on our list of achievements

“Now Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia. And John left them and returned to Jerusalem, but they went on from Perga and came to Antioch in Pisidia. And on the Sabbath day they went into the synagogue and sat down. After the reading from the Law and the Prophets, the rulers of the synagogue sent a message to them, saying, “Brothers, if you have any word of encouragement for the people, say it.” So Paul stood up, and motioning with his hand said: “Men of Israel and you who fear God, listen. The God of this people Israel chose our fathers and made the people great during their stay in the land of Egypt, and with uplifted arm he led them out of it. And for about forty years he put up with them in the wilderness. And after destroying seven nations in the land of Canaan, he gave them their land as an inheritance. All this took about 450 years. And after that he gave them judges until Samuel the prophet. Then they asked for a king, and God gave them Saul the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin, for forty years. And when he had removed him, he raised up David to be their king, of whom he testified and said, ‘I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will.’ Of this man’s offspring God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, as he promised. Before his coming, John had proclaimed a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel. And as John was finishing his course, he said, ‘What do you suppose that I am? I am not he. No, but behold, after me one is coming, the sandals of whose feet I am not worthy to untie.’”

—Acts 13:13-25

When the first emperor of ancient Rome died, he was a happy man. At least he said he was happy. It’s possible his wife poisoned him to death, but that’s another story. On his tombstone, the emperor proudly tells about all the great things he has done for Rome: he took revenge on the men who’d killed his father, he brought peace to Rome, he built dozens of fancy new temples, he made sure his people were well fed, and he left behind lots of money. This was his way of telling his people “Remember me!”, because he’d done such a great job.

That’s the way the world works — we matter when we do stuff and achieve stuff. And we don’t matter when we fail to achieve stuff. Ancient emperors knew this. Modern Hong Kongers know this. Anyone here who’s had to write a cover letter or applied to a programme will know this. Applications make us brag about what we’ve done. “Pay attention to me!”, “Accept me for your programme!”, because I’ve done such a great job.

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03/12/2025 0

on giant killing

“When the words that David spoke were heard, they repeated them before Saul, and he sent for him. And David said to Saul, “Let no man’s heart fail because of him. Your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.” And Saul said to David, “You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him, for you are but a youth, and he has been a man of war from his youth.” But David said to Saul, “Your servant used to keep sheep for his father. And when there came a lion, or a bear, and took a lamb from the flock, I went after him and struck him and delivered it out of his mouth. And if he arose against me, I caught him by his beard and struck him and killed him. Your servant has struck down both lions and bears, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, for he has defied the armies of the living God.” And David said, “The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.” And Saul said to David, “Go, and the LORD be with you!” Then Saul clothed David with his armor. He put a helmet of bronze on his head and clothed him with a coat of mail, and David strapped his sword over his armor. And he tried in vain to go, for he had not tested them. Then David said to Saul, “I cannot go with these, for I have not tested them.” So David put them off. Then he took his staff in his hand and chose five smooth stones from the brook and put them in his shepherd’s pouch. His sling was in his hand, and he approached the Philistine.”

1 Samuel 17:31-40

What a great story. How amazing that teeny, tiny David could defeat the giant Goliath! What kind of giants are there in your life? Maybe relationships that have gone bad? Maybe the fear that you’re not good enough? Maybe pressure from your studies? But all it takes is some faith. Even if you’re small and weak, even if it seems like you can’t make it, all you need is to have enough faith, and go out there and slay those giants, and God will give you the victory!

What I just told you was a very common way of talking about this Bible story when I was growing up. It sounds really encouraging, right? You can do anything you can imagine, even something as impossible as a little boy killing a giant, if you have enough faith.

But that always bothered me — have faith. What does it mean? Have faith in what? In myself? In God? What’s the hope? That God will help me just because I think he will? That I can get what I want because I wish hard enough?

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03/12/2025 0

on the Glory of God

“And the LORD said to Moses, “Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” And the LORD said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.” But Moses implored the LORD his God and said, “O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.’” And the LORD relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people.”
—Exodus 32:7-14

When I was in London I had some very good older brothers who taught me about the Bible. One of them was called Sam, and his catchphrase was the word glory. He’d go into this super deep dive on how the Ten Commandments could actually tell us about God’s character, or how the building plans of the big temple could tell us about God’s relationship with his people, and after he was done, he’d look us in the eye and say – glory.

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11/20/2024 0

on finding answers in the Bible

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
—John 1:1-5

There’s an odd English word out there, or rather a suffix, called ‘-mancy’. Anytime you see a word that ends with ‘-mancy’, it’s to do with some kind of fortune telling. You have pretty standard ones like geomancy, trying to find good luck by studying the positions of buildings and furniture — feng shui is a kind of geomancy — and astromancy, trying to find good luck by reading the stars (aka astrology); and you have some stranger ones like pyromancy (fire) or even gastromancy, which is the art of fortune telling by listening to someone’s stomach rumblings.

There’s also a pretty common type called bibliomancy, which involves asking yourself a question and then opening a book to a random page and finding the answer there. And actually Christians sometimes do this too, we ask God a question and then try to find the answer by flipping to a random page of the Bible.

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04/19/2023 1

the whole story of the Bible in 5 parts

The Creation

The story of the Bible begins with chaos. In the beginning God creates the sky and the earth, but the earth is covered with water and nothing else. It’s shapeless and terrifying. And then God decides to speak — with his word he speaks things into being. He speaks and the sun and moon shine; he speaks and time exists; he speaks and the mountains rise up; he speaks and vines, apple trees, and rainforests spring from the ground; he speaks and whales and eels swim, seagulls and sparrows soar, and lizards, ants, mice, dogs, and elephants wander around. God is now King of all creation. But he’s not done yet — he wants to share all this with people. And so he makes a man and a woman to be just like him, to think like him, speak like him, and be together with him for all time. The King now has his people to love and to take care of what he created — everything is good, everything is at peace.

[This part of the Bible story covers Genesis chapters 1 and 2. It’s one of the most famous parts of the Bible. In recent years it’s been used to try to argue for or against scientific ideas such as evolution or the age of the earth. There’s a lot to unpack there, more than we have space to talk about here, but at least we can say that Genesis chapters 1 and 2 focus on God’s role as King of creation, rather than how exactly he created everything. And in fact that role is one of the first and most important building blocks of the Bible story — very little in the Bible will make sense if we don’t accept this as truth.]

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11/04/2021 0