Windows On The Soul

But what if you don't have physical sight? Certainly spiritual insight is more important, but physical sight is still our primary means of receiving God's word through reading. Whilst Australia's sight impaired have access to talking books, guide dogs, Braille literature etc. suffers are mainly the aging. But in a country like India with one tenth of the world's population, it has one third of the world's blind. Though if measured by Australia's definition of technical blindness (10% or less of normal vision), the numbers in India would double to about 20 million. Sadly, most could be prevented or even cured - causes being measles, smallpox, eye infections, and malnutrition (vitamin A deficiency). 50 million of the world's children currently suffer from trachoma, leading to blindness, for the want of tube of ointment. Worldwide blindness is on the whole a disease of poverty.  Braille books or tapes are useless if you can't afford an education let alone t...

“ What the Church needs are more ‘deep’ Christians ” (Richard Foster, “Celebration of Discipline”).  The Apostle Paul wrote, “ Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!!” ( Rom.11:33 ) How does one become a ‘deeper’ Christian? It takes ‘Time’ and ‘Experience’. To know the depth of something, one must have ‘plumbed’ the depth, that is attempted some sort of measure. To have some knowledge of the depth of God, one must explore the consequences and implications of Christian faith on one’s life and society, and thus to start to see the vast possibilities. Such exploration, takes time in God’s word, time with Him in prayer, and time in constructive, exploratory fellowship together. But most of all, depth of understanding and knowledge of the wisdom, grace and ways of God, come from experience. We learn only a small amount from what we hear, a larger amount from what we read and s...

The computer makes us fantastically more able to calculate and analyse; it does not help us to meditate. We have instruments to enable us to see everything from the nebulae to neutrons - everything, except ourselves. We have immeasurably extended our gift of sight, but not of insight. For that we have the same equipment as the eighth-century prophets. Potentially the same, but actually far poorer, for while we have been so busy extending one aspect of the knowing and telling self, we have allowed other aspects to atrophy. We have built ourselves up into powerful transmitting stations, but as receiving sets we are feeble. John V. Taylor " The Go-Between God "

A major difference between Christianity and a number of the world's largest religions, is its focus on restoration to harmony of body, mind and spirit. The Way of Christ is not through mindless meditation to nirvana, or ascetic debasement of body, or humanistic rationalism of the pre-eminent mind. The biblical view is of body, mind and spirit as all parts of a whole, not fragmented. However, the modern church seems to "put down" rational discussion as some-how not being "spiritual". One of the big criticisms young people have of the church, is that it doesn't address their questions. Where are the Christian thinkers and debaters in our churches? Articles like that of Tim Costello's on Community (Education Age 4/6/96) are few and far between. Why is the church afraid of 'development of human potential' - its humanistic background is no different than the majority of teaching in our schools and universities (all the more need to build-up the faith ...