Grief has surprised me. Before I had experienced it, I thought that it would feel like everything was all awful, all the time. But, somehow, even on the worst days, the Lord shows me his mercies in ways that lift my heart and point me to hope in him.
I heard it from the other end of the house. Raised voices, a scream and then a very loud ‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Please don’t tell Mum!’ I could tell, even from a distance, that the apology in that outburst was driven mostly by a desire not to get to the point of needing my intervention! Other times, I’ve had the experience of instructing one of my children to apologise and they somehow manage to utter the words ‘I’m sorry’ with such disdain and contempt that it is very clear they mean the exact opposite. Sometimes the problem...
Rhys Bezzant continues our Apostles’ Creed series … We often speak of a sports star as an adornment to their game. The way Jim Stynes bore up under his fight with cancer, or the ways that Roger Federer is magnanimous in defeat. Sometimes when politicians retire, their colleagues reach deep to find ways of celebrating the integrity or generosity of spirit in people who were their former antagonists. But more than adorning the game: the apostle Paul also wants us to be adornments to the name, to show how beautiful the Gospel is by the way we live our lives. And...
Our life is completely soaked in a performance-based culture. Like running to the car in a downpour, we are totally drenched in a culture obsessed with performance. It’s everywhere we look. Think about the various areas of life. Health. Finance. Relationships. Work. Creative pursuits. Sport. Education. There isn’t one area of life unaffected by performance. We are obsessed with it. Our life is completely soaked in a performance-based culture. We are obsessed with it. Take the area of finance, for example. We like to know the performance of our account, our investments, our superannuation fund, our tax offsets and returns, and...
Amber Guyger is a former Dallas police officer who has been found guilty of murdering Botham Jean. The case became a national story because of the circumstances surrounding the crime, which included allegations of racism. Guyger is white and was a police officer; Botham Jean was an African American. Guyger shot and killed him in his own home—alleging that she had mistakenly entered the wrong apartment and thought he was a burglar. Guyger has been sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. Many people outside the courtroom have decried the sentence, insisting that it is far too lenient. Inside the courtroom, another...
