Weekly Bible Reflection

e live in a world of uncertainty and the unexpected. Where do we look for security and hope? Bewilderment. At the end of John 13 an ominous cloud hung over Jesus’ disciples. For three years they had been with him, increasingly confident he was...

hat is God really like? Who is he and what should we expect from him? We are left with the possibility that there is no way of knowing God. And of course, there are always those who tell us that there is no God – Nietzsche in the 19th century and...

his Sunday is Mother’s Day. Towards the end of the 20th century there were major shifts in the thinking about the role of women and motherhood. Television sitcoms reflected some of these changes – from the nuclear family in ‘Lassie’ with the...

lindness is a dreadful affliction. A blind man begging on the side of the road was a familiar sight in ancient Israel. But the man we read about in John 9 wasn’t blind because of the dusty roads and disease-laden air: he had been born blind. In...

eath is not something we usually bring up in everyday conversation. It’s not polite. Some may recall Woody Allen’s words: “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying”. Yet death is the certainty we...

veryone has regrets. We regret words we let fly in haste; the opportunities we missed or messed up; the relationships we let slip and the ones that we should never have begun. There are all those past actions for which ‘redemption’ seems...

o one likes failure. You may never have experienced it, but it happens, even to the smartest and wisest of people – physicians when they see a patient die knowing they might have done better; Wall Street brokers when they give bad advice to their...

elevision news loves to capture the tears of grieving people. News editors are aware that other people’s tragedies capture our attention: we are drawn to tragedy and catastrophe as long as it doesn’t affect us. Jesus’ tears. Considering the way...

arren Aronofsky’s long-planned film, NOAH, is invading movie theatres everywhere this week. A high budget movie, it picks up and develops, with a deal of latitude, the biblical epic of the flood (Genesis 6:9-9:17). One of the big questions that...

Health. Browsing the net on the subject of fitness and health I notice that a sedentary lifestyle is a significant cause of death in the US. The evidence indicates we need to watch our weight and keep fit. There were warnings against eating too much hi-carb food,...

‘You Are What You Eat’ was a popular television program in the United Kingdom from 2004-2007. It was based on the idea that what we eat affects who we are and what we are like. A cyber-search suggests that the phrase originated in the 19th century with Anthelme...

Justice ‘If God cares and is in control why doesn’t he clean up the mess?’ is a question I was often asked after 9/11. ‘Why doesn’t he intervene and bring to justice the perpetrators of wars, injustice and evil?’ These are valid questions, for our hearts cry out for...

n the movie Up in the Air, George Clooney’s character lives a life committed to getting his ten million air miles. He sees relationships as insignificant compared with the prestige in having the silver card engraved ‘Ryan Bingham #7’. Yet when it...

Leaders. There seems to be something in the human heart that longs for a leader – a leader whose integrity is transparent and who is worthy of our trust. In fact, tough times make us realise how grateful we are when we have leaders who use their position and power to...

Life… The death of Phillip Seymour Hoffman of a heroin overdose in New York’s West Village last Sunday is a tragedy. He had a long-standing partner with whom he had three children; he enjoyed career success with many accolades including an Oscar for his role in...