Thornlie Church of Christ

When Charles Dickens wrote his wonderful story, A Christmas Carol, he told the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, a cruel and heartless man who is visited one wintry London Christmas Eve by the ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Future. As a result of his encounters with these apparitions, Scrooge is given the opportunity to change his ways and become a more generous and compassionate person. Reflecting on this tale today, I began to recall Christmases that I have shared with my wife and ...

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Remember the movie “My Best Friend’s Wedding”? The key characters are Jules, Mike and Kim. Jules and Mike were once lovers but are now best friends and Mike calls Jules to announce his plans to marry Kim. Jules is horrified because she realises that she really does love Mike and sets about to undermine Mike’s relationship with Kim in a doomed effort to get Mike to marry her instead. One scene in the movie really got me thinking as I watched it again recently. ...

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Over the years as I have prepared couples for marriage I have spent more time on explaining how to manage conflict in marriage. Part of the process that I use is to help them to understand the way in which they approach conflict personally and the impact, for good or bad that this has upon those around them. Every one of us has a method for dealing with conflict and when we discover our preferred “style” it can help open up better ways of handling conflict in the future. Some ...

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Over the years I have spoken to many men on a variety of issues that have plagued them throughout their lives. They genuinely want to be set free from the things that drag them down, but freedom seems to be nothing more than a nice promise that is put before them but is forever out of their reach. A friend of mine has written a song about this and I believe it captures the feelings of many men quite poignantly. The song is called, “The man I ought to be” and it goes like ...

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  A couple of weeks ago a friend sent me an extremely funny video clip by Mark Gungor about the differences between the brains of men and women. It would be fair to say that his presentation generalizes these differences but it did get me reflecting on the fact that many relationships fall apart simply because the people involved tend to see the differences that exist between them as obstacles rather than as opportunities. Couples often say things like, “We are so different; ...

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