To Mr Drum,
Continue reading “Letter to Mr Damian Drum, Federal Member for Murray”
As has been my tradition, every sermon that I preach will be posted here. This sermon, Listen to the voice of the Shepherd, was given at The Salvation Army Rochester on Sunday 17 April, 2016. The Reading was John 10:22-30.
A guy was walking down Bourke Street, the hustle and bustle of everyone heading off to their jobs, trams going all over the place, cars beeping their horns, noise everywhere. And all of a sudden, a young guy taps him on the shoulder. The young guy says to guy, “Hey, can you hear that cricket?” And with an incredulous look, the guy says “Seriously? In amongst all this noise, you’re saying that you can hear the sound of a cricket?” So he stopped, looked at the guy, and dropped a coin onto the pavement. It was as if the whole street when suddenly quiet, as a number of people looked down to see where the coin was. The young guy said “I guess we hear what we want to hear”. Continue reading “Listen to the voice of the shepherd”
In Australia, Asylum Seekers has been a major, divisive issue for a long time. Just recently, following a High Court appeal, Churches around Australia are offering sancturary to Asylum Seekers living in the community, offering them protection from being deported to the regional processing centres in Nauru and Manus Island (Papua New Guinea). In response, I wrote this prayer, which is able to be used in congregations and in personal prayers, as need be. (For my own congregational use, I add a prayer from The Worship Sourcebook, but can’t reproduce it here. Second edition, pg 146. 4.3.27 if you have the book and wish to use it.)
You might also like to use this song alongside the modern hymn, Beauty for Brokenness (God of the Poor) (998 in the new Salvation Army Songbook). Continue reading “Prayer for Asylum Seekers”
Our God, Our God,
we have hit a low point in our nation.
In our fear, we have put people in situations
where they have faced the very thing they were fleeing.
In our fear, we have caused people to be hurt, we have caused people to die
and blamed it on the very people who were hurt.
In our fear, we will try to explain it away,
they came here the wrong way, they shouldn’t have protested
they brought it on themselves.
Lord God, shine a light on our misdeeds.
Help us to see that our actions born out of fear
feed only that fear, and do not offer the protection that only you can give.
Father God, protect those who are in need of protection.
Heal their injuries, and keep them safe from further attacks.
Loving God, accept us with all our frailties,
the mistakes that we have made
the mistreatment that we have endorsed
and the times when we stayed silent when we should have had a voice
to speak for those who had no voice.
Blessed are you, O God, who accepts us all
Praise be to the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost
Who is above all, in all, and through all things. Amen.
This prayer of lament was written by Ben Clapton, Salvation Army Officer, musician and activist, in response to the reports of violence at Manus Island. I release this to be used in any manner, as long as the entire text remains in one unit, and a reference to this post is included.
I’ve been feeling a lot of hurt over the reports coming out from Manus Island. Last year, at this time, I was over on Manus Island. While it is my understanding that the families are no longer on the Island, I believe that many of the men that I met are still there. I don’t know if they’re ok, or whether they’re part of those who have been injured – and I’ll probably never know. It pains me that our government put these people here, and have not done enough to fully protect them, in the name of protecting us. I know that I am, at times, guilty of not speaking up, feeling tired and not knowing whether my voice really adds anything. This fight has gone on for far too long. My prayer is that this tragic event, which I wish had never happened, might draw us as a nation into focus, and realise that our actions and the path we headed down was wrong, and that we would repent of our actions as a nation, and set up a process to assess the claims of asylum in a timely and humane manner.
A couple of nights ago, I attended an event that looked at the issue of asylum seekers, and where to now. The event was very well attended – they were expecting about 30 people, but instead had about 100.
One of the big things I took out of this was an understanding of the two main issues in asylum seeker policy – that of fairness, and of standards.
Continue reading “What now for asylum seekers?”
I was recently on an orchestral tour which ended in tragedy, with the death of a tour member and the hospitalisation of another. I’m not going to go into details, but I’d like to share some thoughts.
We were called down to the lobby around 6.40am, being told an accident had occurred. After we were told the news, we were told to call our parents to let them know we were ok, as names had not been released. At that point, I realised that the only thing I could do was pray. I had a quick prayer in the lobby, then headed up to my room to call my parents and fiancee. I then sent a message to a number of people in Perth, asking them to pray. I then prayed myself.
For about half an hour, I prayed forhealing for the boy still in hospital, I prayed for the boys families, I prayed for everyone on tour. Over the course of the day, I felt God’s arm around me continuously, feeling strongly his presence with each prayer sent his way from Perth.
I would pray often through that day, each time feeling a strong sense of peace through Christ.
It cemented in my mind that prayer works. Whether petitioning for healing, or other concerns, or just entering into communion with God, prayer can have incredile effects – sometimes what we want, sometimes what we need, sometimes an answer in a different form.
I will continue praying about this event, and would ask that you do as well.
I hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas, remembering the real reason for the season – Christ was born, who came to die for our sins so that we can have a full relationship with God.
I’ve recently been stressing over a major decision that I will share shortly. I know the decision is the right one, it’s just how I do it – I want it to be perfect. I’ve received advice from a large number of people, often conflicting opinions, and that made me double guess myself, made me start to rethink and wonder whether the decision was the right one.
On my way to work today I discovered/realised in my thoughts that what others think doesn’t mater. Whatever I do, however I do it, will be perfect for that occasion. And while we might consider things that might have gone better, we can’t change the past, and if we accept that it was perfect as it was, then it is much better for our mental health.
For example, I switched schools at the end of year 10, receiving a music scholarship to another school. I didn’t exactly fit in there, was teased, and went through feelings that, if they had been diagnosed, would be very close to depression. There have been times where I wished I hadn’t changed schools, that I had stayed and received 1-on-1 TEE music Tuition. However, looking back now, if I had a chance to do things over again, to do things differently – I wouldn’t. While I had that really tough time in year 11 and 12, it helped me discover things about myself that have made me who I am today. Had I not discovered those things then, I might still be searching for them today.
So I will go with what I think is the way to do it, and it will be the right way for that time. God will help me out, and through him, anything is possible.
I voted today in ABC Classic FM’s Classic 100 Symphonies. Put my three votes in for Beethoven Symphony No. 5, Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique and Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 6 “Pathetique”. I was very glad that I could pick 3 symphonies, instead of just one, as that would’ve been a lot harder.
Will be interesting to see how the order goes. I have a feeling Beethoven 5 will be fairly high, as most people will know it, but we’ll see.
http://www.abc.net.au/classic/classic100/ <- go vote.
Regulars will notice that I have another new blog design for my site. This is due to my previous hosting arrangements coming to an end and me being required to find new hosting. In the end I decided to go with wordpress.com, as I’ve always used wordpress blogs, and it is far cheaper and more reliable than anything else on the market.
I haven’t decided to go with the custom css package atm, so am stuck with the themes available – but they seem really good, and a lot less work for me. So it’s all good 🙂
Design might change over the next little while as I figure out what’s best for this site, and what direction I’m going to take it in. But for the mean time, enjoy.
Today we look at perhaps the world’s first virtuoso. His skills on the violin brought many to think that he had conspired with the devil to achieve such feats. His compositions today are still some of the hardest ever written for the violin, and require great technical mastery of the instrument. Niccolo Paganini, born on this day in 1782. Continue reading “On This Day… October 27”
Ben Clapton 