February 2013

According to Lifehacker, coffee

makes you clever
helps you burn fat
lowers the risk of diabetes, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s
keeps your liver in good nick
is full of nutrients

All o which explains how I’ve reached this peak of physical fitness!

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Our cross is already there, ready, from the very beginning; we need only take it up. But to keep us from believing that we must simply choose an arbitrary cross, or simply pick our suffering as we will, Jesus emphasizes that each of us has his or her own cross, ready, appointed, and appropriately measured [...]

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O GOD, what offering shall I give
To thee, the Lord of earth and skies?
My spirit, soul, and flesh receive,
A holy, living sacrifice;
Small as it is, ’tis all my store;
More shouldst thou have, if I had more.
Now then, my God, thou hast my soul,
No longer mine, but thine I am;
Guard thou thine own, possess it whole,
Cheer [...]

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I was very sorry to learn that the animator Bob Godfrey has died. In 1974 Mr Godfrey ran a kids’ tv programme, The Do-it-yourself Film Animation Show and subsequently published a similarly-titled book. Me and my friend Kev were greatly inspired, and spent a fair chunk of the later 1970s making daft short films on [...]

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Rev. Joey Reed is done with church growth
Maybe you mean “Growing in Depth.” Would that mean that people were learning to accept their flaws without glossing them over? Would that mean an outbreak of patience and kindness that only comes from realizing that we are all screwed up in one way or another, and God [...]

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Feb 22nd is Founder’s Day for scouts worldwide, being the birthday of Robert Baden Powell. There might well be a few scouting-related posts today. No promises!

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From the Huffington Post
Many years ago when I worked at Christianity Today magazine, I used to think that a clear sign that God favored evangelicals was our numerical strength and our growth rate. Surely that is why the mainline was dwindling and the conservative church was growing: We were right and they were … well, [...]

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The Government’s new Energy Bill must prioritise low carbon power, say five of Britain’s major Churches.
In a statement published in today’s Financial Times, the Baptist Union of Great Britain, Church of Scotland, Methodist Church, Quakers and United Reformed Church join other major organisations in calling on the Government to make Britain a low-carbon economy.
The [...]

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The internet has brought enormous advantages in communication. That’s so obvious, it’s hardly worth saying. We can talk to one another across the world in ways that would have been unimaginable even 25 years ago. In terms of speed and efficiency, communication between people has improved to a staggering degree. Through text message, email, blogs, [...]

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A change from Wesley today.
How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
Is laid for your faith in his excellent Word!
What more can he say than to you he hath said,
You, who to Jesus for refuge have fled?
In every condition, in sickness, in health;
In poverty’s vale, or abounding in wealth;
At home and abroad, on the [...]

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Let earth and heaven combine,
Angels and men agree,
To praise in songs divine
The incarnate Deity,
Our God contracted to a span,
Incomprehensibly made Man.
He laid His glory by,
He wrapped Him in our clay;
Unmarked by human eye,
The latent Godhead lay;
Infant of days He here became,
And bore the mild Immanuel’s Name.
Unsearchable the love
That hath the Saviour brought;
The grace is far [...]

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A good deal of my time is spent with the bereaved, time during which I have often felt helpless and useless, but also immensely privileged, deeply moved, and mysteriously sustained. Here I offer, tentatively, a personal Lenten meditation on grief and grieving.
Grief is tongue-tied –
its language, universal,
is silence and sighs, groans and gestures –
but [...]

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It is not my business to think about myself. My business is to think about God. It is for God to think about me.
One cannot imagine Francis of Assisi talking about rights.
The most important part of teaching is to teach what it is to know.
The intelligent person who is proud of his intelligence [...]

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