I’ve been reading my bible again, and going through the book of Job. I’d gone into this book with the assumption of knowing what happens. Job, an upstanding and outstanding man of God, is tested by God and Satan, when Satan causes a whole heap of bad stuff to happen to him. Job goes on a kind of “Woe is me, woe is this, woe is that” spiel for a while, and eventually God appears and explains what happened. Probably not quite right, but that was my understanding of it, not having read the book before. Continue reading “God Forgets”
Category: Archive
Count Your Blessings
At the end of a Songsters rehearsal last night, I was asked from a musical perspective what I think of the Songsters. The Songsters is the Salvation Army choir, and it’s very different to any choir I’ve sung in before. However, there is a wealth of music there that fulfills me Musically, Lyrically and Spiritually. Continue reading “Count Your Blessings”
Sherlock
I’ve just finished watching an episode of Sherlock – the new series where the characters and world of Sherlock Holmes is thrust into the 21st century. I thought it was very good, a worthy adaptation, that will hopefully bring the stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to a new audience.
I’m not particularly familiar with his stories, knowing only a few salient details that was picked up in this new series.
Firstly, the casting in this new series is excellent. Holmes is borderline genius/neurotic, which differs to the original where Holmes was slightly more gentlemanly. Secondly, in the episode I watched, “The Great Game” his violin playing which makes a brief appearance is shockingly bad. In the original stories, Holmes was a fine amateur player, who enjoyed attending concerts of Sarasate when available.
The character Watson has also undertaken an update, becoming Holmes’ blogger, a nice touch. He gets frustrated with Holmes’ lack of knowledge about basic things such as the solar system, yet is astounded about how he can connect the minutest of details.
The episode finished with a confrontation with Professor Moriarty, who had a strangely Irish lilt to his accent, and I couldn’t help thinking he was a crazed yet calm Irish bomber – though that could have something to do with the episode featuring a lot of bombs. The episode finished on the mother of all cliff-hangers – guns focussed on Holmes and Watson, Holmes’ gun focussed on an explosive vest at the feet of Moriarty. And some how, I don’t think I’m ever going to find out how they all got out of there alive.
I’ve got to wait until next year for the next episode, but the DVD is available next week, if it has more episodes, I might just buy it.
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Related Articles
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- TV Review: Masterpiece Mystery, “Sherlock” (popdose.com)
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Crucified By Email (via Mark Sayers)
I found this blog while looking at blogs for work (what a wonderful part of my job) and I thought it was fantastic. It’s a theme that has been hashed out in different formats through different people at different times and basically proposes the question: Would Jesus fit in at our church? Would he be the type of person to fit in at any church? Are church structures too strict sometimes and do we lose our perspective?
When I read this out at my bible study tonight, someone else got me thinking on this. God is too vast, and too immeasurable, too infinite to fit into our churches. He is also someone who judges what the audience wants, what they desire, and gives them what they truly needs. Like in this post, He gets sent to the youth church, where the pastor thinks he’ll fit in – and then changes and gives them something different. Then sent somewhere else based on this latest change, and he changes once again. Each time, he upsets many people, and leaves many people asking questions. All the time, he affects people’s lives, often in ways they do not expect.
Do our churches need to look past our traditions (which are often done because someone once did it for a certain reason, and a church did it ever after), and start looking at what our church – and more importantly, our communities – truly needs?
via Mark Sayers
I say Tomato, you say Potato
Following a graphic (and controversial) sermon on Sunday, I was challenged to find out a bit more about Abortion – a controversial subject, for anyone, let alone Christians. I won’t get into it here, because that’s not what I want to write about. However, I was amused to find these two News articles on a recent study into public opinion on abortions. Continue reading “I say Tomato, you say Potato”
Esther, prayer and planning
I’ve been reading through the book of Esther just recently, and it’s a fantastic book. It tells the story of Queen Esther, an exiled Jew who was made queen by King Xerxes. It came to a time when Haman, an Agathite that the King had elevated, took exception to Esther’s uncle, Mordecai, because he refused to bow down in Haman’s presence. So incensed was Haman that he decreed, via the King that all of the Jews were to be destroyed, killed and annihilated on a certain date. Continue reading “Esther, prayer and planning”
Division of Labour
Tonight, I went to an Emmaus gathering where the special guest was Bill Harper, National Lay Director of Chrysalis and Emmaus in Australia. He had lots of interesting things to say, but one that particularly caught my mind was one where he talked about the split within Emmaus, and within the Church at large. Continue reading “Division of Labour”
Confession
In my morning coffee time, I follow the form ACTS – Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication – in my prayers. This morning, I was in the confession part of the form, and I used the group confession that is used in the Liturgy of the Anglican Church. Continue reading “Confession”
Coffee with God
I went to Chrysalis over the weekend – it’s a three-day non-denominational Christian retreat for young adults that I’ve been involved with for a number of years. At the end of the weekend, I was exposed to an idea that I absolutely love – having Coffee with God. Continue reading “Coffee with God”
7 Links
I was going through my Google Reader account, clearing out feeds that I no longer read, and I came across a post from ProBlogger that I thought would be a good starter for a post. It’s called 7 links, and you’re asked to provide 7 links to set themes. So here are my links.
- Your First Post – My first post on here is one titled The Importance of Something Different. It talks about the importance of having a passion away from your field of work, to allow your mind to have a break.
- Post you enjoyed writing the most – I think this would be The On this Day… series of posts, which highlighted an important musical event that happened on that day, for example this post on Belgian Composer Gossec
- A post which had a great discussion – The post which has had the most comments is my Pachelbel’s Canon arrangement, which I’m highlighting below, and they are mostly comments thanking me for the arrangement. So instead, the one in which I had great discussion was A Christian Gamer? which had a couple of really good quality comments on the post.
- A post on someone else’s blog that you wish you’d written – How to walk through Steel-Enforced walls. A great post that highlights some of the struggles we face every day. We have our own steel-enforced walls, and we have to find ways to walk through them.
- A post with a title you’re proud of – “Shoot-em-ups” don’t kill people. People keep claiming that First Person Shooters are games that mass-murderers are likely to play, but that’s a long leap of logic. It’s not the games, it’s other issues in their lives. Don’t blame the games.
- A post that you wish more people had read – Has Twitter decreased our internet safety. I believe that URL shorteners are a huge security problem that hasn’t fully been looked at. Being able to look at the URL in a status bar is a big part of judging the safety of the link. I think more url services need to add something like the TinyURL preview function, or have Internet Browsers filter shortened URL’s to show the URL they are redirecting to.
- Your most visited post ever – my arrangement of Pachelbel’s Canon for Solo Violin is by far and away my most popular post, having had over 1700 views since I uploaded it, at an average of 108 views per month. I’m very pleased with this arrangement, and glad that so many violinists have been able to get use of it in a variety of situations all across the world.
There we go, 7 links to 7 posts. If you haven’t read them, have a read, there’s some great posts (if I do say so myself.
Ben Clapton 