We live in an era of many opportunities to escape the real world. Different people will do this in different ways. Some will be physically walking through the world but absorbing none of it due to the music playing in their headphones and the mobile phone up against their face. Others will go into social …
I love to read. In theory, I like to read literary fiction, and when I am relaxed and not too tired, I still do. Give me a good Russian novelist or a Booker Prize winner and I am pretty sure I would enjoy it. Yet, if I am honest with myself, I am often not …
It is human nature to notice the things that are wrong rather than the things that are right. We complain about traffic so quickly, but don’t revel in a smooth car trip quite so much. We love to tell others about bad experiences we have had with customer service, but don’t leave positive feedback when …
In Genesis 6:6, we’re told that God regretted that he made man on the earth. This is a difficult thing for us to understand, and I don’t know if we can fully. God, of course, knew this would happen. Yet God, in a sense, wished it had not. This is trying to explain to us …
The flood narrative in Genesis 6-8 is a long passage. Why? What does the writer devote the most time to? It is the time on the ark itself waiting for the flood to rise and then the waters to come down. From 8:6 we have that odd section when Noah sends out some birds to …
In the famous flood narrative from Genesis 6-8, God instructs Noah to build an ‘ark’. Many of us are so used to that word that we don’t realise it is an odd choice to label the giant boat. There are several words for ‘boat’ that God could have used to describe this vessel, but he …
The first four verses of Genesis 6 are some of the most challenging to understand in the whole Bible. Let me explain how we’re going to approach them today. We’ll look at the complications and see the options we have. This is a help for us, instruction in how to read difficult passages. And once …
There is a much-debated word in Genesis 2: the word “helper”. God made woman to be a helper for man. Almost every single Bible translation uses the same word to translate the Hebrew here; it is the best word in English. Yet we often think of a helper as a secondary person, an inferior person, …
It’s that season when many of us think about how next year will be different to this one. Many make some form of New Year Resolution. It is the time when gym memberships sell and healthy food providers’ profits go up. We can be full of motivation that we can be better versions of ourselves …
Christmas (in theory, anyway) is supposed to make us happy. The songs have happy tunes, whether Christian ones or just ones about snowmen. Bright lights and calls for goodwill to all are everywhere. (A lot of it is aspirational rather than reality, of course. I don’t get filled with happiness wandering through a large shopping …