Bank Holiday Bunkum

Heard this on Radio 2 a little while ago. This is what you do. Whilst sitting, raise your right leg off the ground and move your foot in a circular clockwise motion. As you are doing that, 'draw' a number six in the air with your right hand. As you do that, your foot will automatically start going anti-clockwise! Try it and see!

This reminded me of something else. When you put on a pair of shoes, do you always put the same shoe on first? I always put the left shoe on first. I only found this out when once I accidentally picked up the right shoe, realised it wasn't the left, put it down & picked up the left, and then I thought, "Why??" I still don't know! Anyone any ideas?

At the Start of the Day ...

Yesterday God reminded me of a verse from a Psalm, which reads:
I have set the LORD always before me.
Because he is at my right hand,
I will not be shaken.

The Lord is always before us, yet it is good, for me at any rate, to "set" him before me in prayer each day. In other words, to acknowledge his presence with me for the day. And to remember that as he is with me each and every day, I need not be 'shaken' by whatever comes along.

The Psalm continues (Psalm 16:9-11):

9 Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
my body also will rest secure,
10 because you will not abandon me to the grave,
nor will you let your faithful one see decay.
11 You have made known to me the path of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence,
with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

New Name - New Demeanor?

I saw my first Civil Enforcement Officer yesterday! In case you hadn't realised, from April this year Traffic Wardens are no more. And in the tradition of coming up with a silly new name (like dustmen becoming refuse disposal engineers) they are now Civil Enforcement Officers. Actually I'm encouraged by this. In the past I remember meeting a very uncivil traffic warden!

Sin-defeating Grace

The sermon title was "sin-defeating grace" and the Bible reading was Romans 5:12 onwards. I read it from "The Message", a modern language paraphrase. There were some great "sound bites"! For instance,

When it's sin versus grace, grace wins hands down.

One man said no to God and put many people in the wrong;
one man said yes to God and put many people in the right.

All that sin can do is threaten us with death, and that's the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us to life - a life that goes on and on and on, world without end.

Hope you like the quotes!

Motorboat or sailing boat?

I was leading a session at a church weekend away which was entitled "Transformation not Conformation", based on the Bible verse Romans 12:2. It was about the importance as Christians not to be conformed by the world's way of thinking and doing but instead allow ourselves to be transformed in our minds by God. The world's pressures and standards try to squeeze us into their mould.

On the other hand, we need to be open to God's Holy Spirit to work in our lives. This is sovereignly the work of God, but we need to be willing to allow him to do it in us.

The reason for telling you all this is that I had an illustration (pinched, of course from someone else - all the best illustrations are!) which I shared. I said it is like a sailing boat rather than a motorboat. If you take out a motorboat, you switch the engine on and you are in complete control of where you are going. But being transformed by the Holy Spirit is like a sailing boat - you hoist the sail, but you must wait for God to provide the wind!

Someone from the church added a bit more to the illustration. He said when you go out to sea in a sailing boat, you are often battling against the tide. That's the world trying to conform you. But you must ride the tide in order to go where God wants you. And sometimes it can be a bumpy ride!

Best before ... but what about after?

The staggering news today is that we in England and Wales throw away 3.6m tonnes of food each year. Now I know this is awful, but what I immediately asked myself was, did hordes of people really go through the bins of 2,138 homes?

We even throw away 5,500 whole chickens each day. Well, we never have, so who's throwing ours away? Of course it's these "best before" dates. We have three simple tests if something is past the date:

1. Does it look OK?

2. Does it smell OK?

3. Does it taste OK?

If the answers are all "yes", then we eat it! Mind you I was roundly told off by a nurse who works with elderly people, who said that bacteria start multiplying before you can smell or taste them. But we're not worried at the moment. A week or so ago we opened a horseradish cream bottle. It must have been stuck at the back of the cupboard as its date was July 2007. We had visitors that day so I gave them a health warning about it! They weren't worried - but then they were our generation, not the younger generation that seem to venerate these dates!

The Price of Petrol

We heard this week that BP and Shell have made huge profits. It is due to the price of a barrel being very high, so as oil producers, they get a good price.

But hang on a minute! Why are their prices at the pumps so high? Because of the high price of the cost of petrol, they say. How does that work? Am I missing something?

Rhythms of Life

In John Ortberg's book The Life You've Always Wanted he talks about rhythms in life. There are natural ones like day and night. It's interesting, by the way, that the first thing God created was that rhythm. The first thing God did was to create light and so day and night began. The rest of creation was then based on that rhythm (see Genesis chapter one).

But back to Ortberg. He's talking about the spiritual life. He says:

There will be times of consolation and times of desolation. In times of consolation we like to pray because God seems close, the Bible seems alive, sin looks bad and stoplights all seem green. Times of desolation are just the opposite: The Bible seems dry, prayer grows hard and God is far away. ... When we forget the law of rhythm, we assume that whatever phase is current will last forever. In times of consolation I mistakenly think that I now have spiritual life mastered. In times of desolation I assume I must have done something wrong, or perhaps God is punishing me. In truth, both seasons are inevitable, and both seasons can bring unique growth.

I hope you find Ortberg's words helpful.