Posts from December 2018

Pastors Ponderings

On that first Christmas, some 2000 years ago, a baby was born. He came into the world in much the same manner as all other babies of the time, without the aids of modern maternity facilities. But this was no ordinary baby. Jesus, as he was named, was God coming into this world as a human being. Why would the One who exists outside time and space come as a helpless, dependent baby? Why would the very Creator of the…

Oh, no, I’ve forgotten all my memory verses!

  And I knew so many, too! From a very young age I’d learnt the Scriptures verse after verse, passage after passage What a heritage! What a privilege to have these treasures tucked away in my heart and mind. As I reflected on this, a feeling of deep regret came over me because I know my own children didn’t have the same opportunity to memorise Scriptures in the same way that I had. Week after week we would learn our…

Pastors Ponderings

Making Joy Complete Recently we watched a video in Young-Adults group where John Piper was reading from C S Lewis in response to a question that a lot of people (particularly from an atheistic perspective) ask about God: Why does God want us to worship him?  Typically, we recognise the seeking of praise from others as a childish behaviour and a significant character flaw when we see it in grown adults.Surely the morally perfect God who made the universe cannot…

Faltering Steps

Paul tells us more than once to be imitators of Christ and I woke up this morning with words from a passage in Philippians going through my mind. Our Lord Jesus Christ didn’t consider equality with God a thing to be grasped; he didn’t hang on to this as a right. No, instead, he humbled himself…took on the very nature of a servant…the form of man. He walked in our shoes to such an extent that it led him to…

Pastors Ponderings

Last Sunday we had the pleasure of having three people (Graham, Bonnie and Phil) sharing their perspective on what church is to them.  There were a number of analogies given such as ‘family’ or ‘parts of a body’ but I have to say my favourite was a ‘stew’.  Bonnie was suggesting that through a very odd mix of ingredients that needed very different preparation, something messy but heart-warming was produced.  All the analogies linked with the sense that all of…

I don’t want to be tomorrow what I am today

I press on toward the goal. I once heard someone say that if you woke up wanting to sing you’re a singer. I guess if I woke up and wanted to go for a jog, I’d be a jogger. Well, I wake up and want to write…so I guess that makes me a writer. Writing is the way I process and express my thoughts. It’s one of the ways I talk to loved ones, encourage friends, pray or, at times,…