by Andrew Corbett | 2016 Aug,26 | Pastor's Desk
Kim and I rarely fight over anything. The only possible exception to this delightful fact is how we feel about windows. Kim loves to look out through them and see what’s happening outside. Everyone knows that she is very much an outdoors girl. I, on the other hand, like how curtains and blinds give a certain degree of privacy of outside peering eyes. Kim loves how the sun-light radiates warmth and lights up the room she’s in. Whereas I find the glare of direct sunlight difficult. It’s not that I don’t like natural light or even the warmth which comes from the sun’s radiance, it’s that I like how curtains and blinds allow me to control it and protect my privacy. This dilemma between unimpeded windows and curtained windows is like the dilemma that leaders have to navigate. There are times when a leader must either be fully transparent, or partly transparent, or very discreet. How we use windows teaches us some important truths about leadership
by Andrew Corbett | 2016 Jul,29 | Pastor's Desk
Peter and Andrew were small-businessmen. Along with their father, they ran their family business and had to work long hours just to make ends meet. But this all changed one day when The Messiah came along uninvited and uttered the words: Follow Me. There must have been a moment of dilemma for these hardened sea-farers. “Now?” perhaps they wondered, “It’s hardly a good time now!” But follow they did. Yes, to follow Jesus is to live a life of inconvenience. It really does seem that Jesus often – if not usually – interrupts a person’s life when it is most inconvenient! It’s not just that it seems inconvenient to walk through life with Jesus – it is! There is a cost to honouring Christ and it is counted in the currency of convenience.
by Andrew Corbett | 2016 Jul,8 | Pastor's Desk
I pity those who do not have the privilege of living in Tasmania. Unlike other parts of Australia (and many other parts of the world), here in Tasmania we enjoy four distinct, and relatively mild, seasons. Of course, if you had been to our island haven paradise in the last couple of years you may not have thought so.
by Andrew Corbett | 2016 Mar,18 | Pastor's Desk
While it may be true that most marathons are won by the fittest, strongest, healthiest runner, it is also no doubt true that they are nearly always actually won by the tiredest, weariest, most exhausted runner! In fact, most of life’s greatest achievements are achievements are accomplished by very tired, weary and exhausted people. As we consider the days leading up to the First Easter we see Jesus who was during this week often talking all day with His disciples then up all night talking with His Father. By the night of the Last Supper He would have been very very weary. His subsequent achievements that First Easter must be regarded as the greatest achievement ever wrought in the Universe – and was done by the tiredest, weariest, most exhausted Man of all time who could be bothered.
by Andrew Corbett | 2016 Feb,11 | Pastor's Desk
I was struck the other day when reading F.W. Boreham’s, WHEN SWANS FLY HIGH, as he discussed an apparently unsolvable problem he was facing, by his observation about many of life’s problems: “But the problem soon solved itself.” (p. 112) Shortly after reading this I was doing my morning devotions and had come to the story of Jehoshaphat in Second Chronicles where he too was faced with an overwhelming problem. But the gravity of his crisis and the urgency and enormity of its dire consequences if left unattended meant that this problem would never solve itself. If it is granted that some problems certainly do solve themselves, and it is similarly true that some other problems are solved by our diligence, there is surely yet another category of problems and King Jehoshaphat’s problem was definitely in this category.
