These Lively Oracles

Revolutions are seldom good. I have found in my readings of some of them that the people who were involved at the start, with a call for an uprising, have seldom had any thoughts or ideas of an end-plan. There would be the fighting, the patriotism, the deaths and the suffering. And then there will be a political and social vacuum for some opportunist leader to come and try to take over and form a new rulership for a social movement or country. But things would never be the same after that. And yet, revolutions are all the same at their core. They start with a national and patriotic outcry, then a lot of bloodletting and fighting. And then, if the revolutionaries lose they will be put down, or else if the revolutionaries win they will all stand and look at each other and wonder what to do next. Well, these were my uneducated thoughts as I recently sat in the Musée de l'Armée (The Army Museum), in Paris, France looking at the final resting place of Napoleon Bonaparte. It was a very p...

It has happened to me a couple of times. My work for God became an idol to me. It so easily happened and I didn’t even notice it had happened until something made me stop and take a look around at what I was doing. And it can happen so easily to anyone else, too. You see, I became so involved in what I was doing that I forgot about the person that I was doing it for. Whether it was driving a bus, teaching some group or other, or whatever the reason, I had forgotten that the main reason for my doing it was to worship Jesus. And I see it happening to others all around me also. People get involved in music ministry and they become so engrossed in the music, the sound, and the instruments that somehow the central person of their worship gets side-lined. And it can happen to pastors, preachers, ministers, caretakers, drivers and choir singers too. They can become so engrossed in their various ministries that they forget about Jesus, and their mind becomes focused in whichever activity...

It’s that time of year again when those of us who have gardens are outside mowing our lawns, trimming our hedges and thinking of the flowers and shrubs. And it is no different in our household. The lawns have been trimmed and overgrowing hedges cut back. But this year we decided to also do some much needed maintenance that hadn’t been done in a couple of years. So, off we went to get some super-strength disinfectant for our driveways and out came the power washer. And a few weekends was spent caring for the driveways, patios and pathways. But during the course of our tasks we noticed a little shrub that was almost dead. It was an Acer tree and it had been a lovely coloured bush in years gone by. But now there were no blooms on it and the little wooden container that it was in was totally rotted away. My wife thought about discarding it but I wanted it keep so that we could replant it and give it another chance. So we found a new pot, added some new soil and put the shrub into it. If ...