It’s been nearly a month now since a small spacecraft landed on Mars. It had been many years in planning, and it’s successful landing was a remarkable achievement. One of its objectives is to bring back samples of Mars rock to the earth. But it will be many years before they get here. The spacecraft is aptly named ‘Perseverance’. In it for the long haul. In many ways it’s like the end of the pandemic – we can see light…
“Our planet was perfect – until a new force came along that tilted it off balance – humans.” (David Attenborough – BBC) There seems to be a view that is growing in popularity that goes something like this: ‘The earth, with all it’s life and ecosystems, has been around for millions/billions of years, evolving into something approaching perfection. Very recently (on an evolutionary timescale), human beings have appeared, and their principal impact has been to pollute and destroy the earth…
Well that was 2020. Much has been said – a year like no other, unprecedented, good to see the back of it. And so on. It didn’t finish with the usual celebrations, but there was one significant event that coincided with December 31st. I finished the book of Revelation in my daily study. You may be tempted to stop reading here – but bear with me. The book of Revelation is full of imagery and can be read in different…
We’ve just watched the latest announcements about lockdown over Christmas. It changed our plans somewhat – our son and his wife had been planning to come up this week, but they live in London… The timing could hardly have been worse. Lockdown in a matter of hours, with only a few days to go before Christmas. First thing for them was to arrange for sufficient food – then chat with the family. I suppose the same phrase could have been…
The last blog post was about being renewed in love. I tried to define love as ‘seeking the best in another whatever the personal cost’. When it comes to loving God, however, that’s not so easy to apply. How can we seek God’s best? He is already perfect, and has no need of anything, so what could we possibly do? Jesus helps here. He says that if we love him, we will obey his commandments. On a human level, such…
We’ve been looking at being renewed in Love. I wonder what you think about when you hear that? Maybe we’ll end up feeling better – feeling more loved? Maybe that will make us feel more like loving others. The Bible has a lot to say about love. It tells us that God is love. How he loved even before the foundation of the world, of a love that existed within the three persons of the Trinity. That he is the…
The topic this week is Renewed in Witnessing A witness is somebody who testifies what they’ve seen and heard. And it seems to me that, Biblically, there are two strands of evangelism or witnessing. There’s the evangelist, the one who is gifted in evangelism in the proclamation of the gospel. Not only do those individuals have a gift but they’re also seen as a gift to the church. There’s a verse in Ephesians 4 about how God gave apostles, prophets,…
Renewed in Faith This week’s topic in our 40 Days of Renewal series is Faith. Faith is one of those words that’s used a lot and can mean different things. So I thought it might be helpful to try to understand what faith is, particularly from a Biblical point of view. What is faith? The schoolboy put his hand up “It’s believing something you know isn’t true!” Haha! But deep down, I wonder if we don’t secretly worry about whether…
It’s a great thing to look at and understand the Holy Spirit. He is the third person of the Trinity, which makes him equal with the Father and the Son. But he can be the hardest to understand. We can easily relate to the idea of Father and Son, because they are a part of our everyday lives and vocabulary. But the Holy Spirit is somehow more mysterious. I’m not going to launch into an exhaustive examination of the Holy…
Earlier in the week, I spoke about some verses which have been quite important to me, which started off on a hospital bed! “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you” (Isaiah 43:2). Today I want to look at how that might work. Something that’s helped me quite a lot is an incident that happened in David’s life. In 1 Samuel 13 the Amalekites have been along and kidnapped the wives and children of David and his…