During the worst of the COVID crisis this year (2020), in Australia you saw people stay at home, isolate as best as they could, kept their movements minimal, wore masks, washed their hands, kept a distance from other people. They knew that they were at war and they needed to take precautions. It was a […]
Jeremiah had really looked. He had observed the poor, the rich, the princes, the rulers, the religious elite and he had come up empty. Jeremiah would have been cut up about this. Everything depended on him finding just one “righteous man.” The fate of the whole city of Jerusalem relied on him finding this one […]
Using that metaphor of a deer, the Psalmist is expressing the deep and desperate longing for something and that something or somebody is God. It isn’t just, I really would like to go back to church after COVID is finished but something really far more desperate, something that absolutely consumes the Psalmist. He feels spiritually […]
The thing is that the city of Ephesus was known for its goddess Artemis, the goddess with multiple breasts. Ritual sexual behaviour and prostitution was part of their worship and the language and jokes in the city of Ephesus were often overtly sexual and crude. In that sense, the language and humour of Ephesus are […]
In this Psalm we find David nailing his colours to the mast. He says God is the one I love, he is the one I follow. I will not surrender, I will not retreat. I will choose to go his way, no matter what battle I face. I will trust him always and I will […]
What Paul is doing here is urging the Ephesians to continue on in their education about Christ. It is always so easy to go backwards instead of forwards. The problem that Paul is dealing with here is that for the Christian the old garments of ignorance and death are very comfortable. People go to a […]
The Bible teaches that in God’s order it is the parents who have primary responsibility for teaching children the truth about God and his will (Deuteronomy 6:4–9; Ephesians 6:4). As we know from reading Deuteronomy 6, a parent is to teach their children about God during their waking hours, as they observe life, as they […]
God is presented immediately in this psalm as ‘our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble.’ Amidst a world of difficulty and trial, of violence and war, there is peace and security to be found with God. This is true, yet the challenge remains for Christians to consider whether what is […]