Weekly Bible Reflection

There are many things in life that baffle and trouble us. If God is almighty and all loving, why does he allow pain and suffering, evil and injustice to run riot through the world? From the wildfires in Los Angeles to conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, why does...

Martin Luther King Junior’s 1963 Washington Speech, “I have a dream”, fired the hearts of American people across the racial divide to a new vision and energy to promote harmony and peace. Yet within five years Martin Luther King himself was dead, gunned down by an...

Writing in The Weekend Australian (01/4-5/25), Greg Craven, former vice-chancellor of The Australian Catholic University, observes that Christmas has not merely “become commercial … but that it has become materialist. “All of which is odd,” he continues, “in a nation...

Another day. Another year. A year of change…? In his Choruses from the Rock written in 1934, TS Eliot prophetically observed:   But it seems that something has happened that has never happened before:       though we know not just when, or why, or how, or where.   ...

Does Christmas hold out something special for you? A time to be with family? A joyful celebration? Or is it nothing but fake news and a season of stress? Let me touch on two scenes in the biblical narrative in Luke chapter 2. But first, let’s remember who the writer...

We all like to think that there are areas in our life where we are in control. CS Lewis in Surprised by Joy wrote of his pre-Christian phase: “… But, of course, what mattered most of all was my deep-seated hatred of authority, my monstrous individualism, my...

“Prepare ye the way of the Lord …” are the opening words of the Broadway musical Godspell, that was released in 1971. The lyrics pick up the theme of John the Baptist’s preaching some two millennia ago as he prepared people for the coming of God’s promised Messiah or...

"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely," Lord Acton wrote in his correspondence with Bishop Creighton in England in 1887. Reflecting on the moral issues in writing a history of the Inquisition, Lord Acton considered that all people, including...

‘Thanksgiving’ in America is one of the delights Judith and I experienced when we moved to New York in 2001. Despite the evil events of September 11, 2001 people at our first Thanksgiving Dinner expressed their thanks for the way the Lord had used the events of 9/11...

Jesus’s physical resurrection from the dead is fundamental to the Christian faith. Without it, as Paul the Apostle says in First Corinthians, chapter 15, our faith is meaningless: we would have no assurance of our broken relationship with God being restored and no...

Back in 1995 Joan Osborne came and went with the hit, What if God Was One of Us? On the surface it asked the seemingly impossible question about seeing God face to face in human form. What would we do if we knew his name, saw his face, and his glory? It’s a song that...

In his Pensées Blaise Pascal, the 17th century French mathematician and philosopher wrote, “Everyone seeks happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end…” John the Gospel writer tells us of a woman at a well in...

‘Do you want to live forever?’ was the question leading into an article, ‘From Here to Eternity’ in The Weekend Australian magazine (May 27-28, 2023). ‘Coming back from the dead, then living as an immortal?’ the article began. ‘It sounds like science fiction, but the...

The subject of death is not something we usually discuss. It’s too personal and confronting. Yet it’s the ultimate certainty we all face. It’s why literature, film and philosophy so often dwell on the themes of our mortality. But it’s rare that anyone claims they can...

In March 1973, Pink Floyd introduced the line, ‘The dark side of the moon’. The album enjoyed great success addressing dark questions about life. The theme of darkness surfaced again with the 2013 movie, Gravity where Sandra Bullock is left untethered in space. The...

Jean Paul Sartre, the French existentialist, anticipated the sense of aloneness people today are experiencing when he wrote, ‘That God does not exist, I cannot deny; That my whole being cries out for God, I cannot forget’. I am not suggesting that we need to invent a...

There are many troubling issues around us today – the cost of living, the divisions in society, opioid and alcohol abuse, homelessness and the rising power and influence of autocratic leaders. Many long for leaders of integrity in the West who will promote impartial...

HG Wells, historian and author of The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds once commented: ‘I am an historian. I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ...