24–30 March 2019. Numbers 24–25 (click to read). In Numbers 24–25, the story of Balaam continues. Balak, the king of Moab is afraid of the Israelites and their military power, and so he hires Balaam (a non-Israelite diviner from Syria) to come over and curse the Israelites. In this way King Balak hopes that he […]
2–8 December 2018. Psalm 87 (click to read). Psalm 87 is one of the so-called “Songs of Zion”, hymns that praise Zion (another name for Jerusalem) for its role in God’s work of ruling and blessing the world. Jewish scholars tell us that Psalm 87 may have been sung by pilgrims on their yearly journey […]
25 November – 1 December 2018. Psalm 80 (click to read). When things go wrong in our lives, we often want to know why. Why did it happen? And if God really loves us, why didn’t he protect us? The problem is that there are no easy answers to this “why” question. Maybe that’s why […]
18–24 November 2018. Psalm 74 (click to read). Sometimes one of the hardest things about being a parent is not giving our children the things they want. Because we love our children, we want them to be happy. But sometimes the things that little children want just aren’t good for them. They want to eat […]
14–20 October 2018. Job 23 (click to read). Job knows that he has done nothing wrong. He knows that he has done nothing to deserve such terrible pain and disaster in his life. So Job dreams of bringing a court case to God and defending himself against God. In his heart Job knows this situation is […]
15–21 April 2018. Psalm 72 (click to read). Every day when we read the news we are confronted with a world full of problems. No matter where we look we see injustices and suffering, evil, hatred and violence. We know that this world isn’t perfect. But is there any hope? Of course there is. As […]
8–14 April 2018. Psalm 65 (click to read). One of the big mistakes we can make in our faith is to think of God as being very small. We do this in many ways. For example, maybe we think of God only as the God of Presbyterians. But of course God is not just our God. […]
1–7 April 2018. Psalm 58 (click to read). The world isn’t supposed to be this way. Goodness should win and evil should fail. That’s the way things should be. But sadly that’s often not true. What’s worse, often evil doesn’t just struggle along, it succeeds – and it even rises to power. In politics, society, […]
25–31 March 2018. Psalm 51 (click to read). Often when we pray, we ask God to change something about the world around us: to change our situation, to solve the problems we are facing, or to overcome the challenges ahead. But in Psalm 51 the writer recognizes that the greatest problem he faces is not […]
22–28 October 2017. Psalm 103 (click to read). We all know that Jesus commands us to forgive others. Jesus tells us not to take revenge, not to pay back evil for evil, but to be ready to forgive people for the things they have done to us. While we all know this, sometimes we forget […]