Serious Joy
Lent, the name of the 40 day season prior to Easter, derives from the Old English word, lencten, meaning “Springtime” (northern hemisphere), and before that from the Germanic longitinaz, meaning “lengthening of days”. It anticipates Easter, following upon Good Friday, and the victory of the light and life of Christ over the darkness of sin and death. […]
Trans-figure This!
What’s life like for you at the moment? Is everything ‘coming up roses’? Or is it in ‘the pits’? It could well be somewhere in between. And even if we are on the ‘rosy’ side of that scale, things can unexpectedly take a ‘nose-dive’ any time. In Mark chapter 8 Jesus foretells that He is […]
Complex Persecution
It’s “open season” on Christians in Australian society. What comes through the media, politics and general social attitudes, is a subconscious acceptance that Christian truth, and anyone who holds to it, must be absolutely opposed as illegitimate, and considered “evil”. This is not a shocking surprise, but the fulfilment of Jesus’ words of prophecy in […]
I’m a Racist
I probably don’t look racist. I’ve been very careful and trained myself over many years to not relate to people from other races differently than I do toward Anglos. But I still catch myself entertaining impulses and thoughts of bias against races other than my own. I hope and trust that I’m a repentant racist. […]
Jesus is Getting Married
The first miracle Jesus performs is to keep a party going. It is a wedding in Cana. The wine is about to run out. In that culture wine was a symbol of joy; running out would be a cultural catastrophe for a wedding celebration. Jesus miraculously saves the day by turning water into barrels full […]
Grubbing Thistles
A colleague of tells of funeral he conducted for a man who was a loner and an eccentric. He was also a human being of unbounded hope! He had the habit of roaming the district with a grubber, and wherever he found a thistle, he dug it up. The thistles were persistent, and came back, […]
High Density Love
High density living seems to be “the go” these days in our cities. I’m generally not impressed – rows of glass and cardboard boxes, eaves touching, no room to park, and hardly a tree in sight! This kind of environment is likely to increase tension between neighbours. God’s city in the new heaven and earth […]
God In the Trenches
Journalist Mark Day writes of the war-time songs sung by Australian soldiers, mentioning such songs as The Mademoiselle from Armentieres, Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag, Wish Me Luck as You Wave Me Goodbye, Kiss Me Goodnight Sergeant Major. He says that “While the tunes linger in the mind, the lyrics remind us of the […]
The left, the Right, …& the Heights
“…. remember the heights from which you have fallen,” [Rev 2:5] The USA have just held their Presidential elections (in case you missed it!). In the lead up to the election a lot was said about the political Left and the political Right, and about how good or bad “the other side” is. The name of God was […]
God: Friend of Murderers
We once lived and worked in a small country town where a brutal double-murder was committed. The majority of towns people couldn’t cope with any suggestion of redemption for the murderer – “lock him up and throw away the key” was the dominant sentiment! I agreed. In the famous story of the murder of Abel […]