Christmas is an awkward time for many families. This was most true at the first Christmas. 4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went...
Being close to people is tricky because friction is inevitable. People rub against each other because they are different or sinful. Yet managing relational friction well leads to deep and satisfying relationships. Ephesians gives great teaching on this. …speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every...
Do you believe in Hell? Jesus does. In fact Jesus spoke more about Hell than anyone in the Bible. He even uses the fear of Hell as a motivator to obey. 42 “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for...
I love collective nouns for animals because they capture the essence of the animals behaviour: a ‘school’ of fish; a ‘murder’ of crows; a ‘crash’ of rhinoceros; a ‘flock’ of sheep. In the 1990s Bronwyn and I walked through a ‘gang’ of standing water buffalo. There were about 60 in...
I am not much of a follower. I do not follow any rugby team, soccer team, AFL, or cricket team. I do not follow anyone on Facebook, Instagram, snapchat, or twitter. While I like people, I rarely follow the crowd. I do not follow these things because they don’t follow...
What is the difference between shame and being ashamed? Shame is something that is given and when someone owns that shame they feel ashamed. Shame works from outside a person whereas being ashamed works from the inside out. When someone does not receive the shame given by another they are...
On the 11 Sept 2017, the ABC program, Q&A, discussed the concept of marriage. From this discussion some ‘interesting’ statements were made by Merav Michaeli. “Marriage has nothing to do with love but is a tool created to dominate women, and not something that should be sustained”. “The core family...
The same sex marriage debate has caused some to demand that Christian ideas be kept out of legislation with arguments like, ‘Why are Christians trying to force their values on others?’ Is this true? What does the Bible say about faith and politics? 4 For the one in authority is...
When I was a teenager I remember being at church and hearing a middle aged man belt out a hymn at the top of his voice. His words were clear but he was not really in tune. I remember whispering to the person next to me, ‘He sounds like a...
The normal Greek word for “sin,” namely hamartia, means “missing the mark”: shooting at a target and failing to hit it. This is subtly but importantly different from being given a long and fussy list of things you must and mustn’t do and failing to observe them all. In the...
