Weekly Bible Reflection
POSTMODERNISM
Our age of postmodernism arose out of the ashes of the ‘Deconstruction’ of the Age of Reason (Enlightenment). Over the last century science and mathematics pointed to the limits of logic – especially with the greater understanding of the complexity of ‘light’....
Thanksgiving
In September or October 1621 the Pilgrim Fathers enjoyed a special meal expressing their joy and thanks to God. The feast that was within a month or two of the first anniversary of the settlement in Plymouth Harbor, reflected the practice of Harvest Thanksgiving...
SILENCED?
In October 2013, The Wall Street Journal reported an interview with Alan Greenspan about his book, The Map and the Territory. Greenspan commented on a human feature he had not factored in when he was chairman of the Federal Reserve. Referring to the meltdown of the...
Intimidated?
In an article, ‘Faith’s Implacable Enemies’, in The Weekend Australian (November 4-5, 2017), Dyson Heydon, a former justice of the High Court of Australia, writes of the significant shift by society’s elites today away from the humble dependence on the blessing of...
Handing On
Throughout my ministry, I have endeavored to find appropriate ways to hand on the light of God’s redeeming love to non-churchgoing people. Now at this time of aggressive and arrogant atheism, it seems to me that we need to revisit this task. The substance of the...
PARENTING
Parenting is not for the faint-hearted. A respected pediatrician was once asked by a mother when was the best time to put her children to bed. “While you still have the strength,” he replied. Parenting requires time, patience and perseverance. One is never sure from...
IRRATIONAL
In a New York Times article (October 10, 2017), David Brooks commended Richard Thaler, the recent winner of the Nobel Prize in economics. ‘Thaler,’ Brooks commented, ‘took an obvious point, that people don’t always behave rationally, and showed the ways we...
IF
How important it is that we do not lightly dismiss the wisdom of the past, thinking we know better. Yes, we do need to respect those who have a different perspective, but we also need, to use Kipling’s words, to keep our heads, holding firm to God’s commands and the trustworthiness of his promise.
SUFFERING AND GLORY
Why do appalling things happen? Why do events such as the massacre last Sunday in Las Vegas occur? Why do the seemingly innocent suffer? For the professing Christian who says that God not only exists but that he is compassionate and all-powerful, it is one of life’s...
FORGOTTEN SOMETHING
In her Wall Street Journal opinion piece two weeks ago in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Harvey’s devastation of southern Texas (September 7, 2017), Peggy Noonan canvassed the range of responses to assist people in need following the storm. At one point she...
BLESSING
On the occasions – all too rare these days – when there is a serious conversation about God, the discussion focuses on what we might think of God. Dr. Benjamin Jowett was at one time Master of Balliol College, Oxford, England. He was renowned for his sharp mind and...
INGRATITUDE
One of the marks of human selfishness is our failure to say, ‘Thank you.' King Lear, one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies, illustrates this theme. The play tells the story of a man who voluntarily set aside his titles and property in favor of his three daughters,...
ANXIETY
The build up of arms in North Korea and the associated threats are troubling – as we see for example, in the fluctuations of the equity markets. In a world where there is so much division and uncertainty, we need wise and cool heads – wisdom for leaders and cool,...
DOUBT
The Bible also understands our questions in the face of terrorism and the realities of fire and flood, drought and famine. Why doesn’t God just step in? It seems so out of character.
CLARITY
Moral equivalence – saying that something is ‘as bad’ or ‘as good as’, or ‘not as bad as’ by comparison with something else – increasingly dominates many conversations. Commenting on those who say that democracy is just ‘as bad as’ totalitarianism, George Orwell noted...
WHO AM I
‘Who Am I?’ Shakespeare’s Hamlet observed: What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! (Hamlet, II.ii) Consider the bookends...
INTERCESSION
Governments everywhere in the West are so dogged by division that we wonder what the future holds. In an article this week on the failure of the (US) Senate to pass a bill on healthcare reform (Trump, Obamacare and the Art of Fail), Peggy Noonan asks, ‘Is there any...
CONFESSION
In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, by birth a Mede, who became king over the realm of the Chaldeans… I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy… I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession, saying, “O Lord, the great...