thinking honestly about life and faith
Every year in December our family purchases a CD called 'The Spirit of Christmas', produced by the Myer Corporation to raise funds for the Salvation Army's children and youth programs. The tracks are of varying qualities, but this year's CD … Read More »
I heard this quotation during one of the case studies we did at Harvard earlier this year: People are assets when they are born into this world and they become liabilities. I want to keep making them assets.
Today is 'Remembrance Day', when many nations recognize the signing of the Armistice which ended the 'Great War', World War 1.I have a number of personal reflections on the significance of this event.Having spent my life as a pacifist, I … Read More »
In recent weeks I have been thinking that too much of the discussion in ministry and theological circles is about forms of church, worship styles and models of mission, without the primary focus on what Jesus sent his followers to … Read More »
The Spirit nurtures the fruit of faith, to produce faithfulness, or shall we say, 'faith-full-ness'. To understand faithfulness, we need to think about what faith is. There's a lot of confusion here, but if we can get some handles on … Read More »
It's taken me a long time to get to goodness. Is that somehow significant? Maybe I just never wanted to be good! But this is not an individual thing. The Spirit grows goodness, in individuals and communities. There is a … Read More »
Recently I had a holiday at Uluru, the iconic sacred site in central Australia which used to be known as Ayer's Rock.It is a fabulous place, and we enjoyed a number of opportunities not only to see the Rock in … Read More »
I have been a great fan of Shakespeare's Hamlet since I was at school. I knew the play almost by heart. Most people know only a couple of lines from it, if any at all, but the line 'To be … Read More »
In this post I will comment on some other people's ideas about kindness and the sense in which kindness is part of the harvest of God's presence and life with us.Let me emphasize what I said earlier, too: I do … Read More »
What does it mean to say the Spirit creates or produces kindness?I would like to suggest a few things I think I have learned about kindness. But I hasten to say this is not a claim to sort of moral … Read More »