The parable of the Unforgiving Servant spells out in severe terms the necessity of forgiving those who wrong us “from the heart”. An issue that arises here is the very real difficulty people can have in bringing themselves to forgive.
Difficult texts that say unexpected things are worth a harder look.
When we sing together as a fellowship, we join the reality hinted at by the coming of the wise men to Jesus. We who are not ethnic sons and daughters of Israel have joined the ‘wise men’ in their wisdom when we come to Christ and raise our voices together to him. One day we will join that multitude of Revelation 7. Today we sing as a small sample of that.
The Christian faith frequently conflicts with current ideas. Given this has happened since Christianity’s inception, this should neither surprise nor dismay us. Rather, we should establish its difficult teachings in our hearts and minds so we can preserve them, present them, and faithfully pass them on.
The wise men were prompted to travel far and bring costly gifts and worship him because of what they understood about this new-born Jesus.
||Pastoral Passage|| The sweetness of salvation must be more than a fond memory. It must be the fuel of the Christian life that propels us forward in the present and all the way to the end.
||Book Summary|| A seventh century monastic once wrote: “Time will fail me should I wish to exhibit all the doubts and deliberations… concerning the six days [of creation].” Andrew J. Brown manages to do a large chunk of these in less than three hundred pages.
How often do Christians sing of and to God as Judge? Readers will find this theme in Scripture, yet contemporary worship music neglects to make use of it.
The following is a list outlining 27 out of the 114 amendments that were rejected from the End Of Life Choice Bill. These are the kind of things advocates for a ‘No’ vote suggest would make the ‘End of Life Choice’ Bill a safer euthanasia law and should have been included in the law.
||Book Summary|| Thompson’s book provides nine introductory tours into the history of interpretation of difficult parts of Bible, and gives directions for those who wish to strike out and explore the interpretive landscape of the past for themselves – and for their church.
Chris Northcott 