Episodes

In the midst of the uncertainties and fears of the world around us, it’s worth pausing and reflecting on those all too rare moments when we experience a deep longing that we know nothing on earth can satisfy. We might experience such moments when our hearts are lifted to a sense of the transcendent, perhaps when hearing some sublime music or gazing on a glorious scene that draws us beyond the material to the ethereal. For a few all too fleeting seconds we are enchanted by the prospect of a worl...

During this Easter Season we have been touching on the reality of life and death. Three years ago I observed that Eugene Ionesco’s, Exit the King is a clever play about life and death. Reportedly the Romanian-French Ionesco who died in 1994, said about the play: I told myself that one could learn to die, that I could learn to die, that one can also help other people to die. This seems to me the most important thing we can do, since we’re all of us dying men who refuse to die. The play is an atte...

Writing in The Australian last year (April 23, 2024), Dr Greg Sheridan observed, ‘Politics, as they say is downstream of culture, and culture is downstream of faith. Having lost faith in any transcendental truth, the West now is in a permanent crisis of meaning, which leads to political entropy, a kind of political vertigo, forever on the edge of a nervous breakdown’. Over this Easter Season we’ve touched on the Gospel record of Jesus’s physical resurrection as well as what Paul the Apostle wri...

The death of Pope Francis has attracted wide media attention with numerous outlets having representatives in Rome commentating on the events. Of the many reports one in particular caught my attention. A reporter commented that the Pope’s body was being laid to rest for eternity in a basilica outside the Vatican. It would appear that the commentator was unaware of the creedal statement made by both Protestant and Roman Catholic Churches namely, we believe in ‘the resurrection of the body and lif...

In The Return of the King, the 3rd volume in The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkein portrays the struggles Frodo and Samwise Gamgee faced on the final stretch of their perilous journey to Mt Doom. Utterly exhausted, Frodo is barely able to press on. Sam, despairing of achieving their goal, looked up: ‘There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and...

The story is told of an Easter dawn in a Russian prison camp in the days of the USSR. A voice called out, ‘Christ is risen!’ and, despite the command for silence, a chorus of voices responded, ‘He is risen indeed!’ The events of the first Easter Day awakened the world to the dawning of a new era and with it the assurance that there is more to life than our experiences now. In our troubled, conflicted and war-ravaged world, how encouraging this is. The resurrection of Jesus reveals that death n...

A Maundy Thursday / Good Friday Reflection Why is it, that despite all the hopes and dreams of the world becoming a better place, wars, injustice and poverty continue? Why, two millennia ago, did Jesus of Nazareth die – the most unjust conviction ever? He lived a life of unquestionable purity. He was never accused of lying; he showed a selfless service in his compassion for the needy and the outcast; and he never promoted his cause through weapons of war. Indeed, when Pontius Pilate, the Roman...

GK Chesterton once observed, “On five occasions in history the church has gone to the dogs, but on each occasion it was the dogs who died”. With the 40million Americans who have stopped attending church over the last twenty-five years, Chesterton may well have included a sixth occasion! Are you interested in playing a part in a gospel movement today? Over the last three weeks I have been touching on Bible references that are foundational and inspirational in my ministry. References include Exo...

I have a question: What do you think of prayer? When you pray, do you pray with purpose and confidence? I ask this because prayer is integral to our partnership with the Lord – and not least in our gospel promotion. In Luke chapter 9 we read that Jesus sent out the twelve on a mission to Jewish people. And, in chapter 10 we learn that he sent out seventy to both the Jewish and non-Jewish peoples. He not only wanted the disciples to know that the news of the kingdom of God is for all people, but...

In the light of Dr. George Barna’s Reports in February and March this year, I am touching on Bible references that have been foundational and inspirational for me. The Barna Report in February revealed, “that while 71% of adults” (in America) “believe in the existence of one or more gods or spiritual authorities, far fewer said they believe in the existence and influence of Jesus Christ (59%) or the God of the Bible (40%). Barely half of all adults (54%) said they worship or follow Jesus Christ...

In a report released this week, Dr George Barna wrote that ‘Americans are increasingly minimizing the role and influence of God in their lives—with a minority of only 40% who believe He exists or influences human lives. ‘As a result, fewer American adults put God at the center of their lives, view their relationship with Him as important, or rely on Him for daily guidance. ‘This shift removing God from the center of American life is being seen inside the church, with the role of God becoming l...

It’s often said, we have only one life to live! We need to live it well.’ How many people really believe this? Most people have a sneaking suspicion that there is more to life – that death is not the end of our existence. C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity commented, If I find in myself desires which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. Come with me to a significant question that Jesus put to his close followers. We read it i...

No-one likes a hypocrite – someone who says one thing and does another. I’m not talking about times when we fall short of the Lord’s expectations of us. I’m referring to the general disposition of someone whose professed faith is hollow. A hypocrite – an English word derived from the Greek, hypokrisis – means actor. In Matthew 6:1 Jesus warns: “Beware of practising your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in he...

HG Wells, historian and author of The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds responded to a request from The American Magazine in July 1922, to identify the six most influential people in history. “I am an historian,” he said. “I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history”. Why then was HG Wells, and many like him, not a believer? Perhaps...

Last week a good friend of mine went to be with the Lord. In a final conversation with him – in this world – one of the things we talked about was the hope we have in God whose loving action led to Jesus’ crucifixion. Jesus’ death is reckoned to be foolishness by the world. Consider what the Apostle Paul writes in First Corinthians, chapter 1. Foolishness…? Writing about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ Paul says in verses 18 and 19: For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who ar...

As The Lord’s Supper is often confusing, let me step aside from my usual practice of providing a Bible reflection and make a few remarks about key themes that were crafted by Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1533-1556. Cranmer was used by God to re-form the Church of England as a biblically-grounded, gospel-focused church. He achieved this through recovering the unique nature of the Scriptures as God’s written self-revelation, the development of The Thirty-Nine Articles, the Homilies (...

The late afternoon storms last Tuesday afternoon (Australian Eastern Summer Time) brought down a huge neigbouring tree on to the Cammeray Church site – one of two church properties where I am part-time interim senior minister. No one was harmed – for which we thank the Lord. But the building itself has suffered structural damage making it unusable for the coming months. It brought to mind the devastating fires in Los Angeles, USA as well as the loss and devastation caused by war – not least in ...

With the elections in the UK and the US last year and upcoming elections in other democracies we wonder about the future. Good and upright leaders are rare. Indeed, while every election shows that no leader is perfect, most people long for someone who will use their position to provide for the security and welfare of a nation. In a fallen world the freedom to elect leaders is important and very precious – something for which we should pray. When we read the history of Israel in the Old Testamen...

There are many things in life that baffle and trouble us. If God is almighty and all loving, why does he allow pain and suffering, evil and injustice to run riot through the world? From the wildfires in Los Angeles to conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, why does God allow us as individuals to go through so many of the things we do? If we are to understand the trauma and trials of life, we need more than human wisdom and understanding. Abraham Lincoln once remarked: I have been driven many...

Martin Luther King Junior’s 1963 Washington Speech, “I have a dream”, fired the hearts of American people across the racial divide to a new vision and energy to promote harmony and peace. Yet within five years Martin Luther King himself was dead, gunned down by an assassin’s bullet. Is there any hope for our world where divisions, conflict and war continue? Or will there always be death and destruction? Come with me to Isaiah chapter 60 where he speaks of a city yet to rise. With the Babylonia...

Writing in The Weekend Australian (01/4-5/25), Greg Craven, former vice-chancellor of The Australian Catholic University, observes that Christmas has not merely “become commercial … but that it has become materialist. “All of which is odd,” he continues, “in a nation (Australia) that ostentatiously pines for the spiritual. Millions genuinely seek or claim to be seeking something beyond the commercial veil. But even this desire struggles in an age of mindless mercantile self-help … “But however...

Another day. Another year. A year of change…? In his Choruses from the Rock written in 1934, TS Eliot prophetically observed: But it seems that something has happened that has never happened before: though we know not just when, or why, or how, or where. Men have left GOD not for other gods, they say, but for no God; and this has never happened before. That men both deny gods and worship gods, professing first Reason, and then Money, and Power, and what they call Life, or Race, or Dialect...

Does Christmas hold out something special for you? A time to be with family? A joyful celebration? Or is it nothing but fake news and a season of stress? Let me touch on two scenes in the biblical narrative in Luke chapter 2. But first, let’s remember who the writer is – Luke, the physician. Trained in medicine, he understood the principles of research. Indeed, at the outset of his narrative he assures us that he has carefully researched his account of the Jesus story and verified it with eyew...

We all like to think that there are areas in our life where we are in control. CS Lewis in Surprised by Joy wrote of his pre-Christian phase: “… But, of course, what mattered most of all was my deep-seated hatred of authority, my monstrous individualism, my lawlessness. No word in my vocabulary expressed deeper hatred than the word INTERFERENCE. But Christianity placed at the centre what then seemed to me a transcendental Interferer. If its picture were true, then no sort of ‘treaty with realit...