Posts by John Staiger (Page 112)

The Necessaries of LifeAdmit it. Doomsday Preppers are having their day in the sun. While the hoi polloi were stacking their trolleys high in supermarket raids, Preppers Sam and Mable Smith were sitting on a basement full of…well, everything! No one wants to undergo any form of deprivation. It’s natural to want to be surrounded by the necessaries of life, and even more so to make sure you are not going to run out. Jesus disciples went into town to…

Time—It’s telling you a story. Time marches on! No man can stay its steps or slow its pace. This Lock-Down, too, is caught up in its momentum. Time’s path is a series of steppingstones. Each stone being a moment of time – one moment being laid down in front of the last into eternity. It’s the wise that add goodness to each moment. Caleb knew that value. He boasted that he was as strong at 85 as he had been…

Music is powerful. If your heart is breaking by the end of Tracy Chapman’s song, ‘Fast car,’ and all your emotions driven along by Queens’, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ and your spirits lifted by Neil Dimond’s, ‘Sweet Caroline,’ then I am speaking to you. Our worship music is designed to drive these same emotions…and more. In fact, God has designed even greater things – music for the soul that longs to walk with the Lord. Our ‘Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs’ issue…

Ecclesiastes is raw. Its issues are cut to the bone and exposed to the harsh light of ‘Life under the Sun.’ Daily routines and schemes are subjected to the elements of time, chance, and cause and effect. I have always felt better to preach that this was Solomon’s last will and testament. A legacy of plain speaking to future generations who might foolishly follow his example into the futility of excess. All the things that men long for were on-tap…

John the baptiser was a solitary man. Being confined to a suburban neighbourhood was not for him. However, he didn’t start his life in the wilderness avoiding clothing outlets and looking for beehives for dinner. He was a miracle baby. The son of aged parents. His dad a priest. Brought up in the faith of the One true God amidst the holy practices of the temple. Everyone within earshot of his birth announcement, or the day he was named ‘John,’…

If Jonah was claustrophobic, he was out of luck. You would think a man of God who had his levels of faith would just do what God told him to do. However, great faith doesn’t necessarily issue forth in great acts of obedience. Nineveh was a no-go zone for this prophet. If preaching in Nineveh meant salvation for the wicked Assyrians, then Jonah was sailing in the opposite direction. And that he did. No one anymore believes that God deliberately…

The Lock-Down—Bringing Hope to the Confined CircumstancesDay 2. In Jeremiah 38, the prophet Jeremiah found himself at the bottom of a well – sunk down and up to his armpits in mud. We can’t be sure of what else may have been down there, whether vermin, insect or rubbish, but we do know that he had neither food nor water to sustain him. His days were numbered. King Zedekiah’s cronies had lowered Jeremiah down into the well by ropes in…

The Lock-Down—A Christian’s guide in Confined CircumstancesDay 1. Jail is a miserable place. It is the antithesis of freedom. For most Christians being arrested, beaten and confined in a cell with their feet in stocks would be a sure sign from God that their missionary days were well and truly ended. By the time that Paul and Silas had arrived in Philippi (Acts 16), they had accepted that all of this kind of thing was merely ‘grist-for-the-mill’ for the preacher…