What does it mean for Jesus to promise abundant life in a world beset by COVID-19? What does it have to tell us about abundance?
Category: Spirituality in the Ordinary
For a lot of people, Christmas is an ambivalent time. Emotionally complex. It holds a lot of stuff – both good and bad. For some, it is easy to enter into the spirit of it, perhaps reclaiming that childish delight. For others, it is marred by grief or difficult family relationships. As children we might […]
After a long night of unsuccessful fishing, Simon sits on the shore and reflects on his weird week. Little does he know that what he is about to see will change him forever.
There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. Job 1:1 So begins the book of Job. It’s a kind of fairy story really. Job is an archetype of the good man. He has no […]
This is a complex passage, with a lot going on. Greeks want to see Jesus. But instead they go and talk to one of his disciples, who then finds another disciple, and then go to Jesus (with the Greeks?) Jesus then, instead of saying yes or no, makes the declaration that his hour has now […]
A sermon I preached at Glen Iris Road Uniting Church on 19/11/2017 on the Parable of the talents – Matthew 25:14-30 The video I just showed is a trailer for one of my favourite comedy series – the Detectorists. It’s a gentle, wry comedy about friendship and love and the deep desire for buried treasure. […]
I’ve been reading about Effectuation recently. It’s a way of reasoning characteristic of entrepreneurs, discovered by academic Saras Sarasvathy’s research into how a number of successful entrepreneurs got where they were. You can read about her research here. The top level way to understand this is to distinguish effectual reasoning from what she terms “causal reasoning”. […]
This video is something I made a few weeks ago for a worship event at college chapel focussing on Acts 17:16-34. Paul called the Athenians “extremely religious… in every way” The question that occured to me: What would Paul make of Melbourne? What gods would he observe? So I went on an anthropological expedition through […]
People claim we live in a secular society, from whence the gods have fled. But, on the contrary, the gods walk among us.
In Carlton, where I work and spend a lot of my time “studying” (aka drinking coffee in cafes, occasionally adding a little cake, (purely for my health’s sake)), the local government has built a beautiful library called the Kathleen Syme Centre. It is a state of the art facility, including a space for the senior […]
Alister Pate 