In a recent SMH opinion piece, Adele Horin bemoans the choices made by two women of her acquaintance—a mother and a daughter, both highly intelligent, who opted out of the full-time career market to spend time at home raising children:

She topped the state in the final exams, a brilliant girl. But she married young and did what women did in the 1960s, stayed at home to raise her children while her husband climbed the corporate ladder. Much later she worked part-time. Now it's her brilliant daughter's turn. A lawyer in her 40s, she has pulled back, left the big firm with its killer hours to do home-based work, and to raise her own precociously bright daughters while her husband does the climbing.

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The Bible is like a newspaper in many ways:

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Apparently you have the option to choose the hill you are going to die on.

What I know about military strategy can be written on the round bit of one of those metal thingies that come out the long bit you point at other people when using a rifle.

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Well, I preached Psalm 11. For what it's worth, you can find a somewhat sloppy manuscript somewhat sloppily inserted into the comments of my previous post.

I made the mistake of assuming that the ESV text, which I used, would be fine. It was, except that the NIV text—which was the preferred Bible translation at the church I was visiting—departed ever so slightly from the ESV at two significant points.

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If free-to-air TV still retains value as some kind of cultural indicator, at least for those dinosaurs resisting the move to cable/internet/digital, then a profound cultural shift has taken place. Call me slow, but I have only just noticed it. The underworld has been replaced by the dissection table.

As I write this, Clint Eastwood's apparently less-than-brilliant Hereafter is opening at the cinemas, which may indicate that the afterlife is still of interest to those who go out for their entertainment. But not for Foxtel-resistant Freddy back home on the couch, or those who have not raced out to buy the new digital receivers.

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Psalm 11 talks about the wrath, fire and judgement of God.

I have some 3/4 formed thoughts about how the Psalm points to Jesus. But I would be delighted for blog readers to add their thoughts to the mix, as I prepare to preach it this Sunday. You can go in the footnotes that all good preachers put into their sermons and read out as people are exiting the building.

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I sat in a church staff meeting and we came back—as we must—to that question that all true churches should ask themselves on a regular basis: what's our church on about?

I scribbled down a four-parter in descending order of importance, and share it here for what it is worth. That may not be a lot, given that it took all of one minute and thirty seconds to get it onto a scrap of paper, and people kept saying things that I hadn't thought of as I wrote. But here we go.

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Earthquakes, floods, snow storms... It wouldn't take much thought to start a list of all the disasters that have occurred in recent times. Death and misery fill the news websites and television broadcasts, as people lose their homes, livelihoods and loved ones at the hand of nature.

D Broughton Knox, the influential 20th century Australian theologian, also saw disasters come during his lifetime. We thought that this article by him, published in the Selected works of Broughton Knox (Volume III) and originally a radio broadcast from January 1975, would be relevant and thought-provoking.

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One of the many crosses my children have to bear in having me for a father is that I find it hard to stop being an editor.

“Me and Elle are going to the beach today, Dad. Can you give us a lift?”

“Not until you can say: Elle and I are going to the beach today.”

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Because I am a pastor and maintain a church email group list with large numbers on it, I receive lots of ‘pass it on’ emails. Dozens and dozens.

My kids get even more of these chain emails, urging them to pass on the contents from their friends. Some are harmless, some are enjoyable. Others are false or a waste of time. Some are more sinister.

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