Late in the evening the phone rang and with it came the news that my mother-in-law had passed away. It wasn’t unexpected, but still incredibly sad. We only lived 10 minutes away from the nursing...

Jesus has been betrayed, arrested, put through an illegal trial, and delivered to Pilate in order to obtain his death. Pilate has seen through the machinations of the Jewish delegation but he finds...

Like Jesus, we also have a journey to the cross. Just as it is part of who God is, so the cross becomes part of who we are, as we follow Jesus and live in the Spirit.  Ours is a bit different...

‘I hate one-upmanship’ said my brother. ‘Yeah, well, I hate it more’, I replied. This is a silly joke, I know, but it appeals to me because we are often oblivious to our own failings. It is...

There’s a lot of shouting going on around Pilate’s HQ when Jesus is brought before him. There’s a crowd and there’s nothing like a crowd to get behind a good collective chant. Pilate comes out...

The letter of 1 Corinthians was written by the apostle Paul, directed to the church in Corinth but recorded in scripture for our own exhortation. In chapter 10, verses 1-13 we are reminded that the...

When we decide to go on a trip, we usually make a lot of plans – how to get there, where to stay, what to do and how long it will last. We might begin making plans six months or even a year in...

John is trying to paint a vivid picture of the Son of God. The NIV says that God appeared, he became visible. The NLT uses the word reveal, the ESV the word manifest. He had always been there, but our...

One of my grandchildren is four years old, and two of them are three years old and often I’ll hear them say, ‘My daddy can do this’ or ‘My mummy can do that’. It’s cute when they say such...

Have you ever been to a place you’d call a wasteland? Perhaps the depths of a junkyard or the parched ground of a dry riverbed? Isaiah 43 brings some similar imagery to mind, talking about Israel in...

One of my favourite names of God is ‘Yahweh Shammah.’ (Ezekiel 48:35). It means ‘The Lord is there.’ Throughout Scripture, God reveals himself — who he is and his character. But the Son is...

In 1918 the hymn writer Helen Lemmel was handed a religious pamphlet entitled Focussed written by Lilias Trotter, a missionary to Muslims in Algeria. Although Helen’s own eyesight was failing, she...

Many of us try to be prepared for life’s trials. We buy insurance, we might stock up on food before a storm, we get our cars in good shape before a trip, and we check the weather report before...

I was thinking about how communication has changed just during my lifetime. As a child I do not remember having a phone at all in our home, but we must have had one. I do not remember myself or...

‘Out with the old, in with the new’ is a phrase most commonly associated with the changeover to a new year. It means leaving old ideas, past problems, and outmoded behaviours behind and starting...

Have you ever gone into a pantry and found a can of food without a label on it? The only way for you to figure out what’s inside is by opening the can. After opening the unlabelled item, what is the...

‘Blessed’, the opening word in Psalm one, is very important. It is the same expression Jesus uses in Matthew 5:3-11 when he describes the joys of Kingdom living that abound and overflow to...

Do you ever feel burdened by past emotional hurts, struggles, and traumas? Maybe we all do. We are all broken in a certain way. But that brokenness is not our identity — Christ is. Let’s be...

Now that the snow is melting, I ventured out with my little dog to see if we could take our walks again, exploring the world, looking for treasure, getting our exercise. We soon met the water from the...

We see signs all around us that warn of danger: Toxic; High Voltage; Hot Surface; Smoking Causes Cancer; Danger of Ice. But my favourite, if you can call it that, is Danger of Death. This imperative...

Does the world seem broken beyond repair? It seems every generation at one point or another feels this way. In smaller ways, we also have times of brokenness in our personal lives when we realise...

I’m a big fan of breath prayers. You can turn any Bible verse or part of a verse into a short prayer that uses only one breath. I’ve come up with many on my own, but I’ve also used...

In the header scripture, we see Jesus reassure his disciples before his death. Jesus’ promise isn’t just for the future, but for now. As we approach Easter, our thoughts are focused on Jesus’...

There are days when everything seems to go wrong. You can stress about it, you can act out, but it does no good, it even makes things worse. When you go about something confidently that it will work...

Have you ever visited somewhere on holiday when a fellow traveller comes up to you and asks for directions to a particular place and you have to say sorry, I’m not from around here? That’s...

A research study published in the Journal of Business Ethics in 2000 found that promise-keeping was not a high priority in the American workplace. In fact, only 30 per cent of the 700 study...

An art-loving friend of mine was remarking on the number of people she has seen at exhibitions who just stand in front of each painting and take a pic on their phone. All they are getting is a record...

It seems clear, from the various analogies and metaphors the apostle Paul uses to describe the Christian life, that there is a constant striving after something, but what is that something we need to...

I never tire of baking sourdough bread. Every loaf seems like a miracle to me. How is it that two cups of water, four cups of flour, two teaspoons of salt and a quarter cup of sourdough starter can...

Just when I assumed winter was over, and that we would again slip past a year with measurable snow, in it came, wave after wave of snow. I cannot remember having more than two snow days in a row...