David Turner Blog

I have a dream. The famous words used by Martin Luther King in his century-defining speech. One biblical character makes a similar declaration but in the past tense, “I’ve had a dream”. Joseph, a young man, has two dreams in which (through various images) his brothers are depicted as bowing down to him. As a result, his already wound up jealous brothers, decide this is the last straw, and plan to destroy Joseph. First, by literally killing him, but eventually settling on the good old “sell your little brother into slavery” scenario. This story came to mind recently, and I recognised something in Joseph that stands in contrast to another biblical character - David. You see, Joseph has a God given dream, and uses his God-given gift (dream interpretation), but he jumps ahead of the gun, and shares something that wasn’t ready, he trusts in his timing, and not in God’s. David, on the face of it, shares many similarities with Joseph, he is also a younger brother, he too tends to ...

Recently, I have been reading The Hiding Place, a book on the life of Corrie ten Boom. In the early chapters, Corrie tells the stories from her childhood about her family, and the challenges they faced. She shares much about her father, and one of these stories struck me as a challenge to the 21st Century and our Western culture. The story goes that Corrie was travelling with her father on the train, when she remembers a poem read by her teacher at school which referred to an old-fashioned term which included reference to sex. She had asked her mother what it meant, but she had simply blushed and ignored her. So on this journey she decided to consult her dad. When she asks him, he too, simply ignores her. Then as they are due to get off the train, he asks Corrie to carry his case. She attempts to lift it: “It’s too heavy” she said. And he replies, “yes, and it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his daughter to carry such a load. It’s the same way, Corrie, with knowledge....