There is a community of people on Flickr who like to complain when anything new happens. That's fine, go knock yourselves out, but meta-jokes about this are funny. Well, at least I think so. Join the protest!
]]>All the older posts still exist, as does the website, so feel free to have a look around, or just follow my life as it goes on below.
]]>But, here's the question, my prolific schedule of writing for this website can't be maintained while my macbook is away being repaired, so what are you going to read when I'm not here?
Oh wait, the rest of the internet.
But anyway, if you want a good book to read, or indeed a good series of books to read; then you should probably read my dad's books. The latest one The Infinite Day came out a few weeks back, and well, it's awesome. Obviously, being his son I would say that, but really, they're a good series. The last one, I read over August as a Word document on my computer. Have you ever tried reading an entire book as a Word document? It's not un-akin to standing three inches from a TV screen for three days straight staring as it while it plays sped up kids cartoons. But it was worth it. I read it again over three days after I got hold of the hardback.
So, I'm lacking a computer for a week, but you can order a trilogy off Amazon now instead. Which is a good deal.
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There is a community of people on Flickr who like to complain when anything new happens. That's fine, go knock yourselves out, but meta-jokes about this are funny. Well, at least I think so. Join the protest!
]]>And so on... Someone really should inform them as to what "every" actually means.
]]>The video seems them playing along in a empty ruined church with the sun rising over their heads through the power of bad CGI. Given that the house of the rising sun in the original song is a brothel, it makes you wonder if this is a clever criticism of the selling out of the catholic church or more likely is it the supreme failure to correctly use poetic language in a music video?
1 The coffee is average, and they don't do americano coffee, so if you don't like milk in your drinks you're left with espresso. They do however, have slabs of table, as opposed to the normal pasty tables that can't hold up a book mark let alone take the pressure of a pen on a notepad.
]]>What on earth is wrong with you? Last week Radiohead released their entire back catalogue on iTunes and you decide that the song you really want to buy is "Creep"? I'd have forgiven you if you'd managed to push "OK Computer" to the top of the album chart (or any other album of theirs for that matter). But really? Creep? You're just buying that song because it's the only thing you've bothered to listen to, same as you do with every other band. Don't try and argue that you're buying that song because you really like it and their other stuff doesn't do it for you, that line would only work if you had more than just "Smells Like Teen Spirit" filed under Nirvana.
If you want my advice —and let's face it you never do— then this is what you should have bought:
]]>And that is the real reason why I never became a rock star.
]]>I've raised my two children in household church. They were 6 and 3 when we started and now they're 14 and 11 We have a chapter on children and young people in Total Church, but here's the two minute version. I think household church is a great context to raise children. There are challenges - the challenges of integrating them week by week. But better that by far than postponing those challenges until a crisis moment somewhere in their teens when they're expected to make a big jump to church. You do lose some peer opportunities (although you can address those by working as a network of household congregations). But you gain something more valuable - children and young people interacting with Christian community and, especially, having Christian role s who are older then them, but not as old as their parents. Lose you images of a youth club with 50 kids running around like mad things on a Friday evening and gain instead an image of teenagers hanging out with committed Christians in their twenties.
Tim Chester - Money and Children in Household Church.
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This is a cartoon by a guy writes a website called ASBO Jesus. Some of cartoons are spot on and hard to fault, some are not so much. This cartoon comes to my attention in part because Marko (chief head person of Youth Specialities no less) links to it, and in part because having doubts is a hip idea at the minute, but mostly because on the surface at least it seems completely and utterly wrong. After all, is the faith that certainty tries to kill the same one mentioned in Hebrews 11:1 "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen"?
Here are some thoughts on the matter.
On the whole "what are the limits to our certainty?" question, I have nothing wise to say other than to quote (a slightly paraphrased) John Owen.
]]>Herein [he is talking about Jesus' emptying of Himself to come down to earth], then, I say, we may by faith behold the glory of Christ, as we shall do it by sight hereafter. If we see no glory in it, if we do not understand that this is a matter of eternal admiration, we walk in darkness. It is the most ineffable effect of divine wisdom and grace. Where are our hearts and minds, if we can see no glory in it? I know in the contemplation of it, it will quickly overwhelm our reason, and bring our understanding into a loss: but unto this loss do I desire to be brought every day; for when faith can no more act itself in comprehension, when it finds the object it is fixed on too great and glorious to be brought into our minds and capacities, it will issue (as we said before) in holy admiration, humble adoration, and joyful thanksgiving. In and by its acting in them does it fill the soul with "joy unspeakable, and full of glory.
John Owen - The Glory Of Christ in His Office and Grace
I frankly confess that, for myself, even if it could be, I should not want 'free-will' to be given me, nor anything to be left in my own hands to enable me to endeavour after salvation; not merely because in face of so many dangers, and adversities, and assaults of devils, I could not stand my ground and hold fast my 'free-will' (for one devil is stronger than all men, and on these terms no man could be saved); but because, even were there no dangers, adversities, or devils, I Should still be forced to labour with no guarantee of success, and to beat my fists at the air. If I lived and worked to all eternity, my conscience would never reach comfortable certainty as to how much it must do to satisfy God. Whatever work I had done, there would still be a nagging doubt as to whether it pleased God, or whether he required something more. The experience proves that; and I learned it well enough myself over a period of many years, to my own great hurt. But now that God has taken my salvation out of the control of my own will, and put it under the control of His, and promised to save me, not according to my working or running, but according to His own grace and mercy, I have the comfortable certainty that He is faithful and will not lie to me, and that He is also great and powerful, so that no devils or opposition can break Him or pluck me from Him. 'No one," He says, 'Shall pluck them out of my hand, because my Father which gave them me is greater than all' (John 10:28-29). Thus it is that, if not all, yet some, indeed many, are saved; whereas, by the power of 'free-will' none at all could be saved, but every one of us would perish.
Furthermore, I have the comfortable certainty that I please God, not by reason of merit of my works, but by reason of His merciful favour promised to me; so that, if I work too little, or badly, He does not impute it to me, but with fatherly compassion pardons me and makes me better. This is the glorying of all the saints in their God.
Martin Luther - The Bondage of the Will
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So, I need to find a flatmate within the next week. £700 a month in Central London, all inclusive (that's a bargain really). Find out more (or just be nosey) here.
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The Crystal Palace National Athletic centre is designed with one thing in mind; Communist Russia. Not only the bare rusting concrete assembly (as TV's Barry Cooper pointed out already) but the way the stands are designed to concentrate all the available bitter wind into one particular corner of coldness. And that's the corner we've been in for the last hour or so, in shorts and running vests, walking backwards and forwards between the stands and the starting blocks. Apparently this makes for good TV.
Then we get released for five minutes. That's probably not true. It's as equally likely to be three minutes. Or possibly seven. It's all a guess. The only time it's likely to be is the exact time it takes to fumblingly put a pair of tracksuit bottoms on to try and get warm. Here's another thing about filming other than the cold. Hilarious outakes: They don't actually happen, because you know, you don't want to screw up and so you don't. At least not in a funny way. Will Smith might naturally get hilarious outakes, but I assume that's because he's Will Smith. You're not. Here's another thing. To make a few minutes of TV you've got to film a few hours. And when those few minutes are us sprinting around a track, that means a few hours of us sprinting around a track. Doing the 50m repeatedly doesn't seem too bad until the next day when you can't stand up and realised that 50 metres times forty shots is two kilometres of sprinting.
As for reporting on the actual event we're there for, you know, the whole Discipleship Explored filming thing bit, it turns out we missed it all. I mean, we were there for the whole-stand-around-on-a-track-and-feel-cold-bit, but the bit with the whole actually-speaking-to-the-camera-and-telling-them-about-Jesus-which-let's-face-it-is-the-entire-point-of-this-filming, was all filmed the day before. There were a few scenes left to film with TV's Barry Cooper in it, but alas they used the standard celebrity film technique of keeping the TV personality as far away from the extras as possible and not telling us when they're filming him in the background. Still he was good enough sport to let me take photographs of him with make-up being put on. He wouldn't sign my t-shirt though.
Enough about that. It's a week later and my legs still ache and I still feel slightly embarrassed from trying to fill my frame into a running vest and shorts, but on balance I'm glad I did it. The bits of the filming we saw did look very smart and it is all going for the production of an awesome Christ-centred series.
]]>Police Officer: "We've just been advised the Suffolk Police want you searched."
Young Male: "Okay"