It was wonderful to rewrite Jesus’ powerful blessings and woes with folk gathered at the Love Thy Neighbour conference on 24 Oct 2026. Here’s some of what we wrote – one new beatitude each person attending our workshop:
Now’s the time if you’re seeking asylum; my home will be yours
Time’s up for the Home Office treating oceans as walls
Now’s the time for refugees
Time’s up for scapegoating
Now’s the time for curiosity about differences instead of contempt
Time’s up for the real minority (the billionaires) blaming those who are minoritised
Now’s the time for long dinners around full tables, for strangers becoming neighbours
Time’s up for Meta, for tech billionaires casting idols out of algorithms, sitting back as people’s lives shrink to their screens
Now’s the time for living in the real word, our digital caves can’t hold us anymore; let’s live here in the present now
Time’s up for Meta for the mind-numbing simplification of others through phone screens, becoming weapons in our own homes
Now’s the time to knock on the door, and perhaps be invited in, and to looking a neighbour in the eye
Time’s up for individualistic Christians being a cover for passivity
Now’s the time for investing in peace
Time’s up for BAE Systems and the manufacturers of death
Now’s the time for churches and other groups to work together to repurpose empty buildings (in Croydon) for housing and community
Time’s up for allowing people to fall through the cracks and end up homeless outside Thornton Heath Tesco
Now’s the time for the focus to shift, to reach down through the gaps and pull up the hope
Time’s up for easy votes and quick profits plucked from the air, fuelled by blame
Now’s the time for house prices to be capped, with less people owning multiple homes
Time’s up young people unable to find work or afford homes
Now’s the time for jobs for people, and people for jobs
Time’s up for hundreds of applicants for every job and banks making thousands redundant every Christmas.
Now’s the time to walk the talk on the footpaths of my street
Time’s up on getting outraged by the distant and abstract, but doing nothing about the quiet outrage in my community
Now’s the time for big corporations to be a force for good, for the Top 500 companies to be people-focussed, not AI driven
Time’s up for Anthropic and Open AI destroying our humanity, taking away our resources to fuel machines that are dulling our cognition
Now’s the time for those who know the Kingdom of God will never come through violence
Time’s up for those who think the ends justify the means
Now’s the time for the “biscuit Christians” the foolish ones who would rather stand in a cold street and share food than sit in the warm at a table with empty spaces
Now’s the time for a church that preaches radical welcome, where the gays the refugees, the trans people, the nationalist, the one from another faith, the doubter, the disabled person and the black person can all walk through the same door
Time’s up for a church that puts up walls preventing people walking through the door, where Jesus would feel like a stranger.
Now’s the time for education for all
Time’s up for all those who turn learning into a machine for profit
Now’s the time for people to live in the body they love, and be treated without discrimination
Time’s up for trans women being forced to be treated on male hospital wards
Now’s the time for flags of unity
Time’s up for the flag shaggers
Now’s the time for the White Western Protestant Church to be fed by the spiritual wisdom and insights from the lived reckoning of Christian communities of minority status across the globe
Time’s up for White British middle class British superiority in our ego-driven understanding of Christian faith as a mission to save the world
Time’s up for hating the haters. This is how the whole world is swallowed into darkness. Listen to the still small voice within you. It calls you to abandon hate and choose love. Love never fails.
Now’s the time…
Time’s up…