Articles (Page 81)

By Not Known 2O08 has not been much of a year for humanity. Governments and key international bodies again largely failed to restrain evil and seemed to have missed their chance on climate change. Greed and fear gripped the financial markets and spilled over into major economic difficulties. Violence remained in the usual trouble spots and had a final splurge in the…

By Not Known It’s easy to be joyful at this season. There are holidays, the streets are brightly lit, greetings and gifts are exchanged and parties are held. It’s worth examining this joy. Where is our joy located? What is the occasion of our joy? Where is our joy located? There’s a joy in the body as we rest, eat and drink. There’s a joy in our…

By Not Known God was and God created. And behold there were people, one with the earth from whose dust we are formed, but also one with God whose image we bare and whose breath give life. There we were, true children of the soil, but also the family of God. That’s us isn’t it? Made from the elements of the earth, yet made to be God’s family. Our natural…

By Not Known ‘Do It Yourself‘ (DIY) is back in vogue. We head to the hardware store, buy some gear and tackle that home project. But DIY can be our nightmare and a contractor’s dream – we mess up and then pay up as the contractor repairs our damage. DIY can be a nightmare in home repairs. DIY is a disaster when it comes to repairing our…

By Not Known Advances in medicine mean that we now have increasing control over both ends of human life. Children who were once inconceivable are now healthy toddlers. The timing and manner of death is now more manageable. However, increasing control also means increasing dilemmas. Euthanasia is back in public discussion. Consider these scenes … Uncle Jack is in the…

By Not Known Our church family includes men and women who struggle with homosexuality, along with such heterosexual issues as premarital sex and adultery. It also includes people who struggle with greed, selfishness, hatred and such like. That should not surprise us, for Paul saw the same struggles when he looked at the early church (see 1 Cor 6:9- 1O for a fuller list).…

By Not Known My wife and I have moved house ten times since we married. Each move sees plenty of clutter to be sifted and trashed. Clutter accumulates. It’s the same in the church of Jesus Christ. By the time of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation there was a huge problem. The church still professed the basics of the faith, but these basics were almost…

By Not Known A friend was so excited that he kept telling everyone he met after a church service, how inspiring, how full of zing and how ‘anointed’ the sermon was. His jaw however dropped and was at a loss for words when a fellow congregant asked him what had he learnt from the sermon. A similar mindset was reflected during the recent financial crisis when…

By Not Known Saul, as the first king of Israel gave us much for for thought. His recklessness and arrogance had caused his downfall in so many ways. He failed as God’s king because he took things into his own hands and did many things with utter disregard for God and his instructions. He went for personal honour instead of God’s. In the end, he was rejected.…

By Not Known Our Sunshine fellowship recently had a talk on Dementia – a degeneration of brain function due to damage or disease with numerous symptoms. ‘Do you remember locking your car dȯor just now?‘ It is easy for younger folks to simply dismiss the topic as one for the aged and to worry about it at later times. But this illness creeps silently and…