atomic bomb, and from Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea (1955). The Comfortable Words is written and recorded by Eric and Julia Pickerill.
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© 2026 Eric and Julia Pickerill
6 SEP 2026 · Julia reflects on Jesus' words to his disciples on the night before his death: "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love" (John 15:9). She distinguishes discomfort — the ache of a comfort once known and now lost — from ordinary unease, tracing it through loss, betrayal, and disillusionment. Drawing on George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin, she pictures Christ's love as a thread to hold onto, even when the way feels roundabout. She closes with a portion of Wendell Berry's poem "What We Need Is Here," offered as a prayer to be quiet and clear rather than searching for somewhere else.Closing prayer: excerpted from Wendell Berry's poem "What We Need Is Here." The Comfortable Words is written and recorded by Eric and Julia Pickerill.
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© 2026 Eric and Julia Pickerill
30 AUG 2026 · Eric reflects on Jesus' cry from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46), and discovers it isn't a line Jesus composed himself, but the opening words of Psalm 22. Drawing on a UK pastor who leads prisoners in writing their own psalms, the viral footage of a dementia patient roused to song by music from his youth, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer's reflection that the Psalms are the words God gives us when we have none of our own, he asks why song reaches us in a way doctrine and story can't. He closes with an invitation: pray a psalm, or sing a song, right where you actually are, even in the mess, the anger, or the dark. The Comfortable Words is written and recorded by Eric and Julia Pickerill.
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© 2026 Eric and Julia Pickerill
23 AUG 2026 · Julia turns to the Garden of Gethsemane and the most uncomfortable hours of Jesus' life, where comfort shows up in an entirely upside-down way. Drawing on Mark's Gospel and W. H. Vanstone's The Stature of Waiting, she traces how Jesus moves from actor to the one "handed over" — the God who need not suffer choosing to become "object," by his own initiative. The reflection sits with a hard question: what does it mean to lay down our right to ourselves, to pray "not my will, but yours," and to trust God's goodness from a place of weakness rather than strength? It closes with Julian of Norwich's words that Jesus could not yet say in the Garden — that all shall be well. The Comfortable Words is written and recorded by Eric and Julia Pickerill.
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© 2026 Eric and Julia Pickerill
16 AUG 2026 · Julia explores a phrase tucked into the Sermon on the Mount: "The eye is the lamp of the body... if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light" (Matthew 6:22). She traces the Greek word emblepō — to gaze, to look intently — through Jesus' invitation to "consider the birds of the air" and into the courtyard where "the Lord turned and looked straight at Peter" after his denial. Anxiety, she suggests, is a disease of vision: what we fix our attention on shapes what fills us. She invites listeners to consider what has held their attention this week. Closing prayer: "In the busyness of this day, grant me a stillness of seeing, O God..." — a prayer by J. Philip Newell, from Celtic Benediction: Morning and Night Prayer. The Comfortable Words is written and recorded by Eric and Julia Pickerill.
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© 2026 Eric and Julia Pickerill
9 AUG 2026 · There's a word for wanting to fix a broken world and quietly suspecting it's beyond saving, at the same time. It's not in any dictionary. A documentary made it up this year: apocaloptimism.
Eric ran into the feeling twice in one week: once watching a man methodically pick up trash from a roadside ditch that would fill right back up within days, and once catching himself in it, admitting his own uneasy mix of hope and dread while wading into work on artificial intelligence.
Both moments point back to something older than the word, something Jesus's own followers felt watching a man who "went about doing good" end up dead like a failure. The answer isn't optimism. It isn't pessimism either. It's something else. The Comfortable Words is written and recorded by Eric and Julia Pickerill.
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© 2026 Eric and Julia Pickerill
2 AUG 2026 · Julia reflects on Jesus' words to Peter on the night of his betrayal: 'Simon, Satan has demanded to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.' She explores what it means to be shaken, personally and corporately, and how Christ's intercession meets us in seasons of failure and testing. Drawing on Miroslav Volf's writing on embrace, she invites listeners to stop striving for control and yield instead to the comfort and restoration Christ offers. She closes with a prayer for when the sky feels like it's falling.
Read the reflection and listen to the audio at https://pickerill.casa/comfortable-words/and-when-you-return The Comfortable Words is written and recorded by Eric and Julia Pickerill.
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© 2026 Eric and Julia Pickerill
26 JUL 2026 · Finding Your Way Home — Matthew 14
Eric's first Comfortable Words: on being harassed and helpless, the temptation to build a shelter in the valley or an altar on the mountain, and Jesus's invitation to keep moving — all the way home.
References the song "Guiding Light" by Foy Vance.
Read along and subscribe: https://pickerill.casa/comfortable-words The Comfortable Words is written and recorded by Eric and Julia Pickerill.
More at pickerill.casa
© 2026 Eric and Julia Pickerill
13 JUL 2026 · Julia introduces "The Comfortable Words," a way to let Jesus' words comfort and strengthen you. She leads a "location exercise" to notice where your soul is right now and to picture your current spiritual landscape. Julia explains the Anglican "comfortable words" from the Book of Common Prayer, shaped by Thomas Cranmer to offer fortitude after confession, and highlights Christ's invitation to the weary and heavy laden. She then guides you to name what you're carrying, imagine offering it to Jesus, and closes with a prayer for comfort, protection, and peace. The Comfortable Words is written and recorded by Eric and Julia Pickerill.
More at pickerill.casa
© 2026 Eric and Julia Pickerill
The Comfortable Words is a space to slow down and allow the words and way of Jesus to comfort us, strengthen us, and reorient us to the care and keeping...
show more
The Comfortable Words is a space to slow down and allow the words and way of Jesus to comfort us, strengthen us, and reorient us to the care and keeping of Christ. The phrase comes from Thomas Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer. Cranmer's "comfortable" didn't mean cozy or comfy — it comes from the Latin confortare, meaning "with strength." These are words meant to give fortitude in uncomfortable times. Each episode offers a reflection on words spoken by Christ or about him, with room to be still. More at pickerill.casa
show less
Information
| Author | Pickerill |
| Organization | EP Builds |
| Categories | Christianity , Spirituality |
| Website | pickerill.casa |
| podcast@pickerill.casa |
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