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Let God Be God
To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him? Isaiah 40:18. We should never put limits on God, or put words into his mouth, or define him in terms of our pathetic images. These false images may range from the golden calf on Sinai, to one who encouraged witch-burning until a […]
‘Respectable’ Sins
Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth. Matthew 23:27. Church-going Christians become very ‘respectable’ after a while. But Jesus was a friend of tax-collectors and sinners. […]
War And Peace
Pursue peace with everyone. Hebrews 12:14. As I write (May 1994) Lebanon is settling down, but, says an eye-witness, the rubble of war is everywhere. More than 200,000 are war-disabled – 10 percent of the population. People called ‘Christians’ were involved in this war, as they are in Northern Ireland, the former Yugoslavia, southern Sudan, […]
Psychology
The Advocate [or Helper] the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you… We urge you to encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with all. John 14:26, 1 Thessalonians 5:14. Some people have a fear or distrust of psychology. We call psychologists and psychiatrists ‘shrinks’ and a stigma […]
Debt And Health
Do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Luke 6:35. According to the World Health Organization [WHO] in the last five years of the 1980s the world’s poorest 37 countries’ spending on health fell by 50%. Women and children suffered most: in 1988 46 million women had their babies without the help of any trained […]
A Slave Of Christ
When you have done all that you were ordered to do say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’ Luke 17:10. Probably half of all the people in the Roman world of Jesus’ day were slaves. They were prisoners-of-war, or debtors, or the poor who sold themselves into […]
Matthew 20
LABOURERS IN THE VINEYARD The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. Matthew 20:1. What is God like? Jesus told a puzzling story about a vineyard-owner who urgently needed grape-pickers. He went to the ‘town square’ five times – from dawn until […]
The Divine In The Ordinary
Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God. 1 Corinthians 10:31. Thomas Merton somewhere exhorts us to have an ‘unspeakable reverence for the holiness of created things’. Joseph and Jesus made tables and chairs (and crosses?); Paul used woven goats’ hair to make tents; Dorcas was a […]
Inasmuch
Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me. Matthew 25:40. Henri Nouwen, in The Wounded Healer, tells the story of a young fugitive who came to a village. The people were kind to him, and offered to hide him. But […]
Let Go
Be still, and know that I am God. Psalm 46:10. ‘Let go,’ writes an unknown pilgrim. ‘To “let go” does not mean to stop caring; it means I can’t do it for someone else. To let go is not to cut myself off; it’s the realization I can’t control another. To let go is to […]
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