Welcome to the Lent experience… it's not too late to join in... Each day for 40 days i will be posting a suggestion to give you an action or focus point or challenge for the day as we head towards Easter time and want to spend the time meaningfully by focusing more on who God is and what He did, learning to love people more deeply and slowing down from the busyness and caught-up-ness of [...]
Welcome to the Lent experience... Each day for 40 days i will be posting a suggestion to give you an action or focus point or challenge for the day as we head towards Easter time and want to spend the time meaningfully by focusing more on who God is and what He did, learning to love people more deeply and slowing down from the busyness and caught-up-ness of our day to day. If you are [...]
as i lie on my bed, i have an ash cross crudely drawn upon my forehead. i have never celebrated Lent before. and i don't intend to start now. at least i didn't. in fact last nite when our housemate Aaron announced that he was giving up coffee and liquor for Lent [just before having a tot of coffee liquer with us to see in his time of fasting] it was yet again for me [...]
so there has been a lot of discussion since Don Miller posted his two blogs suggesting that the traditional sunday church vibe is not for him and i responded with my piece titled 'Why you should stop going to church' which was not actually at all about encouraging people to stop going to church, but more trying to enlarge our definition of what church is about... you are the church so you don't go [...]
music played such a huge role in my visit back to South Africa that we have just returned from. the first was a gift within a gift. we were given the use of a car by two people [only one of whom i actually knew before the trip and hadn't been in contact with for about 15 years til a week before i posted a 'looking for a car' ad on Facebook] who decided that [...]
so today we fly back to americaland and i leave a changed man. but maybe not in the way you would expect... i don't feel like i have grown so much as i have regressed, but in a good way though. as in 'returned to former state' - or returning at least. in some Christian senses i guess we have been living the dream - 19 months at the Simple Way [you know, the mecca [...]
i refer to John 15.4 all the time: 'Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.' and i also love o use Psalm 46.10 which talks about being still and knowing that I [God] am God: 'He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I [...]
tbV and i have not really been in regular consistent church services for the last two years now and so it's been really refreshing to find one called Re:Generation that we both enjoy and love going to. in particular being a part of corporate worship has been so refreshing and since we haven't been around for a little while there are a bunch of new songs to discover which is great. one song in paricular [...]
i have not met Tim Hughes personally, but i was once in a room with him [and quite a large room at that] it was on a trip to visit my sister Sue and her family in a town called Rancho Cucamonga near LA which must have been 2006 or 2008 and i organised my ticket so i could stop over in London long enough to take the bus to visit some friends in Holland [...]
i feel like the previous few Easters have kind of passed me by with not too much impact - being the easily recognised dreadlock wearing Easter Bunny at the Simple Way is all i can remember and i'm not sure where i was the year before but in the middle of preparation to leave for the Simple Way and so life was a fair bit chaotic... the last Easter that comes to mind was when [...]