Ira Stanphill

TIME TRAVEL

(March 03, 2025) Dr Jim McClure shares— and challenges…

Sixty-two years ago Dr Who stepped out of a telephone kiosk that was actually a fictional time machine called Tardis.  Since then multiple episodes of the science-fiction TV series have been broadcast with many different characters portraying Dr Who.

Do you ever wonder what it would be like to travel through time?  There are no time-travel machines in existence so we have no opportunity to take a trip 100 years into the future or 1000 years into the past, however we are all actually ‘time-travellers’! 

In fact, we are travelling through time right now! From one day to the next we travel through time! From one Christmas to the next we travel through time!

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GATE OF THE YEAR

(January 11, 2024) Robert McQuillan shares 2024-centred encouragement.

Odd title isn’t it. Picked it up the other night from an old James Stewart movie, 1940’s Mortal Storm. Set in South Germany’s Alps, it tells of the change that sweeps a particular town so quickly and dramatically when Hitler’s coming to power in January 1933 is announced. Contentment between families and friends vanishes when most of the town embraces the Nazi creed, and only a few don’t. It is indeed the beginning of a mortal storm.

As this classic movie concludes, some lines from a poem are narrated over celestial music –
‘I said to a man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied:
“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God.
That shall be to you better than a light and safer than a known way.”’

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A ROAD UNTRAVELLED

(January 07, 2024) Dr Jim McClure encourages Christians to confidently follow the Lord this new year… 

Welcome to 2024! Where did last year go?

I was reflecting on how much the world has changed in my lifetime. I was born when German bombs were being dropped on Belfast. But following the end of the war, despite various hardships, life was pretty good. I have come to the conclusion that I have been privileged to live in a time of unparalleled discovery and achievement in the world.

Following the Second World War who would have guessed that someone would walk on the moon? Who would have speculated that our old radio would be largely replaced by a colour television? Who would have considered that one day you could carry a phone in your pocket without trailing a telephone wire? Who would have anticipated that something called a computer would be invented that would give you instant answers to many of your questions on many subjects? Who would have predicted the amazing advances in medicine and surgery?

Of course, not everything over the years has been good or positive – I do not need to list some of the negatives and tragedies that have also been part of those years… although the Covid pandemic which, directly or indirectly, wreaked havoc in the lives of countless millions of people throughout the world, was one of those stressful times.

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