Now is the Content of my Winter

I walked today where Jesus walked And felt him close to me. At least that's how the song goes. That's what you expect when you visit the "Holy Sites" in Israel and Palestine. You anticipate a religious experience. Instead, you get crowds, smells, bells, noise and constant commerce. Finding Jesus in this distracting crush is like "Where's Wally?" So, there I was, charged by a former colleague to organise and deliver the "spiritual experience" for a group of Christians most of whom were making their first trip to the places where Jesus walked. A few weeks beforehand, with the itinerary in one hand and my Bible in the other, I mapped out our route through the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. There would be plenty of material. And only a little bit of it from the Bible. There's a military occupation to deal with. There's history in bucket loads -- like those huge buckets they use in open cut mines. Was I doubtful we could d

Does ABC News reporting on Palestine and Israel contain bias? Here is today's news: There are fears that weapons from Libya, including sophisticated missiles that can shoot down aircraft, are being smuggled into Gaza to help arm militants there. In recent weeks, dozens of rockets and mortars have been fired from Gaza into Israel. One Israeli man has been killed, and retaliatory air strikes by Israeli warplanes have killed 11 Palestinians.  Violence like this is hardly new; every few months on average there is a new round of tit for tat rocket fire and Israeli air strikes.   Read the full story here Or perhaps it could read like this? There are fears that weapons from Israel, including sophisticated missiles that can shoot down aircraft, are being delivered into Israel from the United States to help arm militants there. In recent weeks, dozens of rockets and mortars have been fired from Israeli warplanes into Gaza. 11 Palestinians have been killed, and one Israeli m

                If you don’t know the song … click here .                  Life’s greatest satisfaction is to see how things turn out. How small steps evolve into huge leaps. How the germ of an idea turns into a powerful movement. How offering someone a job expands into a significant career.                 Again and again, over and over, I’ve had the great privilege to see little things grow into big things.                 In 1976 one of my first jobs at World Vision was to roll out a new program. We called it the 40 Hour Famine. It was a small and simple idea, borrowed from Canada. But in Australia it grew to impact generations of young people and even spawned other big things like the Oaktree Foundation.                 Too many to count are the colleagues who went on to big things. Not a few have become leaders in other organisations, or other fields. They grew because of nothing I taught them, but because they found a place in which there was enough freedom to