Let Me Introduce You – Q1 from St Pauls Castle Hill on Vimeo.
On self-fulfillment
“The Bible… tells us the story of a relational God who hasmade us men and women in his image for the purpose of relating. Cover to cover, Genesis to Revelation, theBible is primarily about one thing: relationship. It is about the creation ofrelationship, the destruction of relationship, and the redemption ofrelationship. When taken as a whole, these concepts are antithetical to theiWorld. Whereas the iWorld focuses on self-fulfilment, the Bible teaches thatself-fulfilment is an oxymoron, an impossibility, because it is a denial of ournature. We were created to relate to God and one another, and our personal fulfilmentand happiness depend on the health of those fundamental relationships. Indeed,it is only in these twin relationships that we can understand ourselves. Christianityis not about deciding who we want to be and what makes us happy; it is aboutlearning who we are and how to find not just happiness but fulfilment, inrelating to God, and one another.”
Dale Kuehne, Sex andthe iWorld: Rethinking Relationships Beyond an Age of Individualism (GrandRapids: Baker, 2009), 112.
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What is man?
When I consider your heavens
the works of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
Psalm 8:3-4
Out of this whole array, from stars to sea-creatures, only man can look at this scene with the insight to ask such a question, even in doubt; therefore it already points to its answer. Further, man has been taught to say thy and thou in such a setting: not only to acknowledge a Creator but to converse with Him.
Derek Kidner, Psalms 1-72 (Leicester: IVP, 1973), 67.
How Jesus is different from other religious ‘advice-givers’
“To imagine that Jesus merely rehashes some general ethical principles of benevolence and altruism is a fantasy. According to him, our ‘hearts’ (ie.what drives our inner self) are broken, and can only be renewed as we ‘come to our senses’ and find our Father again (Luke 15:11-32). He dreams of us entering a new ‘kingdom’, where all orbit joyfully around his Father. His life’s work begins to make that dream a reality.”
Andrew Cameron, Joined-up Life (Nottingham: IVP, 2011), 92.
On the usefulness of Lamentations
“Western cultures are notriously averse to pain and tragedy. We spend an extraordinary amount of money and effort seeking to insulate ourselves against life’s vicissitudes. All kinds of precautions are taken to ensure the maximal safety of the environments we must inhabit – our homes, our worksplaces, our schools, our social space, our transport, our public places – and, just about every type of insurance one could dream of. We do not want sorrow to knock at our doors and, when it does, we do not know what to do with it. Our default mode is to keep it out of sight and pretend that it is not there.
Unlike our Victorian forebears, we are no longer shy about sex, and we have innumerable ways to speak about sexual intercourse but we are hopelessly lost for words when confronted with grief and death. We don’t know what to do, where to look, what to say. Increasingly we lack the social practices, word, and concepts necessary to grasp our pain bu the horns and stare it in the face. We have been robbed of a vocabulary of grief, and we suffer for it. The book of Lamentations accosts us by the wayside as a stranger who offers us an unasked-for, unwanted, and yet priceless gift – the poetry of pain. We would be wise to pay attention.”
Robin A. Parry, Lamentations (Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 2010), 1.
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Believe it: man flu is real
I knew it! Check this out, and gents, ring that little bell for tea and lemon…
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SCIENCE has confirmed what men around the world have always known to be true: the man cold is real.
When the dreaded bug strikes, women have a much stronger immune response than men, Queensland researchers say.
Led by Professor John Upham, from the University of Queensland’s school of medicine, a five-member research team established that gender was a factor in how the immune system reacts to rhinoviruses, the viruses that usually cause the common cold.
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These differences disappear after women reach menopause – indicating they are probably regulated by sex hormones.
”The way nature has put us together has been done to keep the female of the species alive as a survival thing,” Professor Upham said.
He said it was the first time gender had been identified as a factor in the immune response to rhinoviruses but that sex hormones were known to influence the response to other viruses, such as hepatitis.
Researchers made the discovery after studying how people with asthma respond to rhinoviruses. They noticed that within their study group of healthy people there was a noticeable difference in the male and female responses to the cold viruses for participants aged under 50.
”The biology is telling us … that female hormones are having a beneficial effect on the immune system,” Professor Upham said
from SMH
‘Religion’ on Billboards in Australia
Filed under billboards, islam, public debate, tv, videos
NZ tornado – a near thing
Freak NZ tornado to cost millions
Tamara McLean, AAP New Zealand Correspondent
May 4, 2011 – 5:24PM
AAP
Damage from a freak tornado that blasted its way through a shopping mall in Auckland is likely to run into tens of millions of dollars.
Clean-up crews spent Wednesday clearing streets of debris and repairing buildings after a violent 200km/h twister swept through the New Zealand city, killing one man and injuring 14 others.
The dead man was Benedict Dacayan, a 37-year-old construction worker who was working to demolish a building in the northern suburb of Albany when the storm swept through about 3pm (1pm AEST) on Tuesday.
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The tornado, the most severe to hit New Zealand in several years, overturned cars, uprooted trees and flung roofing iron everywhere.
According to witness accounts, Mr Dacayan had been inside a portable office when he was picked up by the wind and thrown like a rag doll against a concrete wall.
“It came out of nowhere, very, very quickly, no real warning,” said Philip King, a manager at Fletcher Building where Mr Dacayan worked.
Student nurse Sophie Bond said she came across Mr Dacayan lying in a crumpled heap and did everything she could to resuscitate him.
“But it was too late,” she said.
“There was a lot of blood when we rolled him over, we could see he had a very bad head wound,” Ms Bond told Radio New Zealand.
The father-of-two later died in the ambulance on the way to hospital.
Mr King said the death had shocked employees.
“It’s traumatic, as you can imagine, and shocking. So everyone’s reasonably subdued today it would be fair to say,” he said.
Another employee suffered a broken leg in the disaster, and a subcontractor was in hospital as a result of his injuries.
Three children escaped without injury when the car they were in flipped with the force of the storm.
The tornado, which reached category two out of five, damaged about 50 homes and businesses along its 5km path of destruction.
Insurance Council chief executive Chris Ryan said the costs were significant.
“It’s still a little early to put a precise figure on the amount of insured loss suffered as a result of the tornado but I’d expect it to be in the tens of millions, given the severity of the event,” he said.
Government minister and local MP Jonathan Coleman surveyed the damage and said it was a miracle just one person died.
Civil Defence controller Clive Manley said clean-up crews had been hard at work on repairs, with the worst-hit Albany Megacentre shopping centre expected to fully reopen on Thursday.
New Zealand is hit by 20 tornado events each year but they are typically narrow and short-lived.
The worst of them hit the North Island city of Hamilton in 1948, killing three people, injuring 80 others and destroying more the 200 homes and businesses.
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The tornado hit Albany- my lovely and my littlelist were in this shopping centre the day before for several hours, and were staying only 2 suburbs away!!
Praise God for his mercy on our family!
6 suggestions of what to cover in a journal
1. A personal record of what I’ve done – people I met, decisions I have made, how I used my time, how I served people and fulfilled my personal life statement.
2. Self-reflection on my mood, attitudes, feelings, health, stress, dreams – what I’ve thought and felt, the highs and lows of the day, ways I’ve experienced change within myself.
3. A record of spiritual experiences – ways I’ve been aware of God’s presence, and what these experiences might mean.
4. Working through relational issues – how to engage with a particular person, why I struggle in particular relationships, coming to terms with a bereavement.
5. Saying things to God – hopes, longings, dreams, worries, fears.
6. Pondering problems – decisions I’m concerned about, discerning God’s perspective on life and seeking his will for the future.
James Lawrence, Growing Leaders (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004), 124.
To this, I would add ponderings on God’s word – questions raised, challenges posed, rebukes that have landed, encouragements that have lifted.
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In Anticipation 