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While some argue about public holidays and pay rates, ‘high’ days and holy days are sensitive topics in the Christian church for entirely different reasons. The Uniting Church is no exception. WHILE CHRISTIANS often bemoan the secularisation and commercialisation of ‘our’ special days such as Easter and Christmas, we struggle to identify with some of the milestones on our community’s ...

TOMB EMPTY. BODY GONE. That is all the Twitter message said. Then longer SMS messages began to fly. What’s happening? :-(. BTW guards gone 2. The photos appeared first on Facebook. Grainy mobile phone picture taken in the half light of dawn. Somebody started a Facebook page Where is Jesus? Within hours it had hundreds of friends. The guy had ...

Movies portraying the crucifixion of Jesus provide us with useful conversation starters as we explore the depth of meaning in the events of Easter. Try suggesting an Easter movie and you’ll get different reactions. Some people are concerned about historical accuracy. Did Jesus have nails driven through his hands, as in The Passion of the Christ, through his wrists, as ...

FOR MOST Queenslanders, Easter means an extra long weekend and a chance to get away or at least have a good break from the usual routine. It can also be an opportunity to enjoy the autumn weather and the ocean water while it’s still warm. For those who follow surfing, Easter is the time of the longest running professional surfing ...

Christian scholars differ greatly on how to understand the resurrection of Christ.Is his resurrected ‘body’ is to be understood as his incarnate body (possibly transformed in some way) or rather as some ‘spiritual’, dis-embodied ‘body’, or even as simply externalising the ‘internal’ experience of the disciples in ‘meeting’ their risen Lord again.  These variants in belief can be linked to ...

Jesus. Either you loved the guy or you hated him. It depended on a couple of things: how well you knew him and what the natural disposition of your heart was. The major Easter events featured two crowds: one a jubilant fan club, the other a lynching mob.Palm Sunday’s shiny, happy people waving palms loved Jesus. They were on a ...

Easter brings together two apparently opposing human experiences; painful suffering and death followed by glorious new life and joy. On Good Friday we recall the unjust treatment and crucifixion of a compassionate and loving man, whom Christians believe was the incarnation of God. Christians believe that when Jesus died on the cross he entered fully into the human experience of ...

IS GOD in the bad stuff as well as the good stuff? Most people wrestle with the question of God when particular issues or events emerge in their lives. Such questioning came home to me when I stood where the suburbs had been in Bandah Aceh, Indonesia, after the 2004 tsunami. More than 50 000 people had been wiped away in ...

No-one much likes the Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS). If we believe the coal industry, it will have us all using candles and riding horses! This is nonsense. If we believe other critics, it is so flawed and toothless that we’d be better off with nothing. This is dangerous. We must put a price on carbon and we must ...

A HARD-WORKING mother of a bright, energetic eight year old girl went to work one day, and never came home. A tragic car accident suddenly left her daughter, Fiona, an orphan. Jo, the girl’s grandmother, went from part-time babysitter to full-time carer. In addition to dealing with the loss of her daughter, Jo now had the challenge of raising her granddaughter. ...