God talk

  In the ancestry of Jesus, we find some really interesting women of faith: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba and Mary the mother of our Lord One will notice that in a conventional genealogy we have such and ‘such begat’ or ‘the father of’...   In Matthews genealogy there is a twist and the reason there is a twist is that sometimes God works in unconventional ways. All these women have a story to tell, and they all faced some type of persecution in their lives.    taken from wikipedia; the address is at the bottom of this blog   Tamar and Judah Tamar was married to one of Judah’s sons and he died.   According to the law (levir practice) she was to have a surrogate husband.   She got a surrogate husband, but he wasted his seed on the ground so that she wouldn’t get pregnant.   God judged him and he died.   Judah decided that Tamar was not going to get the youngest son but lied to her… that when he grew up, he would perform by making her pre...

  Have you ever thought about your own family background and where your roots are found?   In today’s world this is big business and with the advent of DNA testing one can find out even more. We all want to know where we are from as it helps us to build a picture of our identity and where we belong.   Sometimes when we read the news either from the papers or online it is sometimes the only good news we can find. However, DNA may also bring one bad news, perhaps one is related to a despot such as Hitler, Mussolini or even Ceausescu and Stalin. Perhaps sometimes it is better to keeps one’s ancestry at a safe distance.   Herod for example was half Edomite and he wanted to hide this from Judaism of the time so he destroyed the archives in which his ancestry could be found. In Judaism genealogies are very important as they can show in the Old Testament if one is fit to be a priest or not or to be considered Jewish.   So then today we are going to ask the question...

Before we embark on our programme of learning about Advent and Christmas time it is good to pause and think about light and darkness.   It is great to get up in the morning and the sun is shining. however here in Finland as we come closer to the Christmas it gets darker and darker.   When it gets dark where I live it is very dark. It is so dark that it is easy to fall into the ditch. Here in Finland in certain places we have wolves and bears.   When it is dark there are dangers. Darkness can be scary on certain people like to watch horror films. I personally don't like horror films and I certainly don't want to be scared.  It is good to think about the gloom before we turn to the light When I was a child I lived in Cyprus. Cyprus is a beautiful island, and the sun shines a lot. However, if you stay in the in the sun too long you will get burnt. Part of the culture is for the ladies especially, to stay where it is cool inside the house.   the men tend to go to t...