How can Jesus call us the light of the world? If you ask your average non-Christian how they think of the church, “Light of the world” is unlikely to feature in their response. Surely Christians are inconsequential, impotent – dim. Or perhaps they are compromised by hypocrisy – murky. Or maybe the church is an […]
Given the suffering of this world, how can anyone believe in a good God or a happy ending? In Daniel 7, the prophet has a vision of the most terrible cruelty imaginable. It was a “vision by night” that left him, in his own words, “grieved in my spirit… and the visions of my head […]
28 Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding. 29 He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. 30 Even the […]
In common parlance, ideas “take root” or cultural movements “take root”. But in the bible it’s people who “take root.” In fact there is a whole theme of “uprooting” and “taking root” that bears examination. In Deuteronomy, Moses warned the people, even before they entered the promised land, that they faced exile for disobedience. And […]
Psalm 103 gives us a sobering contrast between the life of man and the love of God. One is extremely fragile and short-lived, the other is eternal and unchanging: “As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is […]
In between the Psalm of the cross (Psalm 22) and the Psalm of Christ’s ascension back to heaven (Psalm 24) we have the 23rd Psalm – a Psalm of resurrection. “1The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. 2He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. […]
Apologies for this one – out of order! No time to write something new today. So here’s one I prepared earlier…. As they all gather around the newborn, they coo and smile and remark “What a gorgeous little nose!” “What soft skin!” “Isn’t she perfect!?” Then uncle Alan butts in. With a frown and a […]
“You’re a man after my own heart” says one country music fan to another. “You’re a woman after my own heart” says the man to his new girlfriend as she serves him his favourite dessert. These are common ways that we use the phrase today. But they are subtly different from each other. In the […]
After the brutality of Judges, Ruth is often seen as a nice little love story. A rom com to take our minds off all the raping and genocide! But if we think like that perhaps we need to rehabilitate our view of romantic comedy. The story of Scripture is most certainly a romance – the […]
The story is told of a wealthy man’s funeral at which “Guide me O thou great Jehovah” was the opening hymn. It may have been a typo or it may have been requested as the deceased’s last laugh, but the final verse read as follows: “When I tread the verge of Jordan Bid my anxious […]
