Pastor John (Page 4)

A Christian friend from another church once stayed over for the Easter period.  For Easter Sunday he insisted on providing a chicken and champagne dinner.  I, half-jokingly, questioned his extravagance and suggested it was nice enough to have his company without him “lashing out” in this way to make it a memorable occasion.  He quickly insisted that this “extravagance” wasn’t to make his visit more memorable but rather that it was in memory of the victory of the Lord Jesus…

I don’t get excited very often about Australian politics… nor any other politics for that matter.  Winston Churchill once made the now famous remark: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Like most of us I’m heartily sick of the “coup mentality” that has infected both sides of politics in Australia in recent years.  We have lived through a period of Labor politicians stabbing their leaders…

She turned up at the meeting with a huge bruise on the side of her face.  When someone asked she shrugged and said something about turning around in a hurry and colliding with the open kitchen door.  Well, it sounded plausible but I knew she was lying.  I’d been to her home after her daughter had turned up in my Church Catechism class in tears.  On that occasion I had seen the holes in the plaster wall of the dining…

The joke wears a little thin sometimes so I have to remind myself that people mean well and that they are really just having some fun at my expense. In this case the joke came up in the context of my being retired. The person suggested that it really shouldn’t have been all that different for me to retire because I only worked one day a week anyway. I was waiting for the rest, but it didn’t come so I…

On my walk through the mall on the way back from the supermarket I was shocked. For a moment I wondered whether I had heard right. Perhaps my hearing is getting worse than I thought. But no! The words were repeated. I have to say that I don’t get shocked easily about “foul language”. Some years ago the schoolteacher of the student that I mentor in our Kids’ Hope program felt that she had to explain to me why my…

The doctor’s waiting room is crowded and despite the fact that you have an appointment your expected ten-minute wait drags out to an hour of paging through the magazines you don’t really feel like reading. Meanwhile your stress levels increase considerably and by the time you are called in you’re ready to give the doctor a serve about keeping to schedules. Scenes like this are all too familiar for most of us. Maybe in your case it wasn’t the doctor’s…

As one drives up from Sydney towards Uralla on the New England Highway you enter Thunderbolt country. “Captain Thunderbolt” (Frederick Ward) was a notorious Aussie bushranger in the early 1800s. A little before Uralla there is an area with many huge rocks just off the highway which is known as Thunderbolts Hideout. Years ago I travelled that stretch of road frequently on my visits to Toowoomba from Sydney. On one occasion I noticed that someone had painted some “Christian Graffiti”…

I note that there’s yet another book out about someone who claims they made a visit to heaven while being clinically dead. An earlier book on that theme sold more than five-million copies and ended up on the New York Times bestseller list. I’m tempted to say that the author must be laughing all the way to the bank – except that it would be very ungracious of me to say that – and besides, the author is a pastor…

Some words that we use are very expressive. One such word is ‘homesick’. No! It doesn’t mean that I’m sick of being at home; it means that I’m sick because of my intense longing for home. Migrants typically experience homesickness. Some get over their homesickness very quickly; others struggle with it for a long time – even years. Some can’t get over their homesickness at all and decide to return to their former country. I have spoken to others who…

I guess we’ve all seen the documentaries where, in some thick rain forest, someone has discovered the ruins of some ancient civilization.  The scene is one of crumbling masonry that has been almost totally overgrown by vegetation.  The jungle now has a stranglehold on the remains of what was once a thriving human settlement. I can relate to that in a fresh way.  When we moved to our new location in March last year Merle and I spend quite some…