| By Andy Moyle | 3 mins 57 secs | 0 Comments
We have perfect peace Thousands of years ago God had sworn an oath to Abraham (v73): ‘I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring […]
| By Andy Moyle | 5 mins 45 secs | 0 Comments
God uses faithful women! Luke 1:39-56 stands out as the only time in the New Testament that a meaningful conversation between two women is recorded. There is another example of women speaking together – when Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James and Salome went to anoint Jesus’ body with spices, “they were saying to […]
| By Andy Moyle | 4 mins 52 secs | 0 Comments
Okay God! It never ceases to amaze, how much truth, help and blessing there is in our daily readings. I get fresh insights from the Lord most days, even from passages I have read many times. The temptation is to read familiar passages quickly, even skimming them – don’t! Try reading the passage out loud […]
| By Andy Moyle | 2 mins 37 secs | 0 Comments
Wait for it… TripAdvisor places the Book of Kells higher than the Guinness factory tour for things to do in Dublin. It’s a set of wonderfully illustrated Gospel manuscripts from around AD800. If you were to go to see it, you wouldn’t get to see the gospels themselves straight away. Oh no, you go through […]
| By Andy Moyle | 3 mins 3 secs | 0 Comments
Today’s reading contains a large portion called the ‘long ending’ that is prefixed in many translations with “The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient manuscripts do not have Mark 16:9-20”. The gospel would come to a crunching and rather odd end if it finished in v8, so the theory goes that v9-20 are a later […]
| By Andy Moyle | 2 mins 16 secs | 0 Comments
The thing that is glaringly striking to me from this passage is that for the first and last time Jesus addresses his Father, not as Father, but God. As all the wrath of God for sin is heaped on him and the Father turns away; at that moment the intimacy is gone as Jesus takes […]
| By Andy Moyle | 2 mins 51 secs | 0 Comments
Barabbas – a divine exchange Barabbas is one bad dude. He gets more space in the four gospels than Judas though. Jesus exchanged his life for Barabbas and for us. The name Barabbas – Bar-Abba, literally means “son of the Father”. He turned out a freedom fighter, insurrectionist, terrorist. His proudest moment was his downfall […]
| By Andy Moyle | 1 min 42 secs | 0 Comments
Betrayal Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss – an act of ultimate hypocrisy. Outwardly it was a show of love, a friendly greeting in the culture. But the reality was Judas was betraying Jesus to be crucified. The challenge for us, who have probably all been betrayed at some point or other, is to forgive […]
| By Andy Moyle | 3 mins 26 secs | 0 Comments
The greatest gift Over the course of our lives we may accumulate keepsakes or mementos that remind us of people we have cherished or events that have impacted our lives. I have a little woolly sheep on my mantlepiece that a dear friend bought me as a birthday gift a short time before she died. […]