Very few people go through life unscathed. We experience pain, loss and sorrow. Even if there is a promise of a pain free future it doesn’t necessarily make up for present experience. We have a longing, not just for the end of suffering and death, but for its undoing. But if we take a careful look at the Bible, we will discover…
Welcome Home
Welcome Home
Posts by Paul Dutton
One of Jesus’ famous sayings is: “…it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24). What is the meaning of this saying? What is the point that is being made? A teaching that has become popular in recent years is that Jesus was…
Perhaps over Easter you attended a church service and heard read out one of the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection. In Matthew’s Gospel we come across a rather peculiar statement: When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. (Matthew 28:17) Were the first disciples unsure that Jesus was actually risen from the dead? And if they couldn’t be certain then…
Several times in the Bible God is described as: “Punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation” (Exodus 20:5; Exodus 34:7; Numbers 14:18; Deuteronomy 5:9) We may be comfortable in acknowledging that the actions of one generation impacts future generations, but how is it fair that God punishes children for the crimes of their parents?…
Probably a relative of Joseph. Does that surprise you? The actual nativity account is somewhat different to how we picture it, but when we take a closer look, we see that it is better than we imagined. The traditional nativity play involves Joseph going from door to door, looking for a place for him and Mary to stay. Each time Joseph asks…
I’m taking a break from Questions of Faith this month to think about harvest. By the time this goes to print we will have already held our harvest celebration at Therfield Chapel but we’re still very much in the season of harvest. There are upcoming harvest services at St Mary’s (5th Oct) and St Faith’s (12th Oct), in fact the reason for…
Perhaps you’re tempted to skip this article, it sounds a bit heavy (the death bit, not the tank engine part!) yet it is vitally important. As a child I used to love watching Thomas the Tank Engine but those stories, as nostalgic as they might be, don’t actually prepare anyone for getting on the right train. Previously we considered how many of…
Following on from the previous article ‘Is There Marriage in Heaven?’ we said we’d explore the broader question of ‘what happens when we die?’ Many people believe in heaven, some believe in hell, but where do these ideas come from? It may come as a surprise that many of our cultural notions about heaven and hell don’t come from the Bible at…
People might ask this question for a variety of reasons. Perhaps they long to be reunited with a loved one, or maybe they feel they’ve missed out on marriage in this life. Whilst Jesus seems to give a straight-forward answer to this question it’s worth slowing down to see exactly what Jesus means. Jesus said: ‘The people of this age marry and…
It was the dreaded tongue twister of the school nativity: In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register. (Luke 2:1-3) But according to some scholars and historians, Luke simply made this…