By Jody Bennett
Lots of people say that God loves you. What do they mean by that? And is it true? The same people or others may say I love God. What do they mean by that? And how can we know whether that is true?
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Author: Jody Bennett
Tina Turner and forgiveness
By Rob Furlong
As I write this, news of the death of Tina Turner, the “Queen of Rock and Roll”, has broken. Reading through a tribute to her, I was interested to learn that she had converted to Buddhism. If you are familiar with her story, you will know that for many years she was physically and emotionally abused by her husband, Ike Turner, until she found the courage to leave and regain her life.
As with all women who have been abused, she was left with deep emotional scars and so she turned to the Buddhist faith to learn how to forgive her former husband. Despite her best intentions however, she admitted she was unable to come to the place of truly forgiving Ike.
I don’t tell this story to condemn Tina Turner or any other person who has been abused in any way – forgiveness in situations like these is an incredibly difficult and complicated process and requires thoughtful, sensitive, counsel.
We know forgiveness is essential to the peacemaking process, but we also know it is incredibly hard to extend.
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My beef with the series Beef
By Harriet Coombe
Have you heard of the new Netflix television series Beef?
I had heard it was wildly popular and thought I would check it out.
It’s a dark comedy drama series by Korean director Lee Sung Jin. In the first episode, we are introduced to the titular “beef” – Danny and Amy are involved in a road rage incident. Neither will let the incident go, and the strangers quickly become enemies. Over the course of the season, their acts of revenge only escalate.
Without wanting to give too much away, the series does not end well for anyone.
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Lessons from a sick bed
By Jody Bennett
I have recently been suffering with prolonged ill health, during which I spent several weeks mostly in bed and feeling rotten. Illness naturally makes one morbid and introspective, but I don’t like self-pity, and as a Christian I believe that everything happens for a reason, so I sought to use the time not to ask the tempting question “Why, Lord?” but instead “What are you trying to teach me, Lord?”
Here are 10 insights I had:
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Inside my heart
Peter’s corner
I had the most amazing experience back in 2020. I saw inside my own heart! I had experienced some irregular heartbeats, so I went for a procedure to identify the problem.
The surgeon put three catheter wires inside my heart to measure how the electrics of the heart operated. He located a minor short-circuit, and worked out that it could not cause me any real problem and was best left alone. He also “took my heart for a spin” to try to reproduce the symptoms I had, but without success.
I was awake during the procedure, watching large monitor displays, and the surgeon explained it to me. When the heart beats, an electrical signal first causes the right atrium chamber to beat. The signal then reaches the AV node, where it is delayed a short time before it travels on to cause the ventricles to beat. The timing delay is just right to ensure efficient pumping of blood. The AV node does other critical things also.
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Facing up to the real you
By Jody Bennett
I don’t watch horror movies but I do find the concept of the 2019 horror flick Us very intriguing.
In the movie, a family encounters their evil doppelgängers and spends the entire film trying to escape their deadly grasp. These are not just lookalikes but their own evil incarnations.
The movie highlights the little-acknowledged fact that our greatest enemy and the most confronting thing we can encounter is our own worst selves. Continue reading
Not always easy … but always worth it
By Jody Bennett
People might think that being a Christian is easy, a crutch that gets you through your traumas, a Father Christmas in the sky to pray to, a list of dos and don’ts that you do your best to follow but get forgiveness for when you fail.
However, as a Christian of several decades, I can tell you Christianity is not for cowards; being a Christian requires you to do some very, very hard stuff.
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The world’s oldest colour?
Peter’s Corner
The world’s oldest biological colour is pink. Bright neon pink. Or so the scientists announced in 2018, describing research done at the ANU in Canberra. They had extracted organic molecules called porphyrins from marine black shale rocks from Mauritania in Africa — shales that were well known as containing microbial fossil cyanobacteria. Porphyrins are ring molecules important for the colour of biological substances such as hemoglobin and chlorophyll. On this occasion the porphyrins had a purple colour, which becomes pink if diluted.
The scientists were awestruck thinking that these colour molecules could survive for such a long time. How long? 1,100,000,000 years. That is the alleged evolutionary age of the Precambrian strata in which the shales with the fossils, were positioned.
But that age is impossible for any organic substance. The laws of chemistry dictate that organic substances will gradually decompose — even in the fridge, that KFC chicken left over from the party last week is going to break down quite soon.
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Why not tie the knot?
By Alan Bailey
Getting married is still fairly popular but not as popular as simply living together. We have husbands, wives and partners. And who should question it? After all, what people do in relationship is their business.
Well now, if the de facto position is defensible, why should it all be a taboo subject? Let’s take a quick look at two sides of the question.
Cheesecakes and creation
Peter’s Corner
I’ve been practising making my mother’s baked cheesecake recipe for a while, and I am told it is bearing good fruit.
Now think about this. The chef follows a recipe, or a process, or a code, that is designed to produce a perfect cheesecake. The ingredients do not become a cake just by themselves if we wait long enough. The right amount of time is part of the process – I discovered that when I forgot the cake was in the oven, but fortunately my wife Denise, instead of the fire brigade, came to the rescue.
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