Search Results
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - How It All Goes Wrong (Again)
Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone - How It All Goes Wrong (Again)
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How It All Goes Wrong (Again) NUMBERS 25:1- 26: 51 Numbers cause us some anxiety. I am often discouraged by the numbers of people in our church, afraid it is dying (the average age is quite high). A shrinking church will seem to be a failing church. So from time to time I glance …
Genesis for Everyone Part 2 - How to Live in a Contractual Relationship with God
Genesis for Everyone Part 2 - How to Live in a Contractual Relationship with God
by SPCK - John Goldingay
How to Live in a Contractual Relationship with God Genesis 28:16-29: 14a I was trying to explain to a group of Christians the difference between a covenant and a contract in order to suggest that God’s relationship with us is more like the former than the latter. I have a contrac…
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - I'm Not the Hero; the Hero Is God
Joshua, Judges and Ruth for Everyone - I'm Not the Hero; the Hero Is God
by SPCK - John Goldingay
I’m Not the Hero; the Hero is God JUDGES 8: 1-35 One of my fond memories of our sons’ childhood is of reading Bible stories to them at bedtime, stories that had been rewritten and illustrated for children; I have now passed on the set of books to the son who has children of his o…
LWPT Meditations - Sixth Sunday of Easter - Year A
LWPT Meditations - Sixth Sunday of Easter - Year A
by Susan Thorne
Meditation – Sixth Sunday of Easter Year A Acts 17:22-31 Psalm 66:8-20 1st Peter 3:13-22 John 14:15-21 “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Peter 3:15). This was Peter’s admonition to the members of the e…
Meditation: Whose bone and flesh are we?
Meditation: Whose bone and flesh are we?
by Andrew Pratt
Meditation: Whose bone and flesh are we? Whose bone and flesh are we? Who reigns above our lives? For forty years or four a human monarch has limited tenure, meagre power. And then what? Then who or what is God? What is our greatest concern? Only you, only I, can answer that? A…
HYMN - I love my God with all my heart
HYMN - I love my God with all my heart
by Andrew Pratt
HYMN - I love my God with all my heart - Theme Covered: Easter, resurrection, Mary Magdalene, conversion, commitment TUNE: HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING METER: 8.7.8.7 Also available in PowerPoint Format - Click Here Extract: I love my God with all my heart, I thank God that I'm li…
Hymn: No royal robes, but donkey riding
Hymn: No royal robes, but donkey riding
by Andrew Pratt
No royal robes, but donkey riding, the Christ, our King, had come to town, Jerusalem came out to meet him. Would gold or thorns compose a crown? The people spread their palms before him, they wondered what this day would bring: as Jesus, humble, riding quietly brought contrast to…
Genesis for Everyone Part 2 - Do We Ever Learn?
Genesis for Everyone Part 2 - Do We Ever Learn?
by SPCK - John Goldingay
Do We Ever Learn Genesis 20: 1-13 There was a man who used to come to talk to me from time to time when he had gotten into a mess with a woman (well, he came at other times, too). He was married and ought to have known better, but he didn’t. He would blame the women: they were at…
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