Tag: postaday2011

What makes it sacred is greater

by Ben Clapton, posted in Archive, faith, Life

Woe to you, blind guides! You say, “If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.” You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred? You also say, “If anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gift on it, he is bound by his oath.” You blind men! Which is greater: the gift, or the altar which makes the gift sacred? Therefore, he who swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. And he who swears by the temple swears by it and by the one who dwells in it. And he who swears by heaven swears by God’s throne and by the one who sits on it.

Matthew 23:16-22 (NIV)

This passage comes in the middle of a passage titled in my bible “Seven Woes” and it reads as possibly the most scathing criticism about the pharisees and teachers of the law that comes out of Jesus’ mouth. The passage above got me, which was in my readings for today, thinking. It’s the Church that makes things holy. It’s the altar that makes it holy. It doesn’t really matter what you bring, by giving it to the Lord, he makes it holy.

How often would we hold back in our lives, because we’re not sure if it’s the right thing to do? When you listen to God, and you dedicate it to him, he will make it holy, and work with whatever you can bring. Remember that Jesus worked with as little as 5 loaves and 2 fish to feed five thousand, and 7 loaves and a few small fish to feed four thousand. Whatever you have, God will work with. All you need to do is give it to him$

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Don’t try so hard!

by Ben Clapton, posted in Archive, Life

I played a round of golf on Monday, as I had a morning off from work. The first couple of holes weren’t great, until I started telling myself not to try so hard.

See, when I tried hard, the extra power would put my technique all off, and my shots would either be really short, or a long way off target. But, when I allowed the club to do the work, shots were straighter. Yes, I lost some distance through the loss of power, but my shots were more consistent, and I was able to shoot some good scores.

How often do we try too hard in areas of our lives, only to have it not go as well as we expected? Don’t try too hard! Allow your body, and the tools you use, to do the work in the way they were intended. Yes, it might not be as big as it could be, but the results will be more consistent.

What in your life have you been trying too hard at?

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Sunday Set List – Feb 27, 2011

by Ben Clapton, posted in Archive, faith, Life, Music

Had our youth meeting on Sunday. This was the first Youth Meeting since taking over leadership of the band. Haven’t had much time to work the band as I’d like to, but I’m hoping over the course of this year, I can start to implement some good changes into the youth band. The first service was based upon Micah 6:8: “And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

Started with Blessed be your name. A song that we know well, and has an awesome message: “Every blessing you pour out I’ll turn back to praise.”

Then One Way – a song that we love to pump out, but haven’t done for a while. I love this because I can get away with some grungier effects on my guitar.

Then this beautiful song by Nathan Rowe from the Australian Southern Territory – Let Justice Roll. Very powerful lyrics here

I’ve fallen in love with Chris Tomlin’s Amazing Grace (My Chains are gone) – start with a powerful song, add a powerful chorus, and it’s brilliant.

We love The Stand, and perform it often. I’ve heard it go into a Hallelujah before, but it’s not quite the right setting for that, so we just do the Stand.

And then we finished off with One Way again.

All up, it was a great service. I’m looking forward to our next service in March, and looking forward to start challenging the band musically with slightly more difficult songs, and get us really working together as a band, while still preserving the fun, passion and energy that we have when we praise the Lord.

This post was part of the Sunday Set List posed by The Worship Community.com

What’s in a name?

by Ben Clapton, posted in Archive, Life

When it was time for Elizabeth to have her baby, she gave birth to a son. Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown her great mercy, and they shared her joy.

On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him after his father Zechariah, but his mother spoke up and said, “No! He is to be called John.”

They said to her, “There is no one among your relatives who has that name.”

Then they made signs to his father, to find out what he would like to name the child. He asked for a writing tablet, and to everyone’s astonishment he wrote, “His name is John.” Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue set free, and he began to speak, praising God. All the neighbors were filled with awe, and throughout the hill country of Judea people were talking about all these things. Everyone who heard this wondered about it, asking, “What then is this child going to be?” For the Lord’s hand was with him.

Names have always been very important, especially in Biblical times. Whenever you read of a child being born, it almost always describes the meaning of that name. In this story, there is no meaning placed on the name John, but we read that it was given to Zachariah when the angel of the Lord visited him. Behindthename.com lists the meaning as “YAHWEH is Gracious”

My Name, Benjamin, comes from the bible as well, the youngest son of Jacob. My name means “son of the south” or “Son of the right hand” – the right hand being the position of power next to the father. I don’t know if that meaning puts any meaning to my life, but there are many people who name children names based on their meaning.

What does your name mean, and does it reflect your life?



Post 200!

by Ben Clapton, posted in Archive, Life

Wow, I’ve made 200 posts. You’d think I’d write something like, super special or awesome for post number 200, but no, I’m saving that up for post 500. We’re on Day 60 of the Daily Post challenge, so we’ll hit 500 posts towards the end of the year. Boxing Day I believe.

But anyway, for post number 200, I’m going to ask: what’s been your favourite post on my blog?

You are invited

by Ben Clapton, posted in Archive, faith, Life

For many are invited, but few are chosen.

Matthew 22:14

Jesus shows in this parable (Parable of the Wedding Banquet, Matthew 22:1-14) the sorts of people who will get into heaven.

Then he said to his servants, “The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.”

Matthew 22:8-9

God invited the pharisees, but they weren’t willing to listen. So he invited everyone. But once invited, there are certain responsibilities. In the banquet, the one who didn’t put on the wedding clothes got the boot. Likewise, when we become followers of Jesus, we need to put on the clothes of Christ.

You’ve been invited to Christ’s banquet… What are you going to wear?

The discarded Capstone

by Ben Clapton, posted in Archive, faith, Life

He who falls on this stone  will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed.

Matthew 21:44 (NIV)

I’d never heard this verse before, but it really stood out today for me. Just before this, Jesus has quoted Psalm 118:22-23 and told the parable of the tenants. It’s obvious in the parable that the land owner is God, and the son is Jesus. Likewise the stone that the builders rejected is Jesus. He has become the cornerstone that is marvellous in our eyes.

The contrast in verse 44 stood out to me. “He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces” When you fall at the foot of the cross, when you come to Jesus, he will break you into pieces. He will break down the wall that we have constructed, and he will start to work in our lives through the broken pieces.

“But he on whom it falls will be crushed.” Jesus is warning the chief priests and the Pharisees that the only way to God is through him. Whoever doesn’t come to God through Jesus will be crushed by the cornerstone when Judgement comes.

So what do we do by knowing this? We go to the cross, allow ourselves to be broken and allow Jesus to build our lives into one that will produce fruit for the kingdom of heaven.

What I do when I can’t think of what to write

by Ben Clapton, posted in Archive, Life
Writer's Block... Why bother...
Image by Arnett Gill via Flickr

Writing a post every day can be pretty tough. When I can’t think of what to write on my blog, there’s a number of places that I go to get inspiration.

  1. Daily Post. The Daily Post issued the challenge to write a blog post every day of 2011. They support this by posting a prompt every day. I’ve written a few of these, and always link back to the original post. But sometimes they just aren’t something that inspires me to write.
  2. Plinky. Plinky does a similar thing (in fact, Daily Post takes a number of their prompts from Plinky). But because they’ve been doing it for longer, there’s a great backup of prompts for me to choose from. But again, they won’t always provide me the inspiration to put together a decent post – that is, I could answer the question, but it’s not always going to be a post that reads well.
  3. Other blogs. I have a number of other blogs that I keep track of in my Google Reader. I have sometimes found that through reading these posts, it will spark an idea as to what I might be able to write about either expanding on a blog, or in response to that blog post.
  4. News. Keeping track of current affairs will often give me an idea of something to write about. Whether it’s a response to an issue in the media or politics, or my thoughts on a particular news story, it’s all a potential blog post.
  5. Write a “What do I do when I can’t think of what to write” post. When all else fails, you get todays post. Hope you enjoyed!

My (crazy) Wish List

by Ben Clapton, posted in Archive, Life
Bugatti Veyron
Image via Wikipedia

Each year, for Christmas and for my birthday, I will be asked to write up a wish list to help people shop for presents. When I create a wish list, I always like to include some slightly more expensive presents that I’m sure no-one will get for me. The reason I do this is because I think that it’s good to wish for such stuff – firstly if someone gets it for you, then awesome, but it also means that you won’t know exactly what you’re going to get. There’s always that bit of a surprise. However, there are a lot of things out there that I’d love to put on the wish list but are even further above the price range that it would be just silly. So I thought today I’d list 5 things I’d really love to have on my wish list, but are stupidly expensive.

  1. The Optimus Maximus Keyboard – US$1,599 (thinkgeek.com)
    This is an awesome keyboard that takes customising to the max. Each key has an OLED screen that you can program to change depending on what you’re doing. Working in Photoshop? Each key can show the shortcuts. Playing a game? It can show animated GIF’s to show what macro is assigned to it. I would most likely program the keyboard shortcuts for Sibelius (which would be most awesome). Bit expensive, but if I was working on these sorts of programs often, it would be totally worth it.
  2. Maton Guitars – EM100 Messiah andBB2100 JH Josh Homme Queens of the Stone Age Signature – $8198 (The Rock Inn and Acoustic Inn)
    I’ve loved Maton guitars for a while, and would love to get a “Maton Set” of an acoustic and an electric. Would be expensive to get these two – the most expensive at The Rock Inn, but the tone would be worth every penny.
  3. Star Trek: The Next Generation Complete Series – US$310.99 (Amazon.com)
    I love Star Trek, and The Next Generation is my favourite series. While this one is slightly possible, as I will most likely buy the single series over time, I’m putting this up here because the complete box set is something that I would never expect anyone to buy for me.
  4. JonPaul Maestro Carbon Fibre Bow – $3850
    Carbon Fibre bows are the future of violin bows. With a dwindling supply of Pernambuco making it ever more expensive to make new pernambuco bows, carbon fibre has turned out to be a cost effective method of making really fine bows. This Maestro bow would perform to a similar standard of a $8,000-10,000 bow.
  5. Bugatti Veyron 16.4 – Price: a lot.
    I was just going to put a car, but seeing as it’s my crazy list, I may as well put the craziest of all cars. The Bugatti Veyron, the worlds most powerful car, offering 1,001 horsepower. It has a top speed of 407km/h. My memory puts the cost at over $1,000,000. If you’re dreaming big, you can’t get much bigger.

So that’s my crazy wish list. What’s yours?

The death of multiculturalism

by Ben Clapton, posted in Archive, Life
Julia Gillard
Image via Wikipedia

Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, finally bowed to the pressure from Talk Back radio shock jocks, and their outraged listeners and callers, and declared that multiculturalism was dead, and all immigrants were to return to their home country. There was much rejoicing in the streets. Continue reading “The death of multiculturalism” →