Monday, February 7, 2011 at 10:04AM On this page you will find a range of short comments and reflections on our world relating to the Christian message. Feel free to read these short articles and make a comment.
Monday, January 10, 2011 at 3:21PM
One of the trials of watching the tennis during summer is surviving the constant and repetitive commercials. However one grabbed my attention.
It was an ad from Kia and the punch line of the ad for the car was. ‘Attention grabbing not attention seeking’. I’m not sure what it means for you when you are buying a car, but I thought it interesting when thinking about our commitment and service of God.
We can be attention seeking. In other words we can act and live with the aim to draw attention to ourselves. In the words of Kath from ‘Kath and Kim’. ‘Look at me Kimmy, Look at me!!’ Attention seeking wants the focus to be on us and seeks to promote our own advancement.
On the other hand attention grabbing has a slightly different emphasis. The idea here is that what we do grabs the attention of others. As Christians we certainly want to grab the attention of outsiders not to bring their focus on us, but in order that we can bring attention to God. As we saw in the sermon last week Jesus words, ‘Let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven’.
Let us pray that our witness, our lifestyle, our words and actions will be attention grabbing in such a way as others will sit up and be lead to think about and respond to the love of God.
Thursday, December 30, 2010 at 9:49AM Listening to the radio this week I heard of a number of research projects linked to the way in which we treat others and our personal well being.
In one study, it showed that young people are a third more likely to be happy if they have a strong urge to help others. With this evidence schools are now building into their curriculum values of volunteering and community service.
Similarly another project showed that if you perform 5 random acts of kindness in 6 weeks you feel significantly better. Finally another study showed that if you have high levels of gratitude you will correspondingly have high levels of well being.
In some ways it seems funny that researchers have to clinically examine what Christians have been taught for 2000 years.
The great commandments say ‘Love God with all your heart mind, soul, and strength and love your neighbour as yourself’. Loving God leads to a profound sense of gratitude for all he has done for us and should also lead us to a profound sense of gratitude towards those around us.
Similarly being outwardly orientated to loving others is God’s way for us to live and will also lead to the abundant life Jesus promises.
As we begin 2011, may we refocus our hearts, minds and wills to be thankful for all we have, and to reach out to others in love.
My the Lord bless you all in 2011
Wednesday, December 22, 2010 at 8:43PM As we look back on 2010 I wonder what events stand out most for you?
There seems to have been a rise in natural disasters;
There has been our fair share of disasters at the hands of human activity;
Technological advances continue to amaze us.
Despite our great capacity to love, we have a great capacity to hurt, often by misuse of power and wealth.
Today we gather to worship the birth of a Saviour who is Christ the Lord. In Him and by trusting Him for strength and guidance, with the help of His Spirit within us, we can face the challenges of our age with integrity, love and hope.
May you spend this Christmas enjoying loved ones and most of all enjoying the peace and presence of the one who loves you most of all - Jesus Christ - God’s one and only Son.
Monday, July 19, 2010 at 10:44AM
Living in the so-called progressive Western society where Christianity is barely tolerated by many, often leaves us who follow Jesus with the distinct feeling that we are in the minority.
Many outside the Christian church are of the opinion that we are a dying, irrelevant, and outmoded institution.
I was gratified to read in The Age this week that Christianity is still the largest religion in the world. We make up just on one third of all people on the earth. While Muslims make up 22.4% of the world population they are the fastest growing religion.
An interesting point was that 100 years ago Christians made up 34.8% of the world’s population. In 1910 the world population was 1.75 billion. It is now 6.9 billion people. A rough calculation will give you the fact that there are around 2.3 billion people today who follow Christ. This is far more people than even lived on the planet 100 years ago.
If my rough calculations are right, there are nearly 4 times as many Christians in the world today than there were 100 years ago.
I record all this not so we can sit back on our laurels and be contented but to remind us that the passing on of the Christian faith goes on from one generation to the next and it is our task to pass it on to the next generation. If each of us were responsible for just 4 individuals becoming Christians this rate of increase would continue in the next generation.
Jesus, the Son of God was not born into an earthly family to begin some sidelight of a religion. He came for all people. Praise God!