Harmony of Grace

Image Source:  Microsoft, Inc  (Shared by Jennifer Lieberum) First, a disclaimer... This is not a post about whether God would use Microsoft, Android or Apple products. For this kind of quality analysis, you will need to find an evangelical thought leader more wise and risqué than myself. Instead, this is a reflection on the mediums that God can use to reveal God's grace to us. Last week I encountered a Facebook post from one of my friends, Jennifer Lieberum. She had shared an image that was familiar to me - one of the generic windows 10 login screen backgrounds (shown above). She shared the image alongside a post reminding us that Jesus' Church is meant to be a lighthouse so that lost people can find Christ and the Church can teach them what it means to follow Jesus. While I have seen this image pop up on my PC screen many times (usually after I have been waiting impatiently for Windows to boot up), I have never considered this particular connection. This was a st

Image Source:  Phil Coffman As a sports fan, it is natural to think that the team you support has the best players and the best strategies. Luckily, as a Liverpool fan, I have the stats to back up this claim. Jokes aside, it is easy to surround ourselves with people who share our beliefs. This reinforces our beliefs and closes ourselves off to new points of view. Someone once accused me of constantly looking at the world through red-tinted glasses as a Liverpool fan. This means that no matter what new information I was presented with from supporters of other clubs, I would still hold the same beliefs as before because I interpreted the new information through my red-tinted glasses . How often do we see the world through our Christian-tinted glasses  or our Methodist/Four12/Baptist/Shofar/insert-your-denomination-here  tinted glasses? We tend to only read books and articles written by people who share our theological beliefs, we only follow people on social media who perpet

Image Source:  Julius Drost I love magic. I love watching magicians perform. I allow my beliefs to be suspended while they perform tricks on my mind. In high school, I was fascinated with card tricks and spent many hours learning sleight-of-hand techniques so that I could impress my friends and families with card tricks of my own. While I have forgotten many of them, I still enjoy pulling out the occasional trick when I get the chance. The audience has a special role to play in a magic trick. I have found that there are generally two types of people when watching magic tricks... The first person is the cynic. From the outset, you can see that they are just there to prove the magician wrong. They disregard instructions, analyse every movement and before the trick is done they are already telling the person beside them how they think the magic is achieved. They are always trying to get a peek behind the curtain. The second person is fully immersed in the experience. They fol