Do you ever think – “what if?” What if I had married my first love? What if I had pursued my dream to …? What if my parents hadn’t divorced? What if I hadn’t tried drugs/ fallen pregnant/had that car accident?Continue reading
Tag: Bible
If I were king
Do you sometimes wish you could be in charge of the universe and make all the rules? I think many of us believe we know best how others should live and wish we could tell them!
Continue readingRead the manual!
From early 2016
I have recently started a new job (this one!) and two weeks after I started the person I’m replacing left. Fortunately for me, she left me a giant yellow folder full of all the information I need to do her job – the people to contact, the websites to look at and the writing styles and tips that will be useful.
I couldn’t do this job without that file and the training she gave me before she left, and I am grateful for her diligent preparation before her departure.Continue reading
Christianity is not for cowards
People might think that being a Christian is easy, a crutch that gets you through your traumas, a Father Christmas in the sky to pray to, a list of dos and don’ts that you do your best to follow but get forgiveness for when you fail.
However, as a Christian of several decades, I can tell you Christianity is not for cowards; being a Christian requires you to do some very, very hard stuff. Some of the things I find hardest are: forgiving over and over again, submitting to authority, waiting with patience and coping with suffering.Continue reading
Jesus in Jeans – A 21st century parable
If Jesus had chosen to come to earth in modern times, some of His parables may have been a bit different. He used stories and pictures that the people could readily identify with from what they saw around them. For instance, maybe John 15:1-8, instead of being about vinedressing, would have sounded something like this:
Continue readingBible Basics No.2
Have you heard people say ‘I like the Jesus of the New Testament but I don’t like the angry God of the Old Testament?’
Are they two different people and, if not, then why is the Bible even divided into the Old and New Testament?Continue reading
Bible Basics 101
What do the Babel fish of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the movie Apocolypse Now and U2’s The Joshua Tree album have in common? They all refer to things found in the Bible.
So maybe your interest is piqued and you might like to dust it off and check it out, but where do you start?
And there are so many versions! Does it matter which one you read?
Continue readingGod’s character – light
When we try to imagine God, so often we think of some sort of superhuman. That, if God exists, He must be like us but stronger, faster and invincible. Maybe like some sort of Father Christmas or Father Time, old, bearded and benevolent. Or like Zeus, angry and vengeful like a warrior.
However, the Bible tells us that God is not human. We are made in His image – we are like Him in some aspects – and He revealed Himself to us as the man Jesus, but God the Father is not a man, He is a spirit (John 4:24). God does call Himself in the Bible a Father and there is mention of His hands and eyes and hears. But the Bible also uses animal imagery to try to describe God, it talks about God’s wings and Jesus is compared to both a lion and a lamb. And God also uses inanimate things to convey information about His attributes, like God being a pillar of fire and the cloud that the Israelites saw in the wilderness.
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