Bible

This week, I've been pondering how the individual paragraphs of Matthew 7 fit into the whole chapter. It's always a mistake to take a paragraph of Scripture away from its context, and to read it with no regard to where it comes. In this case, these paragraphs were spoken by Jesus, but he said them as part of what we call the Sermon on the Mount.

On Monday, I posted about the difficulties in reading Matthew 7 as a whole. Far easier to read a paragraph in isolation; hard to articulate what the chapter as a whole is about and how each paragraph contributes to that.

Photo: Germán Póo-CaamañoLots of churches have had their summer holiday clubs for children - they do them as soon as term finishes. We do ours the other end of the summer - just after the bank holiday weekend.

(Quick plug: If you live in or near Kemsing, and have children who have just finished a year at primary school, we can probably still fit you in - 4 mornings starting Tuesday 27th August).

I'm looking over some of the resources we've got for the club. Never mind which one we're using, as I'm not wanting to make a point about any resource in particular. As it happens, I think the resource we're using for this year's club is excellent.

Coming across through a few old files on the computer, I found something I'd written on Job - ooh, back in 2007. At least, I think I wrote it. If someone else recognises this as their thoughts and writing on Job, I apologise. And I thank you.

Anyway - I wrote about how easy it is to misunderstand the book, and to draw conclusions that the book does not support:

Here are 4 really quite common ways in which the book of Job is misunderstood.