A Great Future for Our Kids
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a dark time for people around the world, and we’re still in it! Of course, there have been darker times in history, but the present has certainly been plenty difficult enough for everyone. With this and other global concerns, we naturally worry about the future for our kids. We are […]
Baptism: True Intimacy
It has given us enormous joy to welcome our first grandchild into the world this last 12 months. It took us back to our own experience of the birth of our children. There is nothing more intimate than the relationship of mother and child; for nine months one is literally inside the other! By the water […]
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 […]
Politics & Grace
In Mark chapter 12, Jesus argues with the Sadducees who wouldn’t believe in the resurrection, and with the Pharisees about which commandment was the most important. These two groups were a bit like the left-wing liberals and right-wing conservatives of today; the former emphasizing individual rights and free thinking, the latter focused on the strict […]
The Second Greatest Commandment
Many people will tell you that the most important thing in the world is just to love people. The problem is that we have many ideas about what love is, and something we think is loving may in the end turn out not to have been for the person’s good, and even actually harmed them. Like […]
Climate for Change
A number of government leaders from around the world are making louder noises in acknowledgement of global climate change, and the necessity of responding to it with new, stronger policies and action in order to prevent dangerous alteration to the world’s environment. Even the Murdoch news empire, a recent strident climate-change denier, has converted, and […]
Grace & Law
There are two false ways of living: 1. to live by a grace that has no law in it, where there is no accountability for one’s actions, and no obligation to live in a true way. 2. to live by law that has no grace in it, where there is only success or failure to […]
Submitting
One Sunday a mum and dad were at church with their children. Their young boy insisted on standing on the chairs. He was placed off the chairs several times and chastised by his dad. After quite a ‘wrestle’, finally he sat, dutifully. His father said that he was a good boy for sitting quietly. He […]
Utter Evil
I was on the small side as a young rider, and I was put on a 16 hands plus thoroughbred. I broke from the trees on the opposite side of a hundred acre paddock, the horse saw home, and bolted. I grabbed one rein in both hands and tried to wheel the horse with all […]
Living With The Disease
I was a teenager at high school in the late 1970s. It was the height of the Cold War between the United States and the West, and the Soviet Union and the East. I remember ‘living and breathing’ the threat of WWIII breaking out, and nuclear winter. In one way or another, humanity has always […]