I drove past a church building out in the countryside. The parking lot was filled, and the cars were spilling out into the adjoining field. Now no evangelist had arrived. No prophet had come to call the board back to humble service under Jesus. The turn out didn’t even indicate an itinerant healer had taken up shop. The big event that drew the crowds was  Read more…

I heard God’s voice in the garden. When I garden I rarely hear God’s voice. Without being focussed my mind flies in every direction in what I would call scattered (not “scatter-brained”, please).

God gave the nine words all of a sudden, Read more…

Today we celebrate Victoria Day. Originally it served to honour the birthday of Queen Victoria (May 24, 1819).

It brings to mind that a whole way of social conduct carries the adjective, “Victorian”. People expected everyone to follow certain rules of etiquette and courtesy. This included things like holding the door open for the person behind you, and in a disagreement the parties didn’t insult each other.

We’ve moved a long way from that, superficial though it was. Read more…

If the spiritual life with Jesus was written as a spy novel, what character would you be?

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Where do I start?

Just the other day I checked an online map service to get the travel time to a work site. It became a metaphor for the way some religious people act. In the case of my map search, despite every attempt, it placed my home address nearly an hour to the west. Even when I entered the address by postal code the programme changed it back to the wrong one.

So I turned to a different service. It put my start point in the right place, but the route choices were wrong. The fastest route showed as the slowest. The time totalled over an hour. In reality it took about forty-five minutes.

The only place for a Christian to begin a life journey of time or education or growing up rests upon the Bible. Some would start with an opinion, or a feeling, or a doctrine or even a denominational tradition. But when you start at the wrong place, whether by seduction of a lie or indiscriminate obedience to human authority, surely the route and timing must be wrong.

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