by Australian Christian women. Since September 2015

There is something so precious about cradling a newborn. I have had the privilege of being passed both a newborn niece and nephew to cradle this year within hours of their births. As I held them each of them, I felt a deep desire to want to pray for them, to thank God for the blessing they are to their parents, to pray for God's protection over them and that they may forever know the agape love of Jesus. That they may make a positive difference in this world for His glory. I

We are all I am without a doubt, familiar with longing. It is a feeling that we become acquainted with from a fledgling age. The urgent longing we feel for a parent to buy us an ice-cream from the shop, the excitable longing the night before Christmas when there are presents waiting to be unwrapped at dawn, for the mystery to be uncovered. The longing we feel at that age is mixed with a child-like awe and perhaps brief moments of frustration, “why can’t I have it now?” I as

Once upon a time, around three and a half thousand years ago, the word of the LORD came to an old Babylonian man living as an alien in the land of Canaan. The aged sojourner’s name was Abraham and he was very wealthy in livestock, silver, and gold, but despite all his prosperity, Abraham and his wife Sarah experienced a painful emptiness in their lives, a poverty—they remained childless. During one particularly long, dark night, as Abraham struggled to believe that the LORD r

You may have experienced, as I have, the ‘big box’ Christmas prank. A huge wrapped box is presented amid a chorus of “what can it be?”, then layers of wrapping shed revealing a slightly smaller box within and then another and so on, until only a small box remains containing a not-so-impressive pair of socks. What looks grand turns out to be rather ordinary; the seemingly magnificent is actually unimpressive. That’s not the story of Christmas though, is it? With the Christmas

“O come, O come, Emmanuel And ransom captive Israel That mourns in lonely exile here Until the Son of God appears Rejoice! Rejoice!” At this year’s UN Climate Action Summit, Greta Thunberg had a message for our world’s leaders. “How dare you!” she thundered with chilling prophetic force. “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I'm one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in th

I’ve never been great at waiting. I’ll be honest, I’m terrible at it. Patience is a virtue, they say. But I look at my little seven-month old son hitting the floor impatiently and he doesn’t have it either. He’s just learned to crawl but he already wants to be walking. So I wonder if perhaps there’s something genetic my family simply didn’t get. Coming from the contemporary church, it has been something of a joy to be able to learn from more traditional or liturgical Christia

2 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register. 4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was

As we come to Christmas it is the mark that another year is almost over. This rhythm of the year often brings us to reflection on the year that has passed. If we have experienced the unexpected this year, Christmas can make the rawness of that a more jarring experience. This year has been full of the unexpected for me and the end of the year has brought a sense of needing to rest and rebuild as I move into 2020. I wonder if you have also faced the unexpected this year. Perh

PART ONE: MARY AND EVE A few years ago I – like many people – discovered this drawing of Mary and Eve by Sister Grace Remington of Mississippi Abbey. And like many people, I loved it. I was drawn to the faces of the women: Eve’s a picture of sorrow and shame, yet lit with perhaps a hint of hope. Mary’s, a face of compassion, warmth, and quiet, confident expectation. I loved the hands on the belly, on the face, and clutched at the breast. I loved the image of the snake: woun

“Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music… ” – Psalm 98:4 Today is the day after the third Sunday of advent – a day in the church calendar in which we celebrate the Joy of Christ entering the world. One of the most joyful psalms is 98. You may not know the NIV or The Message version off by heart, but I guarantee you know Isaac Watt’s version of Psalm 98. He wrote a book of poetry published 300 years ago in which he re-worked each Psalm of