Weekly Bible Reflection

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...

The Fourth of July celebrations yesterday bring to mind the words of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”. Interestingly, Yuval Noah Harari, an Israeli historian and philosopher, observes in...

Alienation is a word often used to describe our human plight. Everywhere relationships are broken – between or within nations, in the workplace, between friends and within families. The phrase ‘the power of love’ or ‘love is everything’ is said to be the cure-all for...

In an article, ‘Our politicians and media are letting us down’ in The Weekend Australian (June 17-18), Chris Kenny observes: ‘When we see the open deceit and toxicity of politics and the media in the Canberra bubble (Canberra is Australia’s DC), it is tempting to...

AA Milne’s, Christopher Robin’s prayer, ‘Little Boy kneels at the foot of his bed…’ has touched the hearts of millions. The poem is a picture of childhood innocence, a mixture of God language and the distractions of inner thoughts: ‘Wasn’t it fun in the bath tonight?’...

With the anticipated arrival of summer in the northern hemisphere, the Word on Wednesday will offer a series of reflections on the Letter to the Ephesians entitled, ‘Summer Growth’. The substance of the Letter goes to the heart of quintessential Christianity and...

‘Do you want to live forever?’ was the catchy 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 begins. ‘It sounds like science...

Over the last twenty years or so God’s people have been increasingly put on the defensive about their faith. In a climate where people of faith are dismissed as intellectually inept and even as ‘terrorists’, many are fearful of speaking up about what they believe....

Why don’t we pray more often than we do? And how often when we do pray, do we look to the model prayers we find in the Bible – and not least from the lips of Jesus? Dr. JI Packer once commented, ‘I believe that prayer is the measure of God’s people, spiritually, in a...

The loss of someone deeply loved awakens a profound anguish and grief within us. Even some time after a loved one has gone from us, we can unexpectedly find ourselves tearing up. In the course of his last evening with his close followers Jesus told them he was going...

Glen Scrivener’s recent book, The Air We Breathe (2022) compellingly explores the way that Christianity has shaped the moral values of the West. It is a book for those who believe and those who don’t know what to believe. It especially awakens those of us who believe,...

Elections and the resulting political discourse remind us how much most people long for a leader who will bring us justice and peace, protection and prosperity. However, on every occasion our aspirations are dashed as leaders reveal their flaws and failures and...

In his book God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? Dr. John Lennox, emeritus Professor of Mathematics Oxford University, writes, ‘To the majority of those who have reflected deeply and written about the origin and nature of the universe, it has seemed that it...

In his book God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? Dr. John Lennox, emeritus Professor of Mathematics Oxford University, writes, ‘To the majority of those who have reflected deeply and written about the origin and nature of the universe, it has seemed that it...

Easter Day that we celebrate this Sunday is a gala day as we remember Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. His resurrection underscores the validity of the Christian faith. Without it, we are lost. That said, our joy with Jesus’ resurrection raises interesting...