These Lively Oracles

Over the years I have heard and studied many different and varied passages from the Bible. I’ve read books, listened to sermons and talks, had conversations, and then joined them all with my own thoughts and came up with the small amount of knowledge that I have gained. And I’m thankful to God for every single little morsel of knowledge that I have gleaned from my studies about Jesus and His word. Then – The Internet happened. And over the years christian churches, schools, teachers and institutions opened up God’s Word in a whole new way that no-one ever knew before. Now, instead of sitting with my study bibles, Strong’s Concordance, and various encyclopaedias and commentaries, I just open my computer bible and access various websites. From then things became a lot clearer. In the past my bible studies sometimes used to look one of those crime scene boards that you see in detective movies. All pictures, scraps of paper with seemingly random notes and red lines joining certain part...

I like to sit in the corner, or at the very edge of church congregations. I sit quietly and watch the people move to and fro. Greeting one, chatting to another. And over time you can get a sense of who is connected to whom in a church set-up. We can see the choir people come in from their different directions and from their different social circles and they will all eventually congregate toward the choir area. We can see the musicians all come along and start to congregate toward the music area of the church, saying Hi to all their friends and acquaintances as they meander along. I can see the little groups of older folk who like to sit in the same seats, and with the same friends, every week. And they sit there week after week, well, just because that’s what they have always done. And every church has their own versions of the same routines that I have mentioned. But, sitting in the corner is a very dangerous place. There are very astute and watchful people in churches who know ...

I spent half of my working life in a factory making parts for aircraft. And the other half working on building sites of various sorts. My whole working life has been spent building or making one thing or another. But building things wasn’t the reason that I worked. I worked because I had a home-life to build. That’s why we all work. We go carry out our daily activities to build our homes together. Building things. Making things. Creating things. We all do it at some point in our lives. Builders build houses. Seamstresses and tailors create clothing. Cooks and bakers create meals. We all love to set our minds onto a project and build or create something. And a lot of the time the thinking and planning of the project is more enjoyable than the actual creative process itself. And that desire to build, or create, comes from deep within our minds and hearts. It is the one creative characteristic that we share with God. We love to create things. We build a home. We build projects and a...

The Bible gives us an account of a grievance between David and King Saul. Saul had become jealous of David due to David’s successes on the battlefields. And Saul’s jealousy was so strong that he tried to kill David by throwing a spear at him to kill him. (1st Samuel ch18 v10-11). Infact Saul’s jealousy was so inflamed that he also tried to kill his son Jonathan with a spear also. (1st Samuel ch20 v23). As we go through our christian lives there will be people who want to throw figurative spears at us. And these spears take on many forms. They could be the spears of misinterpreting something that we have said or done. They could be spears of gossip or mis-information. But whatever the reason they will always be thrown out of a mind of jealousy or unreasonableness. They could even be spears of something that was once very real but the person throwing the allegations had no business in getting involved with them. And the spears will usually be thrown when we are at our most vulnerab...