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1 and 2 Samuel for Everyone - Friendship
1 and 2 Samuel for Everyone - Friendship
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Friendship 1 Samuel 20: 1- 21: 16 I know someone now in her eighties who lived for forty or fifty years with a friend. They had separate jobs, but in the rest of life they were inseparable, involved together in church and social life and spending their holidays together. The frie…
Job for Everyone - Friendship
Job for Everyone - Friendship
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Where Could I Go But to the Lord? Job 5: 1-27 The story goes that sometime in the 1930s a Mississippi music teacher and Baptist deacon named James Coats was at the bedside of one of his neighbors, whose name was Joe Keyes. Joe was dying, and James asked him if he knew where he wo…
Psalms for Everyone Part 2 - God’s Laws as the Way to Blessing
Psalms for Everyone Part 2 - God’s Laws as the Way to Blessing
by SPCK - John Goldingay
God’s Laws as the Way to Blessing Psalm 119: 1-24 After church today, a friend asked me a question that had arisen out of a conversation he’d had with a co-worker. My friend was surprised that the co-worker was willing to work seven days a week—what about the commandment concerni…
1 and 2 Samuel for Everyone - I Have Kept Yahweh's Ways
1 and 2 Samuel for Everyone - I Have Kept Yahweh's Ways
by SPCK - John Goldingay
I Have Kept Yahweh’s Ways? 2 Samuel 22: 21- 51 Last night I was talking to one of our students who served in the U.S. forces in Iraq as an antiterrorism operative. Like many soldiers, he came home with trauma that he has subsequently had to try to talk through over a period of ye…
Job for Everyone - On Birth and Death
Job for Everyone - On Birth and Death
by SPCK - John Goldingay
On Birth and Death Job 10: 1-22 Yesterday a girl in her twenties was telling me about the death of her grandmother a day or two before. Like many people of her generation, she was very close to her grandmother, and the loss is a significant one. And yesterday another young woman …
Exodus and Leviticus - Now I will Seal a Covenant
Exodus and Leviticus - Now I will Seal a Covenant
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Now I Will Seal a Covenant EXODUS 34: 1-26 Visiting Jerusalem brings many striking experiences for sober-minded Westerners. The celebration of a bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah at the Western Wall is an occasion of enthusiastic rejoicing, dancing, and singing as Torah scrolls are carr…
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - She's a Moabite, for Goodness' Sake!
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - She's a Moabite, for Goodness' Sake!
by SPCK - John Goldingay
She’s a Moabite, for Goodness’ Sake RUTH 1:19b-2: 9 I was just reading the story of a man called Maxo who died in the earthquake in Haiti a couple of weeks ago when his house collapsed on top of him. His cousin in New York called Maxo a hustler, but his story showed how he was al…
Psalms for Everyone Part 2 - Standing on the Promises
Psalms for Everyone Part 2 - Standing on the Promises
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Standing on the Promises Psalm 119: 25-48 Yesterday I got our congregation to write out their thanksgivings, uncertainties, and commitments for the coming year, in line with the plan I mentioned in connection with Psalm 105. Just before doing so, I realized that there was another…
Psalms for Everyone Part 2 - Teach Me
Psalms for Everyone Part 2 - Teach Me
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Teach Me Psalm 119: 49-72 I’m grading student papers, and one effect that has on me (alongside making me want to commit suicide) is to make me puzzle over what it is that enables people to learn. There are people who have read the Scriptures with fresh eyes, seen things they had …
Psalms for Everyone Part 2 - The Appeal of the Lost Sheep
Psalms for Everyone Part 2 - The Appeal of the Lost Sheep
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Appeal of the Lost Sheep Psalm 119:145-176 A Bedouin herdsman tells of how he was tending a flock of goats in the Judean wilderness near the Dead Sea. Before sleeping, the herdsmen would count their flocks, but for some reason this herdsman failed to do the count for two days…
Psalms for Everyone Part 2 - The Faithful Master
Psalms for Everyone Part 2 - The Faithful Master
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The Faithful Master Psalm 119:121-144 One of my former colleagues used to delight to talk about her first appointment with her boss. His opening words to her were “How can I serve you?” “What can I do for you?” “How can I help you do your job?” In a way the questions seem smarmy …
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - The God of Coincidences
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - The God of Coincidences
by SPCK - John Goldingay
The God of Coincidences RUTH 2:10-23 When I was thirteen, I was walking home from school one day and met a teacher from the Sunday school I used to attend but had left two years previously to go to another church. She told me that my old church was about to start a new youth fell…
1 and 2 Samuel for Everyone - When the King Isn't Tough Enough
1 and 2 Samuel for Everyone - When the King Isn't Tough Enough
by SPCK - John Goldingay
When the King Isn’t Tough Enough 1 Samuel 15: 1- 33 According to news reports, at U.S. bases in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in the first decade of the twenty-first century we were engaged in the torture of people suspected of terrorist acts. This involved keeping people in constrained…
1 and 2 Samuel for Everyone - How to be a Dysfunctional Royal Family
1 and 2 Samuel for Everyone - How to be a Dysfunctional Royal Family
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How to Be a Dysfunctional Royal family 1 Samuel 17: 55- 18: 16 Queen Elizabeth II declared 1992 her annus horribilis, her “horrible year.” The phrase is a riff on the expression annus mirabilis, “miracle year,” the phrase devised by the poet John Dryden to describe 1666, the year…
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - How Not to Leave the Initiative to the Man
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - How Not to Leave the Initiative to the Man
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How Not to Leave the Initiative to the Man RUTH 3:1-18 I was talking to a young man who had been dating someone for a long time, but she had then ditched him and broken his heart. For a while he had stayed out of relationships. He had gone out with a number of women friends, some…
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - How Not to Get Overextended in Real Estate
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - How Not to Get Overextended in Real Estate
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How Not to Get Overextended in Real Estate RUTH 4:1-10 The end of the first decade of the twenty-first century saw a collapse in housing prices in the United States, Britain, and elsewhere, and an increase in the number of people “walking away” from property they “owned” but coul…
Job for Everyone - How Wickedness Gets Its Reward