1 Sam 14:24-35 The film, Return to Me, concludes with the characters gathering for the opening of an animal sanctuary built in honour of a carer who tragically died in an accident. One of the donors at the event, sidles…

1 Sam 14:16-23 A well-known pastor faced opposition in his church. The week when the confrontation came to a head, he asked God for the message he should preach, as was his practice. But he heard nothing. Friday rolled around,…

1 Sam 14:1-15 For a while, I worked with a young woman who was a professing Christian and attended church faithfully. She prayed, she talked of God, but every time I saw her, I wondered about the reality of her…

1 Sam 13:15-23 Experiencing culture shock in a foreign country can put a strain on relationships. My Mum once told me that when we were living in India as a family, she observed several marriages of other Hungarians there that…

1 Sam 13:8-14 The passage about Saul’s downfall is a disconcerting one. What exactly went wrong? When Saul was anointed, he was told to wait for seven days until Samuel came to offer sacrifices and showed him what to do…

1 Sam 13:1-7 We have all experienced times in our lives when we struggled to hear from God, our prayers seemed to bounce back from the ceiling and there was no particular sign that the Lord was working on our…

1 Sam 12:19-25 Who of us doesn’t wonder about certain forks in the road where we chose a path that led to regrettable consequences? It is particularly sad if we had given in to sin whether it was lack of…

1 Sam 12:1-18 I got my first glasses when I was about eleven or twelve and I still remember my sense of awe that suddenly I could read the board in class without squinting and all those blurry shapes on…

1 Sam 11:1-13 A friend of mine had a very critical mother who constantly censured her for the way she dressed, talked, and acted. Although she understood as an adult that her mother’s reproaches arose out of a desire to…

1 Sam 10:17-27 Those who suffer from feelings of insecurity know how debilitating these can be. Irrespective of people’s real abilities, the sense of inadequacy can cause them to freeze or make self-defeating choices that confirm their impression of failure…