I have a confession to make. I like the piece of sacred music entitled How Great Thou Art -not as part of a worship service, but as an expression of thanks to God for creating us and saving us. I particularly like the version sung by the American all- male a cappella group ‘Home Free’ that you can still see on YouTube. The scenery from the Swiss Alps is breathtaking and tuneful words and stunning pictures blend beautifully in appreciation of God’s creation.

Life is a journey - or so we are told. As a journey, life has a beginning, a middle and an end. A starting point, a direction of travel and an end-point. It all sounds so simple and straightforward, yet inevitably as the journey unfolds, certain questions arise: Where am I now on my journey? How can I be sure I’m on the right path? What is my ultimate destination? – to name but a few.

Moses died at the age of 120, and, according to the Bible “His eye was undimmed and his vigour unabated” (Deuteronomy 34:7). Gautama Buddha died at the age of 80. In his final year he was attended by many followers and continued to teach his disciples the seven factors of enlightenment. Confucius devoted his whole life to learning and teaching. Frustrated in politics, he was accompanied by an expanding circle of students. He returned home to teach and died at the age of 72, surrounded by some 3,000 who sought to maintain his philosophy.

How should God’s people respond to such great salvation? The heart of their response ought to be love. An obvious question arises: how are God’s people to express that love?

Occasionally some married couples renew their wedding vows. They may do so for a variety of reasons, but their goal is to strengthen their marriage by renewal of their covenant.

Part 2

Covenant Renewal at any time or in any place must consist of a renewed pledge of loving loyalty and devoted obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Covenants, covenant renewal and covenant commitment were major aspects of the First (Sixteenth Century) and Second (Seventeenth Century) Scottish Reformations. But where did our spiritual ancestors get this idea of covenanting?

Human beings have much in common with ancient ruins. There is a grandeur that can still be seen, but much has fallen into disuse and disrepair. As we investigate the nature of Christianity this is a major element we must build into the picture – what human beings are by design and what we have become by rejecting the Designer.

Christianity is far from a hobby you can just add on to your life. Rather, it is something that reorders your life from top to bottom, with this person called Christ (his title) or Jesus (his given name) at the very centre. Something Jesus said only hours before his arrest points out just how important he is, “I am the way, and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). A Galilean peasant in his thirties is saying that he – in his person and his work – is the exclusive means of access to the God of the universe. It is a breathtaking claim that must be accepted or denied.

It was on the day of Pentecost, when the disciples were sitting together that the place was filled with a sound like that of a mighty wind and ‘there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each one of them’ (Acts 2:1-3). The result was that ‘they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance’ (v.4).

The subject of this article may perhaps seem dry and abstract, or of little practical importance for the Christian life. But really there is no truth of the Christian Faith that is more important for the way of salvation and the Christian life. Christianity stands or falls with the doctrine of the Trinity; where this truth has been abandoned, Christianity soon disappears. It is the landmark of the Christian Faith.

War is a terrible thing. Those who are most in favour of war are generally those who are safe in the knowledge that they will never be called upon to fight. War brings suffering beyond description – to combatants and non-combatants: lives destroyed, bodies and minds devastated.

Self-isolation; pandemic; super spreader; coronavirus; covid-19. Just a few of the words and phrases that have become part of everyday conversation since the first outbreak of a novel coronavirus was reported in Wuhan, China on 31 December 2019. How should we as Christians respond to an event like this? How can we be salt and light?

Voltaire, the French philosopher and sceptic of the 18th century, is reported to have said “If you would destroy Christianity you must first kill Sunday” the inference is that so long as men preserve and observe the one day in seven as a sacred day, so long will religious life be vigorous; and conversely, just in the measure that men secularise the Sabbath and make a common day of it, will they lose the sense of God and so lose religion.

Angels seem to be everywhere nowadays - angel cards, angel charms, angel therapy, lots of books about angels and a lot more. One of the best-selling books in recent years has been Lorna Byrne’s, “Angels in my hair”. She claims to have had many encounters with angels and to have received a lot of comfort from them. Some people believe that a white feather falling in their pathway can be a message from an angel. So why are angels so popular? What should we believe about them? And can they really help you?

WE ALL love mysteries. Story writers know how we are enticed by a tale where the true causes of an event lie hidden in complex plans devised by powerful institutions. You are drawn in as you follow the hero’s discoveries, and all is put right once the evildoers are exposed and vanquished. The present popularity of conspiracy theories reaches far beyond the world of entertainment.

In the beginning, BANG! That is how it all began, or so they tell us! A book firmly committed to the theory of evolution gives the following explanation of how the Universe began. ‘We live in a Universe far removed from its violent beginnings. Time, space and matter all began about 12 to 15 billion years ago in an explosive event called the Big Bang, Cosmologists (cosmology is the scientific study of the origins, structure and development of the Universe) believe this because the Universe is still expanding: run time backwards, reversing this expansion, and both logic and the theory of relativity suggest that at the beginning all matter was concentrated into a single point of infinite density.