If you don't understand Dutch

If you don't understand Dutch, this shouldn't be funny. But somehow it is:

Magical funk

Expialidocious. Strangely haunting. Reminds me of Philip Glass.

Thanks to that master of cool, David Ould.

The Silence of the Blog

Things will be quiet on blog for a bit more than a month. I've got a staff conference next week and then off to Sweden for my sister's wedding celebration! Computer access will be restricted.

Sorry about that faithful readers, and see you towards the end of July.

Your news photos retouched

A top ten of digitally doctored photos.

Thanks Roughth.

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead -
For goodness' sake, don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat.
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and choose,
And cork and work, and card and ward,
And font and front, and word and sword,
And do and go, and thwart and cart -
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd mastered it when I was five!

Keep praying!

So, persevering in prayer is an essential characteristic of prayer. It shows, not only that we really desire what we are asking for, but that we also believe that God will answer.

Broughton Knox makes the point, with examples, in today's Sola Panel post.

OFFENDETH

If this counted as a word in the game Lexulous (the facebook ripoff of Scrabble) I would have scored 266 points just now.

If thy lexulous game offendeth thee, pluck it out.

That'th what I saith,anyway.

Thuffering thuccotash!

Farewelling the cat

We've owned Grover, the daughter of Rover since 1991. She moved with us from Brunswick to Carlton, back to Brunswick, and then in 1999 made the big trip north to Sydney.

This morning we came out and our cat, who was once medium sized and quick witted but in the last few years has become as skinny as a skinny thing, and arthritic. This morning she was breathing heavily and had suddenly lost the use of her back legs.

The girls and I gathered to say goodbye on the veranda and Fiona has just driven off to the vet with her.

Goodbye Grover.

Psalm 68:1

God shall arise, his enemies shall be scattered; and those who hate him shall flee before him.

If that is so, then it makes sense to make peace with him.

The swine has no clothes

Took Ruby to see Dr Big Trev yesterday. He hasn't seen any patients with swine flu. Well he wouldn't, would he, seeing as how this is NSW.

But it's pretty clear that this is not a major pandemic of the sort that kills people. In fact, it's been pretty clear for quite a while now, when you look at the figures for Mexico where it all started.

This is good, but has involved incredible amounts of expense in the process. Imagine if that effort had gone into helping fight some of the third world diseases that actually kill people.

Bonhoeffer on psychologists (and the like)

Found a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer on theologica which happens to express some of the problem with getting worked up about sociological distinctions like Gen X/Gen Y and the like. I already linked it on the Sola Panel but I'm rescuing it from comment oblivion by reproducing it here:

The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus.

The greatest psychological insight, ability, and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is.

Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of man. And so it does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. Only the Christian knows this.

-Bonhoeffer. Click on the Theologica link for the extended quote and the reference.

Got two tickets to ACDC

So Fi and me
We get to see
ACDC
but not for free.

Don't go to Moore College to become a theologian

There are times when it's good to get straight to the point. Here, Andrew Barry says that it's a gracious work of God to turn someone into a theologian, and describes how it happens. Short and to the point.

Trinity in Creation

I've had some thoughts about the Trinity on the Sola Panel, here.

Trying to work out some of the connections between John 1 and Genesis 1, and there are a lot.

When I was on horseback

Speaking of Cork...

when i was on horseback wasn't i pretty.
when i was on horseback wasn't i gay.
wasn't i pretty when i entered cork city.
and met with my downfall on the fourteenth of may.

six jolly soldiers to carry my coffin.
six jolly soldiers to march by my side.
it's six jolly soldiers take a bunch of red roses.
then for to smell them as we go along.

beat the drum slowly and play the pipes only.
play up the dead-march as we go along.
and bring me to tipperary and lay me down easy.
i am a young soldier that never done wrong.

when i was on horseback wasn't i pretty.
when i was on horseback wasn't i gay.
wasn't i pretty when i entered cork city.
and met with my downfall on the fourteenth of may.

-Steeleye Span.

If you've never heard Maddy Pryor, or especially if you have, do yourself a favour and click on the YouTube link.

Mournful!

Diamantina Drover

For the rain never falls on the dusty Diamantina
And a drover finds it hard to change his mind
For the years have surely gone
Like the drays from Old Cork Station
And I won't be back till the drovin's done

-Redgum.

Why trust God?

I can trust God because

he sent his Son to die, and in the Bible it shows how lots of people trusted him and he didn't let them down.

-Matilda Cheng

As it happens

What's the role of providence in the life of the Christian?

"As it happens, my mum was at EQUIP too."

Nicole talks about it.

Leaf blowers

They'd have to be the dumbest invention wouldn't they? I walked past a guy at school this morning who had one going at full bore (and that is the only way they can go). I felt like grabbing a broom and showing him how it was done more efficiently, more effectively, and MORE QUIETLY.

"Help us to repent"

That was one of the prayers that we prayed in church, and I said a hearty internalized 'Amen' as well (being Anglican, I don't like loud noises).

But I also thought that Cranmer (author of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer), had he been rostered on for prayers at our church, would more likely have said "Cause us to repent."

More Cranmerian, more Calvinist, and ultimately more biblical.

1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

-Ephesians 2: 1-7 .

My book nearly got reviewed

by Tim Challies, who does a very good job of not reviewing it here. It's one of the nicest non-reviews I've ever seen, so I thought I would not mention it in this place.

Move along, nothing to see here.

Reformed Charismatics

Phillip Jensen cuts to the chase:

“The Reformed system of belief and the Charismatic system of belief are incompatible.”

That's at about the 10 minute point of this half-hour video.

Fifi and the girls really like this

It's Lille by Lisa Hannigan. Beautiful and evocative.

Our choir got reviewed

In the SMH and The Australian.

From the Australian:

William Walton's oratorio Belshazzar's Feast (1931) was the final work. It was electrifying. Thrillingly fast tempos, biting syncopated rhythms and knife-edge precision generated sizzling energy and bold drama that celebrated the work's pagan savagery and manic wildness. By contrast, the performers brought sinuous shape and expressive intensity to the passages of pungent lyricism.

Both nice reviews, though both completely miss the theological point in a fairly major way!

The concerts themselves (2 nights) were an absolute blast, and Vladimir Ashkenazy is without a doubt da man. Not to mention that the current choir master, Brett Weymark, has really lifted the Sydney Philharmonia to a very high level.

"Happy is he who taketh your children and dashes their heads against a stone"

-Ps 137, and a part of the text we sang.

Christian agnostic

Lynette Spicer from our church got a letter in today's SMH:

To believe or not to believe

I'm not sure how anyone can claim to be a "Christian agnostic" ("Believe it or not, the bishop's an agnostic", May 20). It makes as much sense as calling a colour "ashen red" or a size "gigantically small". The words are incongruous. An agnostic believes God is unknowable, whereas a Christian believes God has made himself known in the person of Jesus. Bishop Holloway has a choice to make.

Lynette Spicer, Telopea

Yeah!

At the end of rehearsal

At the end of rehearsal for our choir a man stood up in front of everyone and proposed marriage to his girlfriend. He'd met her in choir and had chosen that moment to do it, on the stage of the Sydney Opera House concert theatre.

She wasn't expecting it at all.

Sixth sense

An amazing demonstration of technology that is with us right now. Use your hand as a calculator and your wrist as a watch, among other things.

A new super-duper search-and-calculate engine

It's called wolfram alpha, and there's an article by Conrad Walters in today's SMH.

It's the 500th anniversary of John Calvin, so here's the result I got when I 'wolframmed' him.

And here's the result when I wolframmed my exact birthday.

Here, intriguingly, is what I got by wolframming "10% of 365 days".

Sydney rainfall.

Sydney.

One day, this could turn out useful.

Wordy eloquence

Be deeply suspicious of it.

In this Pyromaniacs post, Charles Spurgeon compares eloqence to the tinkly bells on some horses, nice for some but a useless substitute for corn or hay.

Phillip Jensen

I've noticed in the last couple of weeks that quite a number of my bloggy friends have been linking to phillipjensen.com.

If you haven't already, make sure to bookmark this one or add it to your rss feed, as it is now being constantly updated. It is a treasure trove of material old and new dating back over many years.

Thanks Phillip, and Phillip's friends, for ministering to us in this way. God has used you mightily over the last 30+ years and it is wonderful to see this material being made far more widely available.

Only, please don't be tempted to broadcast yourself weekly onto video screens in Seattle. One bad idea doesn't deserve another ;-)