Marching Forth!

Part of the culture shock for me in immigrating to Australia has been adjusting to the amount of annual leave people receive.  The base amount for full-time employees is 4 weeks paid--with 10 sick days a year and something called "long-service leave" which is two additional months off.  If you happened to be sick in the same year long-service leave was taken, this would be almost 4 months off work paid. Whilst some people's eyes light up at the possibility of that much time off work, something inside of me shudders at the prospect.  Holidays, in my mind, have the connotation "going to work" has for others.  Now I have been blessed and benefited greatly by holiday experiences I have enjoyed with family, but they aren't something I pine for.  Holidays are not a dangling carrot which help me push through the daily grind.  I am satisfied and pleased with my daily work routine, and I love what I do.  Why would I want to create extra hassle and expense to...

John 3:14-16 says, " And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. 16   For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life ."  Because Jesus spoke these words to Nicodemus, a Pharisee and ruler in Israel, he had intimate knowledge of this allusion.  It is likely Nicodemus never attached any future significance to what transpired in the wilderness over 1,000 years previous--but Jesus did. After God brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, they became discouraged because of the way He brought them.  They complained against God and Moses for their disappointment and accused God of plotting their demise.  Their biting words were returned in kind by the fangs of venomous snakes God sent among them.   Numbers 21:6-9 reads, " So the LOR...

In the church I was raised, it was a common occurrence for the pastor to invite people to respond to a message by re-committing their lives to Jesus.  Many times under the conviction of sin I raised my hand or went forward in acknowledgement of my sin and desire to repent.  It is never hard for born-again Christians to see their need for repentance and forgiveness.  We could not be born-again again, so re-commitment was posed as the way back to God for a backslider.  This concept of re-commitment became an endless loop which rested on nothing more than my own resolve and self-control which always fell short. There is a place for renewal and revival in the life of Christians, but I am convinced the option of re-commitment modeled for me in my youth misses the point.  The more I think about it, the more I am certain the idea of re-commitment is without biblical precedent.  Should Christians commit and entrust themselves to God in faith?  Yes.  Bu...

Well, it's official:  Google hates me.  I probably shouldn't say anything because Google is always listening and recording (perhaps even hiding from plain sight) what I write.  Over the years I have wondered if changing algorithms negatively affected search traffic to the blog, but recently I discovered something which leaves little doubt.  Occasionally I will look up a keyword of an old post as a point of reference.  I was pretty sure I've mentioned MacGuffin  on the blog before" and tried to search it with the blog address.  By the way, anyone who has watched movies would be familiar with MacGuffins (but maybe not the name), a device in film that drives the plot but has little significance otherwise. When I searched on Google Chrome I was surprised to see only one page of results and none from marchforth2oz.blogspot.com.  After navigating to the blog in the search bar I typed "MacGuffin" and bingo:  the single mention of "MacGuffin" from...