Genesis for Everyone Part 1 - Thursday, Friday Morning
Genesis for Everyone Part 1 - Thursday, Friday Morning
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Thursday, Friday Morning Genesis 1:20-25 A whole corner building in the downtown area of our city was recently reconstructed and remodeled, and to my astonishment what opened there was a store that just sells boxes. A friend of ours got a job there and told us that she was also s…
Genesis for Everyone Part 2 - Two Guys Who Need Their Heads Banged Together
Genesis for Everyone Part 2 - Two Guys Who Need Their Heads Banged Together
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Two Guys Who Need Their Heads Banged Together Genesis 25: 23- 26: 5 There’s a weird thing about babies (well, many weird things). I often reflected on our having two sons, born of the same mother and father, more or less brought up in the same way by the same parents, who turned …
Exodus and Leviticus - Two Kinds of Preparation for Meeting God
Exodus and Leviticus - Two Kinds of Preparation for Meeting God
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Two Kinds of Preparation for Meeting God EXODUS 19: 1- 25 When the Israelites arrived at Sinai, they first had a morally challenging experience—or perhaps one should call it a relationally challenging one. It marks a new stage in the covenant relationship between God and Israel. …
Genesis for Everyone Part 1 - To Love and to Cherish, to Desire and to Dominate
Genesis for Everyone Part 1 - To Love and to Cherish, to Desire and to Dominate
by SPCK - John Goldingay
To Love and to Cherish, to Desire and to Dominate Genesis 3: 16b There is a Jewish story about the first human couple. Often such a Jewish midrash takes up a puzzling aspect of the biblical text and seeks to explain it or imagine something it might imply, using other scriptural m…
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Two Mothers, One Baby
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Two Mothers, One Baby
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Two Mothers One Baby 1 Kings 3:16- 4:19 Yesterday was Mother’s Day, and I was reading a newspaper story about two mothers with one baby. Its birth mother had got pregnant while she was a single student, and she had decided she didn’t want to keep the baby but that she would not h…
Genesis for Everyone Part 2 - Tough Love
Genesis for Everyone Part 2 - Tough Love
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Tough Love Genesis 44:1-34 A woman came to see me the other day. She thought she had met the love of her life. I had seen her with him. There had developed that light that comes into people’s eyes when they know they are loved. They had started talking about engagement. But then …
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Two Unusual Covenants
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Two Unusual Covenants
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Two Unusual Covenants 2 Kings 11:1-21 The idea of covenant has been very important in the history of the United States and in the development of American democracy as a way of understanding relationships in the human community. Etymologically, the word covenant includes the idea …
Genesis for Everyone Part 1 - To Put It Another Way
Genesis for Everyone Part 1 - To Put It Another Way
by SPCK - John Goldingay
To Put It Another Way… Genesis 2: 4b-7 There is a children’s story about Pinocchio, a wooden doll carved from a piece of pine who longs to become a real boy. After a series of adventures that come to a climax with his making a great sacrifice, this eventually happens, and everyon…
Psalms for Everyone - Trusting God with Your Anger
Psalms for Everyone - Trusting God with Your Anger
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Trusting God with Your Anger Psalm 68: 19-35 In a day or two I am to lecture on the Psalms and our spirituality, and I shall talk about the way psalms are designed to feed and shape our praise, prayer, and thanksgiving. Last night as I was finalizing the lecture, I realized I had…
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Unfinished Business
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Unfinished Business
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Unfinished Business NUMBERS 31:1- 34 Two or three years ago, out of the blue, I received a phone call from a Jewish lawyer in Los Angeles. He had self-published a book called Twenty-six Reasons Why Jews Don’t Believe in Jesus, and he wanted me to make sure that his statements abo…
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Two Weeks, Three Kings in Ephraim
1 and 2 Kings for Everyone - Two Weeks, Three Kings in Ephraim
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Two Weeks, Three Kings in Ephraim 1 Kings 15:25-16:34 Yesterday, as usual, we began our faculty meeting by sharing topics for prayer, and then as it happened I had to try to pray a prayer that covered them all. The sharing referred to someone’s health needs, to someone who had lo…
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - Unlikely Saviors
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - Unlikely Saviors
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Unlikely Saviors JUDGES 3:5- 31 My father was a machine minder in a printing works, and my mother was a seamstress. I was the first person in my extended family to stay at school beyond the age of fourteen. I have more than thirty cousins; only one other has been to college. I am…
Exodus and Leviticus - Vocation
Exodus and Leviticus - Vocation
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Vocation EXODUS 3: 11- 4: 17 In my seminary in England, most students had already been accepted as candidates for ordination, but in my seminary in California many more people come not sure what ministry they may seek or even what denomination they belong to. So we have an Office…
Psalms for Everyone - We've Probably All Been Rescued from Death a Few Times
Psalms for Everyone - We've Probably All Been Rescued from Death a Few Times
by SPCK - John Goldingay
We’ve Probably All Been Rescued from Death a Few Times Psalm 18: 1-24 Between us my wife and I have had four or five illnesses that would have left us dead had we lived in most contexts in human history. We have both had appendicitis that might have killed us without medical inte…
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Two Very Different Attitudes to War
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - Two Very Different Attitudes to War
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Two Very Different Attitudes to War NUMBERS 20: 14- 21:3 I write at what we hope is near the end of a war in Iraq but in the midst of a war in Afghanistan whose likely outcome no one can predict; both these wars relate to the attack on the United States of September 11, 2001. Bef…
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - Welcome to the Wild Wild West
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - Welcome to the Wild Wild West
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Welcome to the Wild Wild West Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone JOSHUA 10: 28- 43 28That day Joshua took Makkedah and struck it down, it and its king, with the edge of the sword. He devoted them, along with every person there. He did not let any survivor remain. So he dealt wi…
Genesis for Everyone Part 2 - What Game is Genesis Playing?
Genesis for Everyone Part 2 - What Game is Genesis Playing?
by SPCK - John Goldingay
What Game Is Genesis Playing? Genesis 42:36-43:34 In the movie The English Patient, Count Laszlo crashes a plane and in order to go to get help has to abandon the only woman he has loved, in an injured state, in a cave in a desert mountain. He is long unable to convince people to…
1 and 2 Samuel for Everyone - What Do You Do When You're Desperate