Prayer is more than useful, it is home. In this Psalm, mediating on our troubled world drives us to seek wisdom from God. Wisdom, in turn, drives us to seek grace from God – that he would give us joy … Read more
Category: Suffering
James 5:7-12. The truth about happiness (Lent 2)
As James finishes his letter he returns to the themes he opened with – how to endure, suffering and prayer. He gives us the encouragement of examples of endurance (the prophets in verse 10 and Job in verse 11) who … Read more
James 1:1-18. All Joy
Introducing James & James 1:1-18. What strikes readers in Melbourne today about the letter is how disciplined he expects the Christian life will be. There is no room for sentimentality but there is lots of room for grace in … Read more
Luke 21.5-38. The end of time
A friend recently said that we live in times that feel apocalyptic. He was right, these are the last days and they have been so since the resurrection of Jesus. Of course, false prophets arise in times like ours to … Read more
A service to remember & be reconciled
Some griefs cannot be named or spoken. There are days when our sense of having failed love, life and God is too large to carry. There are people whose wounds span generations and even death. Here is a service of … Read more
Psalm 88. Despair
Our culture is shallow and it produces shallowness in the church. We are addicted to platitudes. We run from negative emotions or try to numb them or drown them out without listening to what they can teach us. One of … Read more
Genesis 3. Meaninglessness
The American sociologist, James Davison Hunter, points out that we began the modern world by looking for new sources of certainty but now our words have become unhinged, separated from the world we must live in. This happened because we