Texts: Lamentations 1:1-6 and 3:19-26 Introduction How could this happen? How could this happen to our sixteen-year-old daughter? Why did it happen to us?Why did it happen to us,our family have served God all our lives. How could this happen? Why did it happen to us? Two very difficult questions to answer. The book of Lamentations is a problematic text. Written in the wake of the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE these five poems give voice to the pain…
Text: Luke 16:1-13 Introduction Every now and then, we come upon a passage of Scripture that is especially difficult to understand or challenging to preach on. This morning’s gospel passage – Luke 16:1- 13 is one such passage. Any commentator will tell you that this is a difficult text. The story itself sounds quite contemporary. Doesn’t it? Luke’s Gospel tells of a dishonest manager who is about to be fired for misappropriating company funds. He considers restitution for his embezzlement,…
Being Lost. Being Found. Being Invited to the Party. Why do fairy tales have happy endings? Because if they happened at the beginning there would not be a tale! Once upon a time there was a shepherd who had 100 sheep. None of them ever got lost. And so he still had 100 sheep. The end. Once there was a woman who had 10 valuable coins. She never lost any of them, so she still had her 10 coins. The…
Text: Luke 8: 40-56 There are times we have experienced disappointments with God. God seems to not fit into our hopes, dreams, and plans. God seems to have a mind of God’s own and operates on a different timeline. We all may have our own stories and still have questions that we want to ask God why God allowed things to happen contrary to our hopes and plans. In the reading we had we have a story of a father…
Work as part of a Ministry team Part-time role (0.5 equivalent) until end of 2022, with possible extended on mutually agreed terms Support programs particularly amongst children, young people and families within the congregation About the role Manningham Uniting Church (MUC), a congregation of the Uniting Church in Australia, Synod of Victoria and Tasmania, has an exciting opportunity available for an enthusiastic and committed person to join our team as a part-time Children, Young People and Families Worker (CYFW). The…
You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you decide to be happy. – Jane Kirsten Marczewski Jane Kirsten Marczewski It would not surprise me if most of you don’t know who Jane Marczewski is. She is best known for being a singer who performed on America’s Got Talent in June 2021, where she got the coveted “Golden Buzzer” from Simon Cowell. She sung her original song, ‘It’s OK.” She is known professionally as Nightbirde. She became internationally known after…
Introduction A few weeks ago, I mused about the fact that we are all wounded (traumatised). And I shared the importance of us healing our wounds. I hope I didn’t give the impression that it was easy. It isn’t. Healing is never a definite location but something in process. It is the basic ordinary work of staying engaged with our own wounds and limitations. Healing does not necessarily mean forgiveness. Healing is learning to love the wound because love draws…
Published in Crosslight October 13, 2017 People around the world are hearing more foreign accents than at any time in human history. Are you guilty of judging someone by his or her accent? Snéha Khilay is a specialist in cultural diversity and unconscious bias. She feels this is just another form of unconscious bias and one aspect of equality that often gets overlooked. Accent is one of a number of characteristics, along with skin color, dress, or mannerisms, that identify…
