New Series on Scripture

The question of how we should think about Scripture, about the Bible, is deeply important for Christian faith, at a corporate and a personal level. Over the past few years I have thought a lot about this question and have come to some provisional conclusions. In response to numerous questions and conversations with friends, I have decided to set out my thoughts in a more structured manner, in a series of an as yet unspecified number of posts titled The New Testament and the Word of God. I make no claims to originality, or to getting everything right. I simply hope this train of thought may provoke and help others, as it has me. I welcome your comments as we go, although ask for patience along the way.

andrew.

Will God Keep Gumtrees?

Will God keep gumtrees
When he makes the world again,
Count ironbarks and wattles
Worth enough to mend?
And will I feel the wide warm light,
And hear cicadas hum,
As lazy evenings fall upon
The new Jerusalem?

A childhood here has filled my head
With creek beds, paperbarks,
Red space, and milky stars,
their colours in my heart.
So, I dream smooth stones to skip,
Long grass, and cockies’ shrieking,
Will also line the river’s banks,
And be the nations’ healing.

Perhaps it cannot be.
Groans betray the earth’s hard curse:
Dry land turns to dust and night.
Is our hope brand new day,
When we shall wake to our new life,
New trees drunk on new rain,
And all that’s dying, old and parched,
Will come to memory?

Must I learn to bear this loss,
sad cost of our sad pride,
and watch the country drift away
on hope’s transforming tide?
Or may I, greeting that new world
Far past this old one’s end,
Feel a smile of recognition,
At reunion with a long-absent, much-changed friend?

Beginning

After much soul searching, I have decided to begin a blog. I am hoping it will raise interesting thoughts, open up areas for reflection, and provoke others to think. And perhaps, in God's grace, it may even turn out to be useful.

andrew.