Pastoral Messages (Page 75)

By Not Known Many find that people bring us our greatest pain and pleasure. Both pain and pleasure increase as the distance between people diminishes in our families. Why is this so? The answer is simple. God made us for relationships (Gen 2:18). This is no surprise, since the ‘us’ of the triune God is essentially relational (Gen 1:26). It is his gift to place…

By Not Known There”s something about a prize that makes us want it. Whether it”s the door prize at a social function, an academic award or a sporting trophy – we want to win. Our desire for the prize can push us to amazing acts of focus, self-discipline and self-sacrifice. But what of we can”t see the prize? What if all we can see are the…

By Not Known When life seems tough it is easy to go into a downward spiral. We may look at our problems (and only our problems), complain that no one has it as tough as us and whine that we are all alone. All these take an added dimension when our complaint is about the toughness of following Jesus. It is no wonder that others abandon us when we wallow in such…

By Not Known Faith works! That’s a simple statement to make after walking through the ‘portrait gallery’ of faithful men and women in the era before Jesus (Heb 11). Christians have long discussed the relationship between faith and works. Technically, it’s a discussion about justification and sanctification. The modern discussion has been running…

By Not Known Someone has identified loneliness and social fragmentation as a feature of our times. We busily pursue our own agendas and make only passing connections with others – and many of these are electronic and fragmentary anyway. This can also happen in church. Let’s face it, church gatherings are sometimes dull and church people sometimes…

By Not Known Have you ever been in a plane during a hard landing? It’s uncomfortable and even frightening. The end of a journey can be a time of fear and uncertainty as the era of the familiar yields to a new unknown. It was like that when Jesus came. Each Gospel makes that point rather forcibly in the introductory section. The coming of Jesus was a decisive end to…

By Not Known God’s will is sometimes clear. Thus, when Jesus was in his garden agony he knew full well that it was the father’s will that he go to the Cross (Lke 22:42). The only question was whether he would obey this revealed will. It’s the same when we have a temptation to sin. If we know our Bible, we know God’s will. The only question is…

By Not Known Where is our sense of belonging and who are our ‘kin’? Many of us will point to our earthly family or maybe to a tight-knit workplace, club or such like. For Christian people, that sense of belonging is expressed in a phrase ‘the communion of saints’. We affirm our belief in this every time we say the Apostles’ Creed. However,…