Westy's Weekly Blog

The word ‘comfort’ readily brings to mind some strong images from everyday life.   A toddler falls over in the park and bursts into tears.   The Mother comforts her child with a hug, a pat on the head and the words. “There, there don’t cry, you’ll be fine!”   Or the word ‘comfort’ may conjure up in your imagination more serious needs than some gravel rash from a fall in the park: the grieving friend who unexpectedly lost her partner to cardiac arrest.   To bring meaningful comfort in such a situation is quite a challenge.   Again a hug and some kind words are the very least we can do for the bereaved. The challenge in such situations is knowing how to comfort.   Often our attempts to comfort seem terribly inadequate.   It’s one thing to pat a teary toddler on the head; it’s quite another thing to try and ease the grief of someone who just suffered bereavement. There’s a further problem too in such situations: to what extend are we genuinely concer...

  Humility is not exactly the flavour of the month.   In fact humility is a notoriously difficult virtue to cultivate at the best of times.   But as someone once said, “You need humility because it’s like a lighthouse to guide you through a sea of ego!”   And that’s the persistent problem isn’t it?   Our ego!   Pride – one of the seven deadly sins – and that deadly sin of pride so often gives humility the boot.   I suspect that maintaining a degree of humility in our life has become even harder in our age of social media.   Think about it!   Can you really be dinky-di humble when that superb nature photo that you pasted on Facebook gets twice as many ‘likes’ as a similar photo posted by one of your Facebook friends?   We do well to remember that Satan’s original sin that kicked off the world’s troubles was pride. Our common tendency towards a lack of humility once struck me in a particularly vivid way.   An older lady (about my ...

  Occasionally I get my ‘knickers in a knot’ over comments by church worship leaders that have not been well thought through.   That happened again recently.   After the first song in an opening bracket, we were told: “Our worship this morning will lead us into the presence of God”.   Really!?!   It’s troubling too that in such pronouncements ‘worship’ is usually regarded only as the gathered community’s time of praise.   Since when was worship limited to congregational singing?   I’ve yet to hear someone say that our listening to an exposition of God’s Word in a sermon will lead us into God’s presence. It reminded me of a Christian music CD I once had in my collection.   It was yet another instance of a Christian lack of discernment getting right up my nose.   The title of the CD...?   Ultimate Worship!   Good grief!   If that was meant to impress I was totally under-whelmed.   Okay, there are some lovely songs on tha...

  Two recent experiences with tradesmen brought home two valuable lessons when it comes to our work ethic. Our kitchen sink had become blocked – again.   It was only a little over a year since that had previously happened.   I found myself wondering whether we had a structural problem with our plumbing that caused frequent blockages or whether the previous plumber had not done a very good job in clearing on the previous ocassion.   This plumber asked me, “John, do you want a cheap quick fix or do you want to try and deal with the cause of the problem – which will take a little longer and cost you a little more?”   That was a no brainer for me.   I wasn’t looking forward to annual visits from a plumber, just to keep our kitchen wastewater flowing into the sewers.   So we bit the bullet.   I found it absolutely staggering to see the gunk that our plumber pulled out of our wastewater drain.   Obviously the previous plumber had merely poked...