Useful web sites

I'm made reference to a couple of web sites recently that I think are very useful. Here they are:

http://www.rationalchristianity.net/ - particularly for those thorny "contradictions in the Bible" objections that people throw our way sometimes

http://www.gotquestions.org/ - for general questions about faith

Another good one for Christian apologetics is ...

http://www.tektonics.org/

As with anything else you read (or hear from Ken, me or anyone else!) don't just take everything on these or similar sites on trust - check out what you read or hear and come to your own conclusions.

Psalm 22

PS 22:16 Dogs have surrounded me;
a band of evil men has encircled me,
they have pierced my hands and my feet.

PS 22:17 I can count all my bones;
people stare and gloat over me.

PS 22:18 They divide my garments among them
and cast lots for my clothing.


Just thinking about Psalm 22 and how many references there are in it to the crucifixion. Roger mentioned it last night as one of the many sources we have for believing in the Bible.

A thought which I recently read from a couple of sources which blows my mind is that this Psalm is not only written a thousand years before Jesus' death it is also written long before crucifixion had even been invented.

When we bring our worries to God in prayer

When we bring our worries to God in prayer-we often think of that prayer as giving our burdens up – handing them over to God and that is a very helpful image.

But sometimes, the concern is still very much a real part of our day.

I read an interesting analogy with prayer recently which I can’t get out of my mind.

The gist of the analogy is to do with carrying weight around – all sorts of weights of varying shapes and sizes.

Until we pray it is like we are carrying these weights in the most disorganised way possible. Carrying some in weak carrier bags – balancing others in our hands which are already overfull – and stumbling on with too much weight carried in ways which cannot be good for us.

When we pray, very often the weights are still there, God hasn’t yet completely removed the problem. But the act of praying has helped us to sort and arrange our weights into a manageable rucksack properly packed and balanced.

And then we can carry on, in a way which would not have been possible without the prayer.

We regularly need to stop, take stock and sort out our bags and sometimes put some new things in which we have unintentionally found ourselves balancing awkwardly in our hands again.

And sometimes when we have a sort out - some of things which were in the bag before have somehow shrunk or gone entirely.

Perseverance

I've just finished reading Stephen Tomkins' biography of Wilberforce (thanks, Ken). He really was quite an amazing guy. When we hear the name Wilberforce, we think "anti-slavery", but the Church Missionary Society, the British and Foreign Bible Society, and even the RSPCA (!) can trace their roots to Wilberforce. What stands out for me more than anything else is his perseverance, amply evident from this quote taken at a time when he anticipated one of the many defeats of his bills:

"Interested as I might be supposed to be in the final event of the question, I am comparatively indifferent as to the present decision of the House. Whatever they might do, the people of Great Britain, I am confident, will abolish the slave trade... For myself, I am engaged in a work I will never abandon... Let us persevere, and our triumph will be complete. Never, never will we desist, until we have wiped away this scandal from the Christian name, released ourselves from the load of guilt, under which we at present labour, and extinguished every trace of this bloody traffic, of which our posterity, looking back to the history of these enlightened times, will scarce believe that it has been suffered to exist so long a disgrace and dishonour to this country."

Wow! "Never, never ..." And he kept to his word. May we have the same dogged pursuit of what is right in our time, and never, never give up.