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 😆

---

*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