The way of imagination

  Text: Psalm 94 1.         UNDERDOG STATUS.      Life’s not fair!   How does this truism strike us?   Do we hear it as a simple fact of life, or does it strike us as being a somewhat cynical statement?   If someone utters this phrase after having experienced some relatively minor setback, such as not getting promoted at work, we will perceive it differently perhaps, from when we think it to ourselves as we watch the news and see images of children sitting on a pile of rubble that used to be their home, with their parents buried underneath.      Indeed, in the early days of World War II, the BBC invited a popular Christian writer (and Oxford lecturer) to give a series of radio talks on Christianity to boost the morale of the British people who were enduring the Blitz of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force).   As he began his series of addresses on “the wireless”, C.S. Lewis invited hi...

  Texts: Is. 40.1-5, 28-31; Ps. 27.1-4, 7-14; Hebrews 12.1-4, 7-13      The life of faith is not easy.   Do you ever get tired?   Do you ever get fed up with it all?   Some people speak of the Christian life as if faith were a solution to our problems.   However, living as a Christian for a few years (or perhaps even a few minutes) reveals to us that the life of faith presents us with new challenges – just ask the women and men included in the “hall of faith” of Hebrews chapter 11:   “…Others suffered mocking and flogging and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death; they were sawn in two; they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented—of whom the world was not worthy . They wandered in deserts and mountains and in caves and holes in the ground” (Heb. 11.36-38).      One of the greatest literary depictions of the reality of the life of ...