Archive of February 2009
How to wash up to the glory of God
Tim Chester writes:
Your kitchen sink is a holy place – it can be a theatre for God’s glory.
Last night, our kitchen reached a critical point, and three of my housemates spontaneously decided enough was enough, and cleaned the whole thing. Washing up is always a big deal in a shared house; Tim Chester doesn’t specifically address that situation, but gets you thinking about God in the mundane! (Also, he has excellent washing up tips.)
Hat-tip: housemate Lina and housemate’s dad Eddie
Church puts on skating for Christ
…we personally believe that Jesus died for surfers and skaters as much as anybody else.
Phil Williams, Christian Skaters
Four years on
Posted at 12:40 PM
So, it was four years ago today that I wrote the first entry on my then very new website, Audience of One. It seemed appropriate that today would be the day to upgrade it. Unfortunately for me (and possibly you), I only remembered this anniversary two days ago, when I was planning on taking at least another week to get this production-ready. As a result, there may be problems with pretty much anything to do with this website which might take a while to get ironed out. (Current case in point: the Flickr photos above should be from a particular set, but what worked perfectly on my computer doesn’t seem to work out in the wild…)
For those interested in such things, I’ve decided to move away from Movable Type after six whole years, and have switched to a newcomer called Chyrp. This isn’t because Movable Type is rubbish – far from it, I still think it’s an amazing piece of software – but it’s written in Perl, a programming language I have a very limited acquaintance with. Chyrp is not only written in PHP, but is written in such a way that in just two days of trying things out I was able to not only write my own module for it, but fix somebody else’s. Switching to Chyrp gives me much more control over how the blog works, makes updating the design far easier, and also keeps my web hosts happy because it’s far lighter on their processors.
Over the coming weeks I might not be updating a huge amount, but come the end of my degree I’ll have a lot to write about, given what I’m doing next year (more on that at some point soon, when it’s all finalised). For those who use such things, update your feedreaders to point at http://audienceofone.org.uk/feed/ rather than http://audienceofone.org.uk/feed/atom.xml or whatever it was before.
Why I love the church
Posted at 8:51 PM
There’s no way I can do the above title justice. What more could I possibly add to all that has already been said, by those far wiser than I?
I guess a little personal testimony. Today I didn’t particularly feel like going to church. I’d found yesterday quite discouraging and slept in late. I had to arrive at church early due to being in charge of the music, but I was quite reluctant to go, and left at the last possible minute.
First on my list of why I love the church, then: it’s the people. Of course it’s the people, because church is a community of people. As we were reminded in today’s meeting, we are God’s children – not just I am God’s child, but we are God’s children. The first person I saw was a guy I don’t really know, but whom I could just talk to because we were family! His daughter was running around. A few minutes later, my friend Cathy turned up, and after our rehearsal, loads of others whom I know and love arrived too. While waiting for the children to come back in at the end, I got to talk to Sian, my church “mum” through the student adoption scheme, and see her two (real) sons as well.
If all of that wasn’t enough, there’s number two on my list: the teaching. Not dry, boring, or a merely “nice” homily, as ever our pastor Mike brought God’s Word to bear on our lives in a way both challenging and encouraging. We were reminded that God loves us as much as he loves Jesus (John 17:23), and when we pray we pray to our father, who loves us (Matthew 6:9). We were encouraged to set our sights on what God wants, on his big picture (“your kingdom come, your will be done” – Matthew 6:9-10). Most of all, we were reminded that prayer isn’t a burdensome rule we have to keep, but a joyful expression of love of and dependence on God. As is so often the case, it was just what I needed to hear today. (Download here: this has got to be one of the best talks on the Lord’s prayer I’ve heard.)
Reason number three: the people. Yes, that was number one as well – I guess I’m not finished. As family, as Christians together, we’re free to be real to one another, and so I was able to say to people I’d had a rubbish day yesterday; I could tell them I needed to pray more like Jesus did, and I could ask them to pray for me, that I would do so! One of the phrases Mike uses a lot is this: “we’re not a community of people who think we’re better than everyone else”. We’re a community of sinners saved by grace, and so we’re all in the same boat, and that’s liberating.
There’s many more reasons than these for why I love the church, but these are the ones I was struck by afresh today. Why do I ever not feel like “going to church”? My church is my family – with them I can be honest. Another of Mike’s favourite phrases is “we’re not called to live the Christian life alone”. So praise God for his church!
Martin Luther on the Word of God
Posted at 12:23 PM
No greater mischief can happen to a Christian people, than to have God’s Word taken from them, or falsified, so that they no longer have it pure and clear. God grant we and our descendants be not witnesses of such a calamity.
When we have God’s Word pure and clear, then we think ourselves all right; we become negligent, and repose in a vain security; we no longer pay due heed, thinking it will always so remain; we do not watch and pray against the devil, who is ready to tear the Divine Word out of our hearts.
The Table-Talk of Martin Luther, Of God’s Word, XII-XIII (public domain)