Archives: life

Delightful breezes from the Psalms

Life

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Reading the Psalms is always a great delight. It is easy to notice when it is one of those delightful kind of Psalms. But some others, of course, take you through the valley of the shadow before the delight arrives. It certainly does come, but only as if through the darkness. I am glad not many are as black as Psalm 88; man, it must take you low, if its high point reads, “You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness.” (Ps 88:18). But even these dark chapters from the Psalmist’s life can resonate with the ones the author of life is writing in your life story. In some (possibly sick) way, this can provide you some encouragement and help (although I never really understand how this works; you say to a friend, “I am feeling pretty low”, and they say, “Me too”, and you both feel better???)

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Is anyone righteous?

Life, Sola Panel

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This is a postscript to my biblical word power series, responding to an excellent question from a bloke at my previous church:

Ecclesiastes 7:20 states that there is not a righteous man on earth. Psalm 14 states that there is no one righteous. So why does the Bible say that Noah, David and others were righteous? It seems to be a contradiction.

This is a very deep question, and a complete answer would be much too long! Nevertheless, I think that the definition of righteousness that I’ve provided so far in my series can go a long way to help us answer this question. We saw that:

Righteousness = being in line with a standard.

Which standard are we talking about? Well, it depends. What does it depend on? You guessed it: on the context!

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History of the ordinary

Life

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History ‘from below’ gets down and dirty. It is a pity it hurts so much to do it.

The ‘Great Ones’ of human history often earn the acclaim they so enjoy to propagate—at the expense of many ordinary people. These ordinary people either made them what they became (without thanks), or were crushed by them in the process of their exaltation (without mercy). Either way, there are valleys of dried bones beneath the feet of those who call themselves benefactors.

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Teaching the Psalms to our children

Life, Sola Panel

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Picture my husband and I sitting side-by-side on the couch in the semi-darkness, watching a DVD. There’s the patter of little feet on the floorboards. A plaintive voice says, “Mummy, I’m scared, I can’t sleep!” And as always, there’s the same response: “Do you want me to pray with you?” (more…)

Fixed NIV fixed by fixers with a New new NIV

Life

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The New International Version (NIV) translation of the Bible was good. Really, really good. So good that even the bits that weren’t quite as good were still pretty good. I used mine as my regular daily Bible for many years. (more…)

Who’s telling the story?

Life

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One of the things that I’ve learned over the years is that it’s always a good idea to know who’s telling you the story and why they are telling it. These are particularly important questions to ask when it comes to telling the story of sex in our society. (To see why telling the story of sex is important, see my original post on writing an evangelistic talk about sex.) In God’s kindness, while wandering aimlessly around the net earlier in the year, preparing for a talk on pornography (there’s a theme here!), I stumbled across a fascinating masters thesis on sex in advertising by Ilona Pawlowski at Canterbury University in Christchurch, New Zealand. (more…)

His eye is on the magpie

Life

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Last week my children made an exciting discovery: high up in the branches of the gum tree in the back yard of the house next door, a magpie was building a nest. For three days, we were transfixed, taking it in turns to look through the binoculars and watch him flying up with tiny sticks, one at a time, carefully adding them to the nest.

On the fourth day, it was windy, and we craned our necks, anxiously watching the upper branches of the gum tree. Would the nest survive? Had this little magpie chosen the wisest place to build a home for his family? We talked about how sad it would be for the poor bird if all his hard work was lost in a sudden gust of wind.

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Is history what you make, or what you receive?

Life

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History. We might be standing in it, but which direction are we looking?

The Terminator told us he would be back, but the latest version disappointed fans because the Governor of California was reduced to a Computer Animated bit-part. For the Australian, T4 was rescued somewhat by the presence of our own Sam Worthington—but only just!

Even though it struggles a bit with the inherent fatalism of a future that seems to march inevitably towards the present, no matter what is done in the present, a major theme of this series of movies now stretching across a quarter of a century is that the future is not fixed; fate is what you make.

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God’s cure for weariness

Life, Sola Panel

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Weary (adj.) Physically or mentally fatigued. Having one’s interest, forbearance, or indulgence worn out. Extremely tired: bleary, dead, drained, exhausted, fatigued, rundown, spent, tired out, wearied, weariful, worn-down, worn-out.

It was a weariful week. It came right at the end of three months of draining ministry. I’d been looking forward to this week for months. I’d been telling myself that I just had to make it through the next month/week/day, and then I could rest.

As I spoke the final words of my final seminar, I could feel the burden lifting. Yes! Time for relaxation! But it seems God had other ideas. My week of rest turned out to be a week of sickness, exhaustion and discouragement.

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The noughties version of the devil made me do it?

Life

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My recent posts have been about my thinking and preparation for an evangelistic talk on the topic ‘Free for sex or living in bondage?’. Obviously the title assumes that if you don’t have a Christian view of humanity and sexuality, you are living in bondage. So is there any argument to be made that the modern secular view of sex is, in fact, bondage of some kind?

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