Tag: Jesus

Meeting Jesus on your couch

Published June 2020

IF you have never the read the Gospels (the books Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the Bible) or have read them but found them hard to imagine as history and difficult to picture as real life events, then may I encourage you to watch the free series The Chosen about the life of Christ on The Chosen app?

With a 8.5 user score on IMDb with over 5,000 user reviews, making it the highest-rated faith project of all time, and 100% critic score and 99% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, this is not some painfully acted, poorly crafted Sunday school project.

The Chosen has surged into IMDb’s Top 250 All-time series list. It joins other prestigious series like Netflix’s The Crown and HBO’s hit series Band of Brothers and Chernobyl as the most highly rated historical dramas. Dubbed into Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian, besides its original English, it is currently being watched in nearly every country on earth. Continue reading

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Our faith is not blind

WORLD SIGHT DAY is on the 13th of October, celebrating our physical sight – a wonderful gift and a vital sense that helps us interpret and evaluate our environment.

However, there are many real and important things that are not visible to us like energy, love, and gravity.

What about faith? An oft-quoted Christian phrase is “we walk by faith and not by sight” but is it really true that “faith is blind”?

Homicide detective J. Warner Wallace, in his 2013 book entitled Cold Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels, discusses how, as a religious sceptic, he investigated the death of Jesus Christ and the evidence for God in the same manner he investigates cold cases (unsolved murders of the past) in his job.

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What type of father is God?

HAVE YOU HEARD people say ‘I like the Jesus of the New Testament (NT) but I don’t like the angry God of the Old Testament (OT)?’

According to Christianity, Jesus is God in human form. Jesus told His followers that if they had seen Him they had seen God.

Sometimes it seems to me though that we think they are two different types of gods: that the OT God is a stern, strict Victorian father who takes the strap to his children if they do wrong, whereas we imagine Jesus as a modern, fun parent who gives us lots of hugs and positive reinforcement.

 

But are either of these really the picture the Bible portrays?      

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Jesus in Jeans 2 – The fancy banquet

 – a modern rendering of the parable in Matthew 22:1-14

There was a tycoon who threw a party at a swanky restaurant. He issued an invitation in the local press that “whomsoever” wanted to come was invited. The only proviso was that they had to be dressed properly in the dinner jacket that he provided. His Son had gone out and, at much cost to himself, bought enough jackets to provide for all possible attendees.

Well, the poor beggar man was only too pleased to exchange his raggedy coat for the fancy dinner jacket and go into the party. He was overflowing with gratitude and couldn’t believe his good fortune.Continue reading

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Our most serious disease

Tips for Life

by Alan Bailey

The cry of the present day seems to be “Get outta my way!”

You see the grimace on the face of the man or woman who was beaten to the parking bay at the supermarket. At times it will be heard in the impatient blowing of the car horn or the shouted insult. At least in the western world, considering oneself first has become the rule of life. Individualism has gone mad. Richard Dawkins blames what he calls the ’selfish gene’. It strikes me that it has much more to do with the conscious choices we make.

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Miscarriages of Justice

Tips for Life

By Alan Bailey

Every now and then we hear of someone being released from prison after wrongfully serving part of a lengthy sentence. It is a sad situation when an innocent man suffers the indignity, the pain and the loss of reputation that goes with being declared guilty and then locked away. It is hard to imagine how you would feel in that situation; grieved, frustrated, angry? And what of those who are put to death, only to be found innocent after all?

There are many reasons why these events occur. Sometimes it is a wicked plot and a web of lies that secures a man’s conviction. Sometimes an unfortunate set of coincidences that incriminate, even convincing judge and jury. Then a drawn-out process can take years to bring the truth to light and set the prisoner free.Continue reading

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What’s the point to all this?

Tips for Life

by Alan Bailey

Why do we endure such stress and pressure?
For most of us, life’s a struggle. Work can mean endless hassles and even holidays can bring on more struggle. Men, women and children are working and playing their way through life. But after all the perspiration and the parties, the question persists: What’s the point?

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Finding a bargain


Tips for Life

by Alan Bailey

After the Christmas rush comes another rush: the New Year sales. Doorbusters as they are often called. I don’t go to them but I see hundreds of people on the TV news literally breaking down doors and almost trampling others underfoot to get at bargains inside some department store.

Once in there, the frenzy is on in earnest. People push and shove and fight and struggle to snatch up clothing, grab household goods and line up to pay for them. Some items are torn or damaged in the fray. Some people are even hurt. Clearly, people love bargains.Continue reading

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Benefits of saying goodbye

by Andrew Lansdown

A fortnight ago I conducted a funeral for a friend. It was a graveside service and I stood at a lectern at the head of the coffin in which my friend’s body lay. The coffin rested on three chromed bars bridging the two-metre drop of the grave.

At the conclusion of the service, I spoke the words of committal: “Forasmuch as it has pleased almighty God in His great mercy to take out of this world the soul of our dear brother … we therefore commit his body to the elements, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust …” As I spoke these words, the six pallbearers lowered the coffin into the grave and out of sight.

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What price for a life?

Tips for Life

by Alan Bailey

Youth suicide appears to be dropping, but self-harm is taking over.

Most of us simply can’t keep abreast of all that is happening around the world. News spreads rapidly and much of it is hard to come to terms with, so we tend to give up. We just do our best to survive. That’s the formula these days.

But have you noted this? Trends show that world-wide, young people are losing their sense of the worth of life. Suicide is still chillingly common, but now self-harm is taking over. In numbers of countries, those in teen years in particular, are being driven to attack their own bodies. They deliberately harm themselves out of frustration, anger, sadness or just to get attention.

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