(Some) Things Change
It is so easy to become overly engrossed in your own small and largely insignificant life. To my shame I …
Category Archives: Pride
Love Resourcing
This parenting lark isn’t easy. Perhaps that’s obvious to other people, but I must confess to being slightly naive going …
Carry me!
Walking anywhere with a young child is always a distraction game, trying to delay the inevitable request for a carry. …
If it makes you happy…
Once in youth group I asked the young people what they thought God wanted for their lives. There was a …
Music Matters
When it comes to musical taste we all think we are experts. My upbringing in music was mixed. Dad had …
My Evening as a Stripper
It’s been a busy couple of months, on top of work, our ongoing adoption process, Christmas, New Year and the …
The Same Spring
You probably know that feeling. You are on a spiritual buzz, you have had a good prayer time, bible study …
Disillusioned
“Seems you created your own illusion, fuelled by an image of me” The above are lyrics to a song by …
The Great Unchangeable Me: Success
The film School of Rock ends with a battle of the bands. Jack Black’s fraudulently taught class of young teenagers …
Counter Balance
We were holidaying in Crete with another couple when we decided to hire a couple of mopeds. At the rental shop they asked us all if we had ridden a moped before. I said yes. I lied. How hard can it be I thought? I don’t want to appear like an english idiot I reasoned. So with Anna on the back I turned the key and gunned the engine. Tearing onto the road, taking the corner way too wide and careening on to the wrong side of the road into on coming traffic.
Hubris
So I sat there, not sure about the content, not sure about the approach I was going to take, feeling a bit embarrassed about my oversight and concerned that I was failing in responsibilities to God and everyone who had showed up on a cold night in January. Then before the sermon we sang ‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross’ – a classic and well loved hymn that I have been singing since I’ve been able to read. All of a sudden all my insecurities, worries and hopelessness were put into perspective,
‘Were the whole realm of nature mine,
that were an offering far too small;
love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.’
Quality Brew
Several months have passed since I last wrote about tea. I am amazed that a simple cup of tea could …
Man the Brooms
The mate tipped me out of my bunk and onto the deck of my cabin. “The crew are on strike. Get your backside down into number five hold and get sweeping. The old man (captain) is down there. If the old man is sweeping, then so are you.” (Polite version.)
Everything you ever wanted
Port congestion used to mean ships spending long periods at anchor. I experienced three such weeks in the Shatt-al-Arab River …
Give us clean hands…
Having just finished a two-week business trip to New Zealand and Australia in December 2000 I had one day free …
The Difference
I had always wondered how Peter felt during these two incidents, going from being a rock to a stumbling block in two sentences, from pride to horror in a matter of minutes
Another Cuppa
The first taste is not the best. There is more. The Apostle Paul knew this
A life with no buts
You see the descriptions of the kings in this book are hugely interesting to me. Let me start by saying most of the kings are gash, their opening descriptions telling us how evil they were and how they followed the evil perpetrated by their predecessors. But every now and then you find a king who did a bit better. 2 Kings tells us that these kings ‘did right in the eyes of the Lord.’ But then adds a caveat, usually that these kings did not get rid of the high places, the altars where the people worshiped other Gods.
Erasing God
Nice quote eh? I even thought to myself ‘I might use that in a sermon!’ Sometime later I remembered that thought and looked up the quote on the internet and this is what I found:
disciples
Following on from Nick’s post Safety in Labelling I started to write a comment & realised it was getting a …
Gigging it up
And then at 2100, 15 minutes before the gig should end, the main act start their set. After a 12 hour journey where they have witnessed multiple accidents, phoned me so much that their batteries have died, got lost in Scarborough when they were only five minutes away from the church.
The Path of Reverence
When you assume you can will yourself to reach any goal, you’re forgetting that you’re only human. When you feel aggravated that you can’t stop stressing or worrying or crying over your current circumstances, you’re forgetting that you’re only human. When you think you should have known life would unfold this way and planned the next move, you’re forgetting that you’re only human.
Refinement
Our society sees refinement as an end or a product or something to be consumed. But refinement is not just an end. It is not just a product. Refinement is also a process. And hardly ever a fun one.
Off Your Trolley…
Distracted by cheap food and rich conversation with my beautiful wife, I took my eyes off the trolley park for a bit, and when I looked back it was chaos. More trolleys had been left any which way, a lady approached and tried to slot her trolley into the back of another in the correct fashion, but this made more of a mess because of the angle it was now sticking out at.
The List
The list leads to an ultimately more peaceful existence for me, it gives me satisfaction, and I know when I obey it things will be better. But sometimes my rebellious self thinks ‘Stuff you, stupid list, why are there so many jobs on you today, and what’s this? An extra job that has never appeared on you before? No no no no no. This cannot be right. Best just to ignore you altogether.’
Cech it out
Silence is an underrated tool of reflection that can be used to great effect in drawing close to the Lord, and seeking his still small voice. The silence that followed this remark wasn’t of that ilk, but I tried to look as though I was reflecting so to appear holier than everyone else in the room who were now staring forlornly at me.
Tyred & Irritable
In that moment I was a mix of anger and despair. Anger because despite following the instructions it still didn’t work, and despair at being reminded that here was another simple task I could not perform. While my friend, God bless him, who has just moved in down the road is building shelves from old drawers, painting the house from top to bottom, working shifts and looking after two kids under three, I was struggling to patch a hole the size of a pinprick. And if I couldn’t do that, in what other arenas would I fail to live up to my designation as a man? I have already failed to provide my wife with a child, she is the main breadwinner, my lack of DIY nous means I am relegated to performing even simpler chores such as hovering, ironing and emptying the dishwasher.
Behaving
The thing is churches often flip that around and expect people to behave long before they believe and certainly before they belong. Not only is it pious to the extreme but also it’s heresy. Yeah you heard me, I did just go there.
Enough is not Enough
It seemed that they would rather keep me in the comfortable category of religious than make a new one for this troublesome little God botherer. Or maybe I am again assuming that when they say I’m religious what they are actually saying is that expect me to put on some tin foil armour, mount a horse and start a second but more brutally effect crusade. Whatever the reason I assume that they think religious is bad, so I try to avoid being labeled it.
Ivory Tower Block
Now we have a foundation for our latching. Now we can examine everything they say and do to make sure that they are a better Christian than us. Now we can hold them up as an example to everyone who thinks Christians aren’t cool! Take that heathens! Now we can judge them more harshly than we judge ourselves, and expect them to live a life second only to Jesus in terms of purity.
Road Closure
A week or so ago I was involved in closing a road. It was in the pedestrian precinct and was …
