Weekly Bible Reflection

We don’t normally like to think of ourselves as being meek. These days meekness is usually associated with someone who is weak and submissive. Someone who is timid and easily pushed around. Yet in the third Beatitude in his Sermon on the Mount Jesus says, “Blessed are...

The world loves to laugh. Comedians will always have an audience. People don’t like kill-joys who ruin the party. Yet Jesus says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Mt 5:4). He doesn’t mean that God’s people are always to be...

Happiness is something we long for. Yet happiness is elusive and, at best, momentary. Where then can we find the riches of a lasting experience that satisfies the depths of our soul? Today we turn to the first of Jesus’ Beatitudes found in Matthew 5:3 – “Blessed are...

Heraclitus the 5th century BC Greek philosopher wrote: Unless you expect the unexpected you will never find truth, for it is hard to discover and hard to attain. He was commenting on the creative thinking required to understand the nature and meaning of life. His wise...

Most of us don’t find it hard to imagine a better world, but the question is, ‘How do we get there?’ History is littered with the theories and experiences of political and economic ideas. But history shows that whatever the system, there is still fraud, injustice,...

Two thousand years ago the angels sang at Jesus’ birth, “and on earth, peace …”  But the world hasn’t got any better. Indeed, while peace is something we all long for, it is one thing the world does not have. So, where is the fulfilment of the angelic promise? Before...

Bitterness and anger are the playbook of life around us today - from the bedroom to the corridors of power, from social media to the unrestrained looting in the streets. How should we respond? Back in 1979 the historian and social critic, Christopher Lasch, published...

Augustine of Hippo, one of the great minds of the late Roman Empire, wrestled with the notion of God and the question of evil, before coming to believe that Jesus Christ is truly the Son of God. He goes on in his Confessions to say that as a young adult his prayer...

At midnight in Sydney as the year 2000 and the new millennium began, the word Eternity lit up on the Harbour Bridge. The back story is the personal story of Arthur Stace. Born in poverty to alcoholic parents, he had little education and became a petty criminal, an...

Back in August 2011, The Wall Street Journal carried an article, ‘Reversing the Decay of London Undone’ by Dr. Jonathan Sacks, then chief rabbi in Britain. Dr. Sacks stated, ‘In virtually every Western society in the 1960s there was a moral revolution, an abandonment...

Years ago, I met an academic from China, who told me that when on June 4, 1989, the people’s army turned on the pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square, Marxism and Maoism within him died. He said he knew then that if there was such a thing as truth, it must come...

In an article in The Weekend Australian (July 11-12, 2020) Dr. Greg Sheridan, writing of the cancel culture forces at work within the West, concludes: ‘The West is under profound challenge internally and externally today. The irrational hatred of the West, within the...

With the continued spread of Covid-19, concerns are being raised about the mental health of many who have lost their job, experience loneliness, or have a sense of helplessness – especially young adults. That is the generation that will experience the impact of the...

God’s people will sometimes have doubts about their faith, for there is much in life that threatens to undermine our confidence in a God who is good. How can a good God allow the continuing spread of the novel coronavirus, not least amongst the poor? The only sort of...

In the current crises of Covid-19 and the cultural challenges in the West, is there anywhere can we turn for hope? We may feel inclined to echo the words of Jean Paul Sartre, the French Existentialist who said, ‘That God does not exist I cannot deny; that my whole...

In these troubled times what guidance does the Bible give us on the subject of prayer? Let’s consider Paul the Apostle’s prayer for God’s people in Colossae. He was writing when Rome’s power was supreme. It was an age preoccupied with entertainment, and plagued by...

‘How can we help our broken and divided postmodern world find hope and peace?’ In his Letter to God’s People in Colossae, Paul the Apostle writes of the hope that has awakened their faith in Christ Jesus and their love for one another. He reminds them that this hope...

Back in 2004 Robert Letham in The Holy Trinity commented on the impact of postmodernism on society: ‘In terms of instability and diversity, he said, ‘the postmodern world of constant flux is seeing insecurity, breakdown, and the rise of various forms of terrorism… As...