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Showing posts from December, 2015

Christmas Reflection 2015

‘He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him’. Corporately and individually humans persistently and consistently reject God. We are pretty good at choosing what is bad for us- being tempted by any number of false desires. We can become addicted to all sorts of bad behaviours, like alcohol, social media, pornography or self-hatred. The simple ways that we choose to spend our time every day determine the sort of people that we become; the minor details of our lives matter to God – he has given us each moment of every day. As a modern poet, Malcolm Guite puts it: O king of our desire whom we despise, King of the nations never on the throne, Unfound foundation, cast-off cornerstone, Rejected joiner, making many one Take the Biblical tale of the rich man at his gate. He ignores the daily pleas of the poor and sickly man, Lazarus, and after a life of selfi

Has God become routine?

Many of us do something, not because we make a choice everyday to do it, but because it’s become part and parcel of our lives, one of the things that we do. Church going can be like that, but then Advent turns up in the church year to unsettle and challenge us; to wake us up and out of our routines into some serious re-engagement with the fundamentals of our existence. Advent reminds us that all this ritual, prayer and worship isn’t just a routine that we’ve gotten used to and quite enjoy, but actually is about our eternal destiny and about the things that matter most: truth versus darkness; goodness versus evil; judgment and end times. Wake up we are told, be watchful, get ready, be alert! Jesus might have left but He will come back; the things that you have been taught and promised are realities; God is not some dream that was imagined a good long time ago; the search for truth, the work of goodness is real. John the Baptist is a serious prophet – not one to allow us to fall