ECCLESIASTES 2 – PLEASURE
Hedonism is the belief that pleasure is the chief good in life. Hedone is the Greek word for pleasure. Hedonist imagination turns to reality in Ecclesiastes 1:12-2:16. This passage describes the different ways people try to experience pleasure. The writer is seeking...
ECCLESIASTES 1 – THE MEANING OF LIFE
As I enter into a new year I plan to do a study of the book of Ecclesiastes. Along with the book of Job, Ecclesiastes reminds us that God is bigger, and our life in this world more unpredictable, than we might think. The book invites us to take a realistic tour of...
THE NEW YEAR
A Prayer for the Commencement of a New Year. Almighty and immortal God, whose mercies are like your years, unnumbered, we your dependent creatures, humbly adore you for your manifold goodness to us and to all your children. Awaken in our hearts a thankful sense of...
DEALING WITH DEPRESSION AND LONELINESS
A primary symptom of depression is sadness. Freud, a sadly depressed man all through his life, admitted, “we are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never so helplessly unhappy as when we have lost our loved object or its love.” Our aging...
A GREETING TO MY READERS
It is always interesting to me to discover where my readers of this blog live. The statistics of locations for the past year are illuminating. At the top of the list in the thousands are from the United States (3,823) and in their hundreds from the United...
INSPIRATIONAL READING FOR THE NEW YEAR
This past year I have been reading a number of books on aging to gain some wisdom on this stage of my life. Some are personal memoirs and others are somewhat academic. Many are representatives of their eras and some are dated. However the most accessible and...
MY FIRST CHRISTMAS IN ENGLAND
My first twenty-three Christmases were spent in my home in New Zealand where it was the middle of summer. In 1964 I sailed to England to study Theology at the University of Durham. For the first time I was feeling homesick and lonely. My first Christmas away from home...
ADVENT 4
I have been writing about The Four Last Things, the traditional subjects of the four Sundays in Advent – Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell. The fourth of the four last things is the doctrine of Hell. This is a subject that is rarely heard of in the pulpit these days....
A VISION FOR THE AGING CHRISTIAN
James Houston and Michael Parker have produced a valuable resource for Christians who are aging and for their potential caregivers. They share their own stories of aging, their prayer lives, their maturation, their experience of miracles, and their wish to leave an...
HOPE
Hope is the message of the Advent and Christmas Seasons: Hope of the coming of the Savior. It is the prayer of the Gospel: “May the God of Hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”...
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