Posts from May 2015

Technology has changed incredibly in my lifetime.  Magnetic tape was invented in 1928.  Okay, that’s quite a bit before I began “my lifetime”.  But magnetic tape was limited at first to bulky and expensive ‘reel to reel’ recording machines.  However in 1962 (two years after I began my apprenticeship as a fitter and turner) Phillips invented the ‘compact cassette’.  Show a compact cassette to a teenager today and chances are that he’ll look at you with bemused bewilderment.  Compact cassettes…

Last Monday evening the ABC’s Q&A program featured a lengthy discussion on death and dying. Underlying those discussions was that death is one of those “unmentionable subjects” in our society. One is tempted to ask, “Surely among Christians death is not an unmentionable subject?”  The very next morning, after watching this program, one of our elderly ladies was talking to me about a certain hymn. She added that she had put that on her list of songs to be sung…

Preaching last Sunday in a couple of country churches (Goondiwindi and Inglewood) brought home to me again some matters that have often troubled me deeply. That is the need for sound Biblical teaching in small congregations in some of the remote places of Australia and the problem of the survival of these small churches. Occasionally over the years I’ve spoken to some of our ‘grey nomads’ when they return from a stint of travel around Australia. Invariably there is a…

Usually I can relate to a poem that I read many years ago.  I don’t remember the exact words of it but I remember well the thrust of it.  It was the way we pray for the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. The mother prays: Come Lord Jesus… but then she adds: But please let me first see my daughter grow up.  A farmer prays: Come Lord Jesus… but then he adds: But please let me first finish my…