My youngest son doesn’t speak much. His severe autism has always made language a struggle for him. Even though he is sixteen years old now his vocabulary remains very limited. His sentences are simple ones that only let us know his basic needs. Even these sometimes fail and he will need to grab our hands and show us what he wants. Still, his light-hearted laughter, delighted smile, and shining eyes can speak volumes at times. Often I only have to look at him to share in his joy. He may not be Shakespeare but his heart says so much. To me he will always be a gift from Heaven.

I can remember last Summer helping him to get his room ready for bed on a warm August evening. As it often can be with families dealing with autism it had been a long day full of ups and downs for us both. There had been both laughter and joy and frustration and tears. Read the rest of this entry »

It is the beginning of a new year. A time when people look ahead into the year with renewed hope. The old year has rolled away and become history. The successes, failures, frustrations and events have become history. It is as if it never existed.

It is also a time when people make resolutions. Areas of weaknesses to be dealt with, habits to be broken and relationships to mend. These are among the things people focus on at the beginning of the year. Typically people make resolutions like;

1 To stop drinking
2 Stop lying
3 Pray at least 30 minutes a day Read the rest of this entry »

One thing that intrigues me about the Bible is the fact that it not only shows the good and enviable side of great men of God, it also shows the ugly side of them that I am sure they would not have wanted the Bible to record.

Let us take a look at the life of David. He was a boy who loved the Lord with all of His heart. He was never seen by his family as a candidate for the kingship of Israel. This was so obvious when the prophet Samuel was sent to the home of Jesse to select the next king of Israel. When the sons of Jesse were summoned, no one bothered to call for David.

 I can imagine how exasperated Samuel must have been, having gone through all the likely candidates and did not get God’s approval. He was forced to ask, ‘Are these all the sons you have?” (1 Samuel 16:11) This was when Jesse remembered that he had one son left, who was at the point tending to the sheep. David was summoned and Samuel got the green light he needed to anoint the next king of Israel.   Read the rest of this entry »

As I thought about this second in the series of lessons from our Patriarchs, I could not easily make up my mind who to take next. We are so blessed in this generation to have the benefit of hindsight, looking back at how the Patriarchs lived  the examples we can learn from them. Eventually, I had to settle for one person, Abraham. If there is one man whose life challenges me in the Bible, it is Abraham.

Although the Old Testament records only instance of the call of Abraham, the New Testament records two calls. The first call was before his father Terah died. In fact the movement from Ur had begun before the death of his father. The second call came after his father died. (Acts 7: 2-4)

God in His infinite wisdom chose Abraham. We are not told why He chose him but evidently Abraham possessed all that God needed for the kind of man who would become the ‘Father of many nations’.

There is no record of Abraham’s family worshipping God before the time of his call by God. Stephen under the influence of the Holy Spirit, declared, ‘..The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran’ (Acts 7:2) God appeared in a glorious manner which left Abraham with little or no doubt about who God is. From that moment on, there was no going back. Read the rest of this entry »

 Abraham was  man of faith. God spoke and he believed. His faith so moved God that the Bible says,  ’Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness’ (Gen 15:6)

To Abraham, nothing was too big or too complex for him to trust God for. He believed God’s promise to make him a father of many nations at a time when his wife was not even pregnant. He believed when God told him to leave his comfort zone for a place flowing with milk and honey. 

Do we indeed have men with the faith of Abraham today?  Our Lord Jesus Himself must have thought about this when He asked the question, ‘When the Son of man comes, will He find faith on earth?’ (Luke 18:8)

Abraham was one of the few people God referred to as His friend. ‘The Lord says, “People of Israel, you are my servants. Family of Jacob, I have chosen you. You are the children of my friend Abraham’ (Isaiah 41:8). Read the rest of this entry »

Moses.  A child whom the parents recognized as an extraordinary child when he was born.  He came into the world at a time when there was an order that all male children born to Hebrew women should be killed at birth. Against all odds, he survived. Hiding him for three months was an act of faith. So also was the act of placing him on the river Nile in a small basket.  

I am sure that Moses’ mother did not in her wildest dreams believe that Moses would be raised in Pharaoh’s palace.  She was only hoping that someone,  probably a Hebrew,  would see the baby and have compassion on him. How the heart of Moses sister must have skipped a beat when the person who saw the baby was Pharaoh’s daughter! Ordinarily, this should have meant instant death for the baby but God had other plans.  

When Pharaoh’s daughter saw the baby, she recognized the baby as a Hebrew child but had compassion on him (Exodus 2:6).  This was the sign Moses’ sister needed to run up to Pharaoh’s daughter and tell her she knew someone who could nurse the baby. Thus, Moses’ mother became a paid nurse to take care of her own child! Read the rest of this entry »

 At age 40, Moses was no longer satisfied with sitting in the palace and observing what was going on. Day after day he must have struggled with himself, trying to cope with his double identity. He was considered the child of Pharaoh’s daughter, having been adopted after being rescued from the river Nile. However he knew that he was born of Hebrew parents and desired so much to be part of them.

The first flaw we see in Moses is that of presumption. On one of the days when he went out to watch his people working, he saw an Egyptian maltreating a Hebrew. Indignation at this injustice rose within Moses and he came to the defence of the Hebrew slave, killing the Egyptian in the process. We read in Acts 7:25, ‘Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not’.   He was to realize this the next day when he went out and saw two Hebrew slaves fighting. Trying to make peace between them, he asked the oppressor, ‘Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?’ (Exodus2:13)

The response of the man made Moses realize that there were other witnesses to what happened the day before and that even his own people were afraid of him. The consequence of his action dawned on him when Pharaoh heard what happened and attempted to have Moses killed. Moses had to escape for dear life and thus ended his royal lifestyle. He became a wanted man, an outlaw. Read the rest of this entry »

Laughter. That was the meaning of the name,  given to the son of Abraham and Sarah.  They had waited for so  many years.  Many had written them off and no doubt had hailed Abraham’s marriage to Hagar as a wise move. When she got pregnant and gave birth to Ishmael, I am sure it was well celebrated and the news must have gone round, ‘Abraham has a son! At last, someone who will inherit Abraham’s vast riches!’

This was the thinking of man but God had other plans.  Isaiah 55:8 says, ‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways says the LORD’

This scripture found fulfillment when God announced to Abraham that He would have a son when he was a hundred years old. The immediate response when Abraham heard this was laughter.  It was the same response from Sarah when she overheard the second time this piece of news was relayed to Abraham.  One can therefore understand why the child was named ‘Laughter’. 

Isaac  was the focus of God’s  testing of Abraham’s faith. He saw his father place him on the altar to offer him to God because that was what God demanded of him. He also saw God intervene and prevent him from being sacrificed by his father. What a lesson of faith that must have been for him! This brings us to my first question. What lessons do our children learn from us? Do they learn faith from us or learn words or actions which negate what we claim to believe?   Read the rest of this entry »

 A son who learns well from his parents is always a source of joy and pride to them.  I have no doubt that Abraham and Sarah would have gone into their graves with a sense of fulfillment knowing that they had raised their son in the fear and knowledge of the  Lord.

However, when our children learn the negative things we do and actually manifest those things before us, how do we feel? I have seen many frustrated and disappointed parents who saw their weaknesses being portrayed before them by their children.  In their frustration, they discipline these children severely, with the hope that they could uproot the seed of those behaviours from their hearts.  They thought the children had been insulated and protected from their weaknesses but alas, it becomes plain to them that the children have some way acquired those same traits.

While Abraham was travelling from Ur to Canaan as led by God, he had to divert to Egypt when there was famine in the land. As they entered Egypt, Abraham noticed that the Egyptians were admiring Sarah’s beauty. He became afraid. He knew sooner or later, enquiries would be made about her and he was afraid that the Egyptians might kill him in a bid to have Sarah. His solution was to ask Sarah to lie about his identity as her husband. This they did but God would have none of that. The truth was exposed and God ensured that Abraham and his wife were not harmed. (Gen 12:10 – 20) Read the rest of this entry »

The eyes of the whole world are on America. This has always been the case whenever elections come up in the US.  The level of attention this year has been unprecedented because this may well be the election that will change America’s history if the current polls have anything to say in the elections.

The presidential candidates have over the months made promises, a lot of them. As is the case with politicians, some of these promises will be kept but many others will not be. It happens all the time. The new President gets elected, he tries to keep to his promise, then other factors come to play and he finds out that some promises, if kept as promised, may cause problems for him. He talks his way around it and that issue becomes history. This is not the bane of just American politicians; we see it over and over again in the polity of many countries. Read the rest of this entry »