Weekly Bible Reflection

In his post, ‘Unherd’, on September 24, 2023, Peter Franklin comments on a new book, The Great Dechurching, by Jim Davis and Michael Graham (August, 2023). They observe that in recent years some 40 million Americans have stopped attending church. Now it’s easy to say...

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely…" wrote Lord Acton, in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887. Human institutions and governments don’t give us grounds for optimism, for none is perfect. No matter how good or well intentioned, all...

Many in the West follow the mantra: ‘All religions are the same’. This popular form of pluralism seems to make sense, but it fails to account for the many significant differences between the world’s great religions. A more sophisticated form of pluralism argues that...

Most of us find ourselves in situations where the name of God is mocked. This was happening at Belshazzar’s great feast described in the Book of Daniel, chapter 5. Persia, under the military leadership of Cyrus at the time, was threatening Babylonia’s hegemony....

It takes courage to stand up for what you believe to be the truth. In the sixth century BC, leading lights in Jewish society: Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were, with Daniel, exiles in Babylon at the time of Nebuchadnezzar. Like Daniel they enjoyed the privilege of...

Dreams fascinate us. They can tease us with hopes that they may come true, but they can also terrify. In the past, as in some cultures today, dreams were often treated as portents of the future. So people called on the ‘wise’ and fortune-tellers to interpret their...

In our changing world the words, ‘In God we trust’ are fading into the mists of time. We’re now living in a brave new world where, in the west, powerful and influential voices believe they can chart a path to a secure future, even though it may mean silencing freedom...

‘Count your blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done,’ are the words of an old Christian song. How easily we forget to thank God for the countless good things he provides for us. We take it all for granted. But there is...

CS Lewis once observed, ‘I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to "rejoice" as much as by anything else’. Yet, rejoicing is not just an apostolic injunction. Various psalms in the Old Testament Psalter pulsate with exhortations to sing...

One of the things I love about the Bible is its earthy realism. It understands the world we live in – the good and the bad, the grief and the joys. It also understands how we feel about life’s injustices especially when we see people who mock the notion of God,...

In his Screwtape Letters CS Lewis says that there are two equal and opposite errors that people fall into regarding the dark powers. One mistake is to disbelieve in their existence, the other is to believe in them to excess. In Ephesians chapter 6, verses 10 through...

Every day we make decisions. It’s part of being human. We can choose. But we know that there are some decisions in life where we have a sense of obligation – a sense of duty. But such obligations need to be awakened. Children obey your parents in the Lord, for this is...

In ‘What Are People For’, an essay in his 2002 The Art of the Commonplace, Wendell Berry writes, “Marriage, in what is evidently its most popular version, is now on the one hand an intimate ‘relationship’ involving (ideally) two successful careerists in the same bed,...

How are we to reach a world where voices in the media and social media criticizing Christianity have morphed from constructive conversation into emotive smearing? Paul’s words in Ephesians chapter 5, verses 1and 2 are key to the life God calls us to: Be imitators of...

In Christians: The Urgent Case for Jesus in Our World (2021), Dr Greg Sheridan, Australian foreign affairs journalist and writer, comments: ‘In the West… religious belief has been in serious decline in recent years. The loss of faith is part of a broad movement in the...

Commenting on how we understand Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), Rebecca McLaughlin writes: ‘we hear a call to care for strangers in need. But Jesus’s first audience heard more. They heard a story of love across racial, religious, and political...

Sixty years ago the writer, M.E. Macdonald wrote: The real menace to life in the world today is not the hydrogen bomb… but the fact of proximity without community (M.E. Macdonald, The Need To Believe, 1959, p.82). And nothing has changed. We see it exemplified on the...

How can we weather the challenges of our changing and uncertain world? Come with me to Ephesians chapter 3, verses 14 through 21 where we find one of the great prayers of the Bible. The curtain over Paul the Apostle is drawn aside and we are given a glimpse of him at...