Finishing off my video blogs of the Gospel of Mark as i work through the last four chapters with thoughts and insights from each passage as I go: All men will hate me? Mark 13.1-13 Be ready, be very ready Mark 13.14-37 Jesus, perfume and space for the interruption Mark 14.1-11 Having your enemies round for some pizza Mark 14.12-26 why DID Jesus keep them around? Mark 14.27-42 Jesus heads to the garden and gets arrested [...]
How do you put a positive spin on the words, "All men will hate you because of Me"? Especially when they come from the mouth of Jesus [which makes them a little bit harder to ignore or explain away]. Perhaps that is why Mark 13.1-13 is not a particularly popular passage for those who don't specifically preach continuously through the Bible? The rest of it is End of the World stuff which generally is good [...]
DAY 8 Woke up to some really bad news this morning. A close friend had suffered one of the hugest losses imaginable. Task: Weep with someone who is weeping. If you don't know someone personally that is weeping, then pick up a newspaper or go and visit a website, because there is enough corporate weeping going on that you can join - the families and friends of the missing airplanes, the people in the various [...]
Just heard that today is National Grammar Day. Only problem is they were not too specific on which nation so I'm claiming it. One of my pettest peeves has to be when people use the word "loose" when they are intending to mean the word "lose" - that always makes me just want to loose it. [where "it" is a fire-breathing dragon that will rain down burning molten lava upon the unsuspecting person who butchered [...]
People like to say that my wife and I look young, but you should have seen us when we got married on April 20, 2001. There is a picture from our wedding day on our dining room wall, and it serves to bring joy and laughter to many visitors. We were young, fresh out of college and ready to begin our adult life together. We have changed and evolved over the past twelve years. I’d [...]
if you don't know who Terry Pratchett is, then you should probably administer yourself a slap to the head. come on... do it... there, you go. much better Terry Pratchett is a man who i have never met [altho he did email me once] who has kept me thoroughly entertained for, oh since about 1983 when his first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, was published and 40 novels later [as well as others not [...]
DAY 7 In Matthew 6, the disciples of Jesus ask Him to teach them to pray and He responds with what has become known as the Lord's Prayer. Task: Spend some minutes today focusing on this one line from the Lord's prayer Give us this day our daily bread, Think of the relationship implicit to this request: Trust Expectation Need Faithfulness Provision Father Abundance Hope Thankfulness Enough Take some moments to think about your life. [...]
If i were to ask you what the best job in the whole world was, i doubt if anyone would respond, "Working with Lego" simply because, how is that a job? But if i were to tell you that for the last two months i have lived with someone whose job is working with Lego, your response is very much likely to be, 'Wow, that's the best job in the world!' So Aaron and Sarah [...]
DAY 6 Task: Take a listen[s] to this song, 'I will be blessed' by Ben Howard and think about who the person it is singing about for you... and then find some time in this day to let them know just how much they mean to you. "I Will Be Blessed" [Ben Howard] Oh my ghost came by Said who do you love the most Who you wanna call before you dieOh my [...]
Ro is my wife tbV's sister and this is one of the most incredible encounters you may ever read about: A couple months before Christmas, Aaléyah and I had the following conversation on the way home from school one day… Aaléyah: It's Jesus' birthday soon. Me: Yes. At Christmas time it is His birthday party. Aaléyah: I need to get Him a birthday present. Me: Yeah. Good idea! You know what gift He would love [...]