Be Still and Know

Genesis 22:2 This is an incredibly tough passage to cope with. My wife and I have three children. The thought of offering one of them as a sacrifice is well beyond my power to comprehend. I really struggle with every part of it. But Abraham agree...

Genesis 18:13-14 I love laughter and I am sure you do too. It’s a pleasure to see people really letting rip and having a good laugh. Laughter can be sparked off by any number of things, but it is often sparked by absurdity. We laugh at clowns bec...

Genesis 17:5-8 It’s a big moment when you enter into a binding agreement with someone. Whether you are thinking of marriage, buying a house or starting a new job, it is a time to stand back from life and take a deep breath. This was just such a m...

Genesis 12:2-3 Never forget that God is in the business of blessing people! That’s what he loves to do and that’s what Abram was just about to discover. At a time of life when most people would be seeking to take things more slowly, God calls him...

Genesis 12:1 I wonder what your life looks like at the moment. I would guess that, for many of us, there are plenty of aspects that suit us really well. Life isn’t perfect, and we can easily come up with some suggested improvements, but the thoug...

Genesis 11:4-8 God hates arrogance because it is a complete rejection of him. Here, the story of the tower of Babel could be described as an ultimate example of arrogance. The people decided to build a tower that would reach to the heavens. This...

Genesis 6:22-7:1 I am sure most of us have heard about Noah from our earliest days. Genesis gives us an amazing account of this heroic man. In short, Noah is asked by God to produce an enormous boat and fill it with his family and a wonderful col...

Genesis 4:8-9 This is the world’s first murder. Isn’t it terrible that, so early in the Bible, we have to confront such an appalling evil? If you have ever known a family that has experienced a murder, you will know the awful impact that it has –...

Genesis 3:11-12 This account of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden has a very contemporary ring to it. Blaming others is as much a way of life in today’s world as it was for Adam long ago. He knew he had done wrong in eating the forbidden fruit,...

Genesis 2:2-3 The French revolution turned everything upside down, including the arrangement of time. They used decimalisation in a thoroughgoing way, dividing each day into ten hours and each week into ten days. But it didn’t catch on. After onl...

Genesis 1:27 I can happily sit people watching for ages. It fascinates me that we are all so incredibly different from one another. In size, shape, colour, height, age and ability, we are all absolutely unique. However, we have one thing in commo...

Genesis 1:3-4 It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of light. Without light there is no life. It’s as simple as that. So it is not surprising to discover that, on the first day of creation, God created light. With the introduction of ligh...

Genesis 1:1-2 It is important not to rush past these verses. They may be so familiar to us that it would be easy to skip over them. But don’t! These words are foundational for the whole Bible and, indeed, for each of our lives. They are telling u...

Luke 2:29-32 Eight days after Jesus’ birth, his parents took him to the temple for his circumcision. There is no suggestion that the people of Jerusalem understood the significance of this moment. All that the people saw was a poor young couple p...

Luke 2:19 This sentence is what I would call a piece of considerable understatement! Mary, who was probably a teenager and who almost certainly knew very little about the world, had just given birth to the Messiah. She had certainly been given pl...