Advent - Week 2 – We are family… Today is the second Sunday of Advent.  It never ceases to amaze the unity we see in Scripture.  Despite the fact that the Bible was written over many centuries by many different authors, there is this one single unifying thread that keeps coming to the fore, the birth of the Messiah.  And the purpose of Christ’s birth is also clear, namely, the forgiveness of sins and salvation of sinners for all who come to believe, to the glory of God.   The gospel was promised in Gen 3:15 and now in Genesis 12:1-3, we see another new...

Someone’s last words are often considered important.  Just Google ‘Famous Last Words’ and you’ll find hundreds of them – everything from Winston Churchill’s, “I’m bored!” to Frank Sinatra’s, “I’m losing it!”  Quite frankly I find most of them rather trite and some of them objectionable.  There’s actress Joan Crawford’s rebuke of her housekeeper who was praying: “Don’t you dare ask God to help me!” In the Bible the Gospel writers considered the last words of Jesus before His death on the cross important too... important enough to record them for us.  In all there are seven sayings from the cross.  They...

The scientist, Albert Einstein, was once asked to explain his famous theory of relativity to a scientific novice.  He is said to have replied: “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour.  Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.  THAT'S relativity.” Relativity is an issue that works itself out in all kinds of areas of daily life. One of my memories of living out west, in Narrabri, during some drought years, was the dust storms.  They presented an eerie scenario – with visibility down to a...

Over Christmas visitors from Brisbane told us how they had inspected a majestic Queenslander home – the kind you still frequently see in older suburbs around Brisbane.  What put them off buying the house was the terrible slope in the floor of the main living area.  While it might have been great for their boys for racing toy cars downhill they knew that some speedy renovations would need to be done.  The problem lay in the foundations – some of the stumps under the house had settled considerably more than others. Of course a slightly sloping floor in an older house...

Recently someone questioned Christmas celebrations.  He asked, “Why should we bother with Christmas?  Isn’t it just totally irrelevant for our day an age – after all it is 2022?!”  One of the chaps in the group responded, “So, it’s two-thousand and twenty-two years, since when...?”  There was a very telling silence in the group as they pondered the question.  Since no one answered, the second chap said, “Have a joyful Christmas!” as he walked away. There’s no doubt that there are moves to sideline Christmas celebrations in our Western culture – particularly with regard to its religious connections.  Do we still...

Children often struggle to sort out fact from fantasy when it comes to Christmas.  I recall the growing scepticism of one of my own children and how that increased after she noticed that two different retail stores had two quite different looking Santas.  On the other hand there’s the story of the lad who became even more convinced that Santa was real after his parents took him to a social event where Santa made an appearance.  The parents had been asked to bring presents for their own kids.  This lad’s mother had bought each of her three children a beach towel...

An elderly saint once made a comment that has always stuck with me.  She said, “A Bible that’s tattered and falling apart usually belongs to a person who isn’t.”  Good one!  I’ve since traced that comment back to Charles Spurgeon. I thought about this recently while speaking to a Primary School teacher.  Apparently her school has just extended the working hours of the school psychologist so that it’s now a full time position.  That suggests something about the number of troubled children in our schools.  In fact the rise in mental health problems among our school children has escalated in the...

Question:  What do autism, Asperger syndrome, ADHD, bi-polar disorder, bulimia and OCD all have in common?  Answer: They are all labels for mental conditions or personality disorders that make life challenging for those who have been assigned those labels.  You may know some additional conditions that I have not listed, because there are literally dozens of such conditions. It is not my intention here to play down in any way the seriousness of mental illness or to minimize the hardship brought about by personality disorders.  Over the years I have counselled too many people who struggled to come to terms with...

The author of the book of Hebrews in the Bible urges his readers to be hospitable – or in his words – to entertain strangers.  And he’s not the only writer in the Bible to urge us to be welcoming of others.  The apostle Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans to “practice hospitality”.  The apostle Peter tells us to “offer hospitality to one another.” Of course it’s not always easy in all circumstances to be hospitable.  It takes time and effort.  I guess that’s why the apostle Peter adds the rider that we should do it “...without grumbling!” ...

I once remarked to a colleague how unfair it was of the devil to tempt Eve in the Garden of Eden while Adam was away counting his sheep.  His reply...?  John, you’d better read that story in Genesis 3 again.  I did!  Stone the crows!  How can you read a Bible story so often and yet miss a crucial point? During my years of full-time pastoral ministry my goal was to read the Bible from cover to cover, annually.  Yet it seems I’d always read, without really noticing, that when Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, she then gave some to...

When someone speaks of their suffering as a cross to bear, I always feel a little uncomfortable.  Is that really what Jesus had in mind when He told us to take up our cross and follow Him?  I think for example, of an acquaintance who was married to a woman who was a particularly difficult person to get on with.  He once candidly remarked that his wife was a cross God had given him to bear.  I was tempted to ask him why he had married her but wisdom dictated that I let that go through to the keeper. An elderly...

He came out of the shop and stood there... too long... scanning the car park.  He caught my eye, and with a shrug took off for a small sedan in the second row of cars. So?  Big deal!  We all forget at times where we parked our car.  That’s happened to me more than once... usually because I’m preoccupied with my mental shopping list.  Okay, but sometimes it’s a little more serious. A parishioner once phoned the police from the shops to report his car stolen.  He gave them his rego details and took a taxi home.  The next morning a...

I recall once asking my Scripture Class students: “How does someone become a Christian?”  Several young people responded: “By going to church!” “Well, that’s not a bad answer in as far as it goes.  It’s certainly a much better answer than that of many people today who say, “You don’t have to go to church to be a Christian!”  And of course there are many other people who would never go so far as to actually say that, but they do live that out in their weekly routine – they believe in Jesus but church rarely comes onto their radar. So...

Recently I had cause to return to where I spent my teenage years and early adulthood.  I came home a week later with two lasting impressions. The first thing that blew me away was Melbourne’s suburban sprawl.  The country roads with their dairy farms, where my friends and I rode our bicycles as 14-year olds, are now densely packed suburban streets.  It was somewhat disorienting.  My recognisable landmarks had virtually all disappeared.  I took the train from the city out to where I used to live.  It was trip that for some 12-months I did back and forth five times a...

He was a good-natured bloke who got on well with all and sundry.  He lightened up the room during coffee breaks with his jovial sense of good humour.  If something needed doing around the place he was quick to volunteer.  I would say that he was a good role-model.  However, I often found myself wondering: Where is this guy at when it comes to God? The other morning I decided there was something to be said for tackling him head-on.  So I asked him point-blank, “So Fred, why aren’t you a Christian?”  I figured one possibility would be that he’d protest...

One of the blokes at the Men’s Shed had some time out, after being taken by ambulance to hospital.  He returned this week, minus part of his large intestine, but not minus his usual sense of good humour. I asked him what would have happened if the medical team had not been able to bring him safely through his health crisis.  Would he have been prepared to face his maker?  He assured me that this wasn’t a problem for him.  He then proceeded to tell me that we’re really no different to a worm – when it dies it just ceases...

My recent Blogs have been about emotions and feelings – and how to put those sentiments into perspective so they don’t dominate our lives.  There’s one special feeling I still want to touch on: the feeling of the presence of God, or, if you like, emotions that come from special spiritual experiences.  Jonathan Edwards wrote a whole book on this subject: Religious Affections. As a pastor I’ve met folk who, for better or worse, had intense feelings on this subject.  At one end of the spectrum are those who have had some euphoric experience of God’s presence, at the other end...

Emotions are wonderful.  They lift us up to dizzying heights of ecstasy and delight.  Think of the newlywed bride.  She’s just over the moon about this knight in shining armour who has just become her husband.  Or the father in the maternity hospital holding his newborn son while tears of wonder and joy trickle down his cheeks. Emotions are painful.  They plunge us down into the depths of grief and despair.  Think of the parents with aching hearts.  They’ve just left the hospital where the life-support system of their daughter was turned off.  Or the devastated young couple who, after many...

Question: what’s the relationship between the head and the heart?  We humans have emotions... but we also have the ability to reason.  The Lord made us with a head to think but also with a heart to love.  So how do we put those two things together? I ask that question because lately the subject of emotions has been on my mind somewhat.  Maybe that seems an odd thing to say – because I am doing some reasoning about my emotions; I’m using my head to think about my heart. You may wonder what brought this on.  Well, within the space...

The young couple were planning to marry but they were going through a rough patch.  I wasn’t the only one in our church who noticed the change in body language.  My wife commented on it too.  On Sunday after church I asked the bloke about it.  Frank admitted things were not going well.  A week later at church I took them both aside and said, “You guys have been making some tentative wedding plans, how about we begin some pre-marriage counselling.”  After some hesitation they both agreed so we set a date for our first meeting. It’s not often that my...