So how about the head of ASIO saying that one of our former politicians was a foreign government asset? It was one of those announcements, in an otherwise routine speech that landed like a dead possum onto a picnic table – it had to be disposed of, but even when it’s gone its presence at all still puts you off your meal.
This week I attended the funeral of Joe Mullins. Joe died old and full of years (103 of them). He and his wife Edith (who died in 2009) had six children, and what seems to me like a bajillion grand-children and great grand-children.
1. I’m struck as I read the New Testament just how much of it is concerned with finding unity across distance.
Be it cultural distance (Jewish and non-Jewish Christians); confidence to live as a distinctive Christian minority who, nevertheless, are intelligible to the cultures around them (the so-called “stronger” and “weaker” Christians); and, of course, the mountains of passages about how to handle conflict, disagreement and sin.
A surprising thought rings out through these texts – unity within the body of Christ is deeply precious, it is worth contending for and is more important than being right. This thought is easier or harder to believe based on what’s going on around us.
Have you ever received an SMS telling you to urgently pay a toll? An email informing you of an incredible investment opportunity? An unsolicited telephone call apparently from a reputable organisation asking for your personal details? Or a Facebook friend request from someone whose name you don’t know and whose somewhat provocative profile photo you suspect is probably not a photo of them at all? If so, you have almost definitely been the target of a scam.
I want to tell you about a dinner conversation I had this week with my children regarding brain worms and the Holy Spirit. It’s possible you missed hearing about the surgery at Canberra Hospital of a woman who had gone to hospital with pains in her stomach, diarrhoea, a cough, a fever and experiencing forgetfulness and depression. The hospital did a brain scan, noticed something abnormal, then did another one and noticed it’d moved, so they decided to operate. To everyone in the operating theatres’ surprise, they pulled out a very active worm, about 8cm long.
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