It has been a fair while since I needed to be right. Naturally I grew up needing to be right. Most bright young things do. Now I just cringe at the thought. I don’t mean glorying in ignorance; I mean being defined by never being wrong. There are two problems with never being wrong. Firstly, you’re only kidding yourself and secondly, people who are always right may feel self-vindicated but actually appear pretty fragile and silly to most of the rest of us. Someone at church said to me the other day, “I just don’t know any more?!” They were not talking about doubting God or their faith. They were talking about encountering a God who seemed to be reordering their priorities by revealing what really matters to Him. It is a rude discovery to realise that you have been working away for a long time very diligently on the wrong thing! When people are radically converted to Jesus it is a salutary awakening to the fact that so much of life has been directed to wrong things. The main wrong thing I directed my life towards was that it was all about me. What a joke! While this has [continue reading...]
In my talks recently, I have been considering what God is like. I have intentionally been balancing his love and justice. Justice is love! My girls tell me that their mother’s strong, clear convictions have always made them feel safe. They know where they stand, even when they have been on the end of her justice. Advent – “the coming” – leads up to Christmas with the promise of God’s son coming as saviour. That is love! But Advent also prefigures the second coming of Jesus as rightful judge. That’s justice! In Advent we see love and justice hand in hand. This Advent we are going to consider some of the reasons Jesus came. What is God like and what has he sent Jesus to do? ‘Why?’ Is a very western question but not a very biblical one. God’s word shows little interest in why this or that happened. God is much more interested in ‘what’ – in light of this or that, what is your response? Especially, what is your response to God? Psalm 13 starts, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” David, the author, has three whys? Why can’t I find God in these troubles? [continue reading...]
Last Sunday we filled out the National Church Life Survey as a community. The NCLS is the census of the Australian church taken every four years. I had some interesting responses to the survey during the week. Several people reported they found the survey challenged them to reassess their priorities and faith. One person said he found the questions about where the Lordship of Jesus fitted in his life especially challenging. Another said they found the questions implying the necessity of change confronting. The survey asked several questions about trying new things, being outwardly focused and intentionally welcoming, on a personal level, which made them think. Another reported that they found it ironic how in their discussions after the survey there was a determination that life was good and nothing needed to change……ever…..so help me God! We are a mixed bag of children aren’t we? For some reason this made me think of a story I heard recently that made me think. The story is about a sad, isolated, blind man. The blind man sat at a particular spot on a city street with his cap placed on the ground begging. There was a small hand written sign near the [continue reading...]
We have enjoyed the start to our time at St John’s University of Tanzania. Walking around the dry and dusty campus reminds us a lot of our days at Maningrida in Arnhem Land. Our house in Tanzania It’s comfortable but basic and functional and we are settling in well. We are surrounded by open country looking to some hills. Our yard is rather bleak but some new plants are starting to grow. Our neighbour keeps goats, cows, pigs, chooks, ducks, guinea fowl, so we sit down to dinner with the sound of the guinea fowl nesting in our tree for the night. Work is an interesting challenge We share an office with a secondhand computer each and there are no phones, no printers. The five departments of the faculty have a computer per department and there is a printer and a data projector for the whole faculty (31 academic staff). Education classes are all in excess of 700 students. Alison is the only admin person in the faculty – there was NO admin before her -and I will begin teaching soon. Our colleagues Still early days, mainly meeting people and understanding the processes. The university’s second-ever graduation since [continue reading...]
I just cannot get past how important simple things are – things like encouragement. One of my favourite pastoral books by Larry Crabb is called, “Encouragement: The Key to Caring”. It is a great book that helps us understand how encourage ment works. The other night at Church Together, Dr Tony Campolo encouraged people to get in touch with their power to make a difference. Knowing the good doctor as I do, my hunch is that he really wanted to jump off the stage and grab people round the neck and shake them out of their comfort and complacency. But he didn’t; he encouraged us to know the joy of getting out of our safety zones and involved with people less fortunate. A member of the Art Group at St Philips, who displayed high quality work at our Sundowner the other night, was telling me how they have improved as artists over the past four years. She puts the improvement down to the group’s mutual encouragement of one another. Painting is risky; people look at what you have done and have their opinions. Encouragement is the power for growth and perseverance and overcoming. When one of my beautiful daughters is un packing [continue reading...]