Sheep are a common image in the Bible for the people of God: crowd-following wanderers in need of someone to lead them, take care of them and bring them home. The hope of a “good shepherd” coming to do that is a recurring theme of the Old Testament. We are supposed to identify with the…
I prepared this brief survey of what the Bible says about war for a CHOW session at Business Connect today: 1. War is a reality Mark 13:7 “When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen.” Whether we like it or not, the Bible recognises that war…
How do you celebrate Christmas if you don’t have mince pies, turkey or television – and you think that red and green clash horribly? Much of our ‘traditional Christmas’ comes from a time and place alien to most Christians in world history. Should Christians be celebrating Christmas at all? The earliest believers did not. What…
Christianity offers Good News to the world. But what is it? The Christian message is distinguished from other kinds of good news by the technical term ‘Gospel.’ But what does it mean? The word derives from the Old English ‘Godspell,’ which in turn was a translation of the first century Greek ‘Eu-Angelion’ that simply meant…
“Pleasure without conscience is one of the key temptations for today’s executives.” This is the conclusion of management guru Stephen R. Covey, author of the ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,’ which is widely recognised as one of the best-selling business books of all time. According to Covey, the danger lies in mistakenly believing –…
O Come, O Come, Immanuel is perhaps the most popular hymn sung in the run up to Christmas. You may already know from popular carol service readings that ‘Immanuel’ is Hebrew for “God with us.” What may surprise you is that this famous name occurs in the Bible in only two places. Matthew (1:22-23) tells…
In 2007 the richest woman in Asia apparently left her multi-billion dollar fortune to a fengshui practitioner who had promised her immortality. I’m not sure why the irony didn’t strike her as she wrote her will. The merciless greed of the fengshui practitioner is reminiscent of the young man in Jesus’ “Parable of the Prodigal…