God's gift

"God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." 

John 3v16

The Reichenbach Fall

I've been watching the BBC series Sherlock recently.

The final episode of season 2 is called The Reichenbach Fall. 

Sherlock's arch-nemesis Jim Moriarty - a fantastically insane criminal mastermind - wants revenge. He has hitmen in place to kill Sherlock's friends. Sherlock can only save them if he himself dies - and not only dies, but dies in disgrace, with everyone thinking he's a fraud.

 

It made me think of these lines from a song:

"To pay for our salvation

He let a bunch of fools portray him as a criminal"

~ from Good Company by Ross King

Jesus didn't just die - he died in disgrace. Bad enough to be tortured to death, but so much worse to do so while being misrepresented, mocked, doubted even by his friends.

He could have come down from the cross like they goaded him to do. He could have asked his father to send 12 legions of angels to rescue him. He could have vindicated himself.

"He was despised and rejected by mankind, 

a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. 

Like one from whom people hide their faces 

he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. 

Surely he took up our pain 

and bore our suffering, 

yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. 

But he was pierced for our transgressions, 

he was crushed for our iniquities; 

the punishment that brought us peace was on him, 

and by his wounds we are healed."

Isaiah 53v3–5

How to make music for a horror movie

Film children dancing, but try out the 'slow motion' setting on your camera.

(I threw lots of filters on afterwards, to anonymise the children in the video - and now it looks like ghosts dancing, which is very appropriate)

I think the tune was actually Santa Claus is coming to town.

'Condensed' soup (plus recipe)

It's really difficult to get Campbell's condensed soup just now, which is not ideal if you have a recipe that needs it. But I thought of an idea - and it works!

If you mix powdered soup up with half the quantity of water, it gives you a pretty good condensed soup consistency. I actually preferred the texture. (I think I would sieve the croutons out in future, though - they got rather soggy waiting for the soup to be used!)

And here's the recipe - sausage pasta.

You will need:

• Square sausage. I used 4 for 3 people (260g), and could easily have got away with less.
• Frozen spinach. 3 lumps per person.
• Pasta. Whatever you would normally use - I use a small handful each.
• Condensed mushroom soup. One tin for 3 or 4 people. Or I used 3 packs of cup-a-soup, diluted with half the water.

What to do:

1. Shred the sausage with a couple of forks into small lumps.
2. Put in a large frying pan on medium heat  (no oil needed if it's non-stick). Stir from time to time until cooked.
3. Meanwhile, cook the pasta.
4. Also meanwhile, defrost the spinach in the microwave.
5. When sausage is done, add spinach and stir through.
6. When pasta is done, add to mixture (I use a slotted spoon, but if you drain it, make sure to reserve some of the cooking water).
7. Stir in soup.
8. Add a little pasta water to bind it and get the sauce to the consistency you want.
9. Eat!

I don't think I'm the strange one

I can usually tell if someone other than me has been hoovering in church. 

They will often put George back in the cupboard in the correct place, but facing into the corner - as if he's in disgrace 😟

I always put him facing outward, so he can see.

 

Doesn't he look happy?

A loooooooooong time ago

I was explaining to the children how God has always existed. 

He was there 100 years ago... A thousand years ago... A million... A billion... A trillion...

5 year old: an octillion

7 year old: a googolplex,*

Wasn't expecting that 😆

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*Fortunately I did know this was a real number! Didn't know how big, so I've just looked it up. It's 10¹⁰¹⁰⁰, which means that the mass of the books needed to write the number down would be many times the mass of the visible universe. Fairly large, then.

Analogies are not (necessarily) heresy

Wrote this aaaages ago - finally got round to finishing and posting.

From time to time, people claim that this analogy or that analogy of the Trinity gives the wrong idea of God, or is even heretical. I'm sure that's sometimes true. But sometimes I think it's just that the people criticising it are trying to make an analogy do more than it's meant to.

For example, take the triangle. People say it's a bad way to explain the Trinity because each member of the Trinity is fully God, whereas each side of a triangle is not a triangle. But, I don't think it's bad, just - like all analogies - incomplete. It would only be a bad analogy if you were saying that a triangle says everything that's to be said about how the Trinity relates - and that's not how analogies work.

Craft we made, based on these instructions.

 

I have used the triangle analogy in Sunday school. I'm teaching people who may not yet even know that Jesus is God. So all the analogy is meant to say is that:

• The trinity is a thing.
• There is one God, made of three people, (who are all God).
• They are the Father, the Son (Jesus) and the Holy Spirit.

It's true in what it intends to teach - it's not the last word on the subject.

Actually, it's the same with the analogies of Jesus which are used in the Bible. He is variously described as our father, future husband, brother, master, shepherd, a lamb, a vine, a gate, bread, water, light... If you took any of those to extremes you could easily make a heresy. And some of them are mutually contradictory.

 

But the point is that Jesus - who is far more than we could ever understand - is a little bit like all those things (and the context usually makes it clear in what way).

Here's a quote:

We have to think about Christ using ideas and images, but if we put our trust in these symbols, rather than in the One they symbolize, we will be making a big mistake. [...] By using more than one image for God, we remind ourselves that any image we use is only temporary; it must be corrected and relieved by other images. These images serve our minds; they do not save our souls. A fork is not food.

~Michael Ward, The Narnia Code

Unusual menu item

A good reminder

"Nothing is wasted

Nothing is wasted

In the hands of our redeemer

Nothing is wasted"

~Jason Gray

Clever business card

Came across this old business card for a restaurant.

Tasty leftovers

Leftover cabbage, fried up with bacon. A few splashes of soy sauce. On granary bread. 

Wasn't sure what it would be like, but definitely worth repeating.

[Edit: also works with broccoli]

Pillars

I liked this quote about pillars in the Bible - both literal stone monuments, and the pillar of fire & cloud that the Israelites followed in the desert.

Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” 1 Samuel 7:12

"In your own life, there are, no doubt, “pillars” that point you backward, reminding you of what God has done before and what he can do again. You need that. Those are reassuring and give us the confidence to keep walking. 

By day the Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light  Exodus 13:21

"The pillar of fire, though, is scary. It points you onward, and, like your ancestors in their journey, it gives you only enough light to see just ahead. You will see that the light goes out into the wilderness with you, but often these times will feel to you confusing and disorienting. You will feel lost. Only in retrospect, if at all, will you see what God was doing. The temptation at the moment, though, will be to pitch the tent in place and look to the pillar of memory rather than to follow the pillar of glory. The light is there, though; the cloud is overhead. Moreover, this pillar of glory is not really a “thing,” but a person. Where it is pointing you to is the final New Jerusalem, which has “no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Rev. 21:23). The Lamb is the Light. The pillar of fire and cloud still leads on."

~Russell Moore  

Makeup

Are women fortunate because, unlike men, they can cover up their flaws with makeup? 

Or are men fortunate because, unlike women, they are not expected to have no flaws?

Non sequiturs

First day back at Sunday School, colouring pictures about 'B is for Bible', when the child next to me suddenly asks  - "Did you know that pirates still exist?"

A few minutes later he starts talking about the noise turkeys make, and instead of colouring his picture, fills in all the blank space around it with pictures of two turkeys, a nest, a baby turkey and eggs.

I'm going to enjoy having this child in my class! 😊 * 

 

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*I realise that could sound sarcastic but I mean it literally.

Delete

Jason Gray's songs so often sum things up perfectly:

"I want to bring the heat

I stop and take a beat

I type, then I delete

Until I find a way to say a kind thing without lying"

~Jason Gray

Oh, but it is cathartic to do the type and then delete bit. (To be on the safe side, type in a notes app, and not somewhere you can accidentally hit send 😄) It's such a shame to be unable to use some of the more colourful or creative phrases in real life, though...

A useful tool

A braille stylus is a useful tool. As well as using it to write braille, you can use it to remove hairs and fluff from your hoover brush.

Knowledge

Received ‘wisdom’ says that the people who lived before us, and particularly in the Middle Ages, knew far less than we do, but what stands out the most for me from my research is they were infinitely more knowledgeable. What we have is much more information at hand, most of it little better than trivia, but they had real, embodied knowledge of their world. They understood the chemistry of plants and minerals, how to make the most of it and what to avoid. They knew when and how to gather and prepare for food or craft. Their daily practical skills and self-reliance put us to shame, with our dependence on factory-made products that don’t need to exist.

~Joumana Medlej

Cross-cultural persuasion

What are we going to tell them, Teyla? “Listen, kiddies, everything you believe to be true is wrong, and trust us because we've been here for almost an hour.”

~Stargate Atlantis 1:06 Childhood's End

It's amazing that it's taken over 7 years of Gate travel for someone to articulate this. Even more amazing that it's McKay, not exactly known for his humility or seeing other people's point of view, who realises it.

Nothing to do with the quote, but MacKay being babysat by these two is one of the fun things in this episode.

[Edit: he does spoil it a few scenes later when he proposes stealing the power source from their only defences, and then solving the obvious safety issue by deporting them all to Atlantis 🤦‍♀️]

Great song title!

 

[Edit: just realised the title is barely visible. It's Jesus loves you (and I'm trying)]

Sabbatical

They mentioned yesterday in church that all paid staff will have sabbaticals after a certain number of years. I assume they meant the spiritual staff. 

But I'm just imagining me having a sabbatical from church cleaning...

Maybe I would tour other churches to see how they clean them? Watch lots of carpet cleaning videos (surprisingly interesting)? Maybe write a paper on stain removal? Or develop a foolproof method for preventing fingerprints on glass doors? 

The possibilities are endless...

On second thoughts, I think I'd rather stick with the cleaning 🪣🧹

How to remove bloodstains

This blog hasn't been random enough lately, so I thought I'd give you a cleaning tip:

To remove bloodstains, use saliva. But it should be the saliva of the person whose blood it is.

Yes, really. Apparently it's to do with enzymes. 

All-day sun

Doesn't seem quite the right weather for Good Friday:

 

"Well might the sun in darkness hide

and shut his glories in

when God, the incarnate maker, died

for man, his creature's, sin"

~Isaac Watts

Forks

I've wanted to use wooden forks as kings for aaages! 

King David

We made these yesterday.

With more time, glitter or gold paint on the crown would have been nice.

💣 Patience

A verse for anyone that has to relate to other Christians:

"I ... urge you to live worthy of the calling you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace." Ephesians 4:1-3

(The emoji in the title is meant to represent having a long fuse 😁)

Happy New(ish) Year

 Here's a good song to start the year:

Something I need to keep reminding myself.

Caveat: I don't like the line about 'make of your troubles swiftly an end' - he might, but he might not. Though I probably tend to err on the side of assuming he won't.