What if only some of it matters? You decide you want to try your hand at planting veggies so you prepare a patch in the garden behind your house and you plant four sets of seeds. A professional gardening expert comes over for a meal and you take them out back to show them what you've done. After looking at the setup they tell you that three quarters of your plants are destined to fail. [...]
This post is going to be a collection of scattered thoughts largely inspired by a Keegan Davids sermon last night [so attribute all wisdom nuggets to him]. He managed to put a lot of good words on some of the things i think and feel and know... Disciples over Converts "Discipleship has collective implications for us and people" - Sho, this thought was too deep and could be unpacked for days. One of the biggest problems [...]
Let there be peace! Most weeks when life is not too crazy i send out an email message called 'Thort For The Week'. Basically a sermon/message/thought for the week that relates to God and following Jesus or wrestling with some aspect of faith. This week i asked my friend Ashley Visagie if i could use a Facebook status he wrote as my thort and he said yes... but when i looked up the passage he had [...]
On Saturday 22 April, 2017, a million South Africans met in Bloemfontein to pray for South Africa. Or three hundred thousand. Or closer to 2 million. Depending who you ask. People of all races, ages and genders. Or majority white afrikaans middle class people. Again, difficult to say. Let's get this straight from the start - this is not a popularity piece - writing on another such polarized/polarising event in South Africa is very likely [...]
"If my people pray... then I will hear from heaven and forgive their sins and heal their land." [2 Chronicles 7.14 beginning and end] Wow. This feels a little bit like a dejavu flashback or something. From two weeks ago when the question was to march or not to march, which i wrote about here. Afterwards i wrote a comparison piece looking at different marches over here. As i've done my best to navigate the [...]
i have just finished reading Nadia Bolz-Weber's second book, Accidental Saints: Finding God in all the Wrong People and i highly recommend it to everyone. Especially people who are not Christian. i really think this is a book you might enjoy because of the heart, compassion and just basic realness of this lady. The first part i shared dealt with the question of Who Pastors the Bishop? and this extract is from a chapter titled, 'Mary, [...]
i am busy reading Nadia Bolz-Weber's Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People and being completely inspired by it. For those of you who don't know her, Nadia is the tattoo-covered ex-addict F-bombing Lutheran pastor who wrote the amazing Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint [do yourself a favour!] and she is back with this, her second book. Short chapters that really kick you in the chops and it's not [...]
In part I i shared some thoughts from The Justice Conference from René August, Sivuyile Kotela and Craig Stewart and here are some other notes and thoughts i was able to take down: Afrika Mhlope had this to say: We have to break this entrenched idea that this is white man's religion. We've got a lot of work to do. He also encouraged us to check out the Black pain White Guilt video on you Tube. There is [...]
i am busy reading [and really enjoying] Leonard Sweet's 'The Bad Habits of Jesus'. People who know me well, will get that one of the reasons i am really enjoying it is because it is not a wade - the words are straightforward and simple even if the concepts are not. But today, when i've been feeling completely in a funk and when i was in desperate need of some inspiration and belief, i read [...]
i am busy reading Leonard Sweet's book, 'The Bad Habits of Jesus: Showing us the way to live right in a world gone wrong'. It has a very different way of looking at Jesus in terms of picking up some things that might be seen as bad habits - He spat, He procrastinated, He was constantly disappearing, He offended people, He hung out with bad people and so on - and showing how they point [...]
