When I think of salt, my mind goes to its use in seasoning foods. What would we do without salt in our cooking? Yesterday, I opened my kitchen cupboard and found cooking salt, as you might expect. But I also found rough crystals of rock salt intended for the salt cellar, flakes of Maldon salt, …
How they persecuted the prophets
Persecution for political or religious beliefs is never pleasant. I am grateful that we live in a time and place where human rights are respected and defended, and where persecution is unacceptable in law, and eschewed by the vast majority of our fellow Australians. Sadly, that is not the case generally in our world today. …
The test of true discipleship
Romanian Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) was a great twentieth-century scholar of religious history and religious experience. He is perhaps best known for his work on seeking to identify universal patterns in human history and experience, and for his theory of hierophanies, or “manifestations of the sacred.” For Eliade, persons and objects “acquire their reality, their identity, only …
Must have a short memory
We have all heard of the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians on October 7, 2024, and the military responses and counter-responses. That deplorable conflict, far from over, is now further complicated by evidence of mass starvation, allegations of genocide in Gaza, and Israeli “pogroms” against Palestinians living in Israel. And this is merely …
Healing the divided self
Within reach of most of us this morning is our smartphone, that miracle and tyrant of modern living. Cast your mind back to the day when you first took your device out of its box. It’s flawless, shiny, sleek, light; the screen is crystal clear. On that first day, you’re careful – wiping it down, …
iDigress 