Quote: to love is to be open to hurt
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (1960)… Continue reading ...
Thoughts out !oud and the middle eastern Oud
I have felt that I need to blog an apology to the many, many enthusiasts who are scouring the internet for information about the Middle Eastern instrument, the Oud (a guitar-like instrument, pronounced ud, I believe), and who are ending up at my blog: Thoughts out !oud.
Monitoring the free blogging stats tool for my blog I have noticed with interest that my blog is ranking reasonably well in searches for the Oud, turning up in search strings such as: Oud, Oud for sale, Ouds for sale Sydney, thinking out oud, Oud built, stand for Oud, out Oud, Oud Cartoons, playing the Oud, all about the Oud, Oud poetry, etc. It became obvious to me that, so far as Google and other search engines are concerned, Thoughts
Lazy Myth: Christianity oppresses scientific truth and is closed-minded, aka the Galileo case
As Christians, it seems we are forbidden to ever broach the topic of who the Western world’s fathers of science were. Heaven forbid, especially, that we mention that many of them were faithful, Bible-believing Christians and then follow this up with the bold (but factual) claim that the methods employed by modern science today, and that science as an established and sustainable institution, happened within only one period – and in one part of the world – in history: that of Europe, in the period then known as Christendom.
I made the fatal mistake of dropping this claim into a little discussion on a related topic and it wasn’t long before someone piped in with their contrary piece of wisdom: “Just ask Galileo what he thought about Christendom [sic]
Forgetting about the man in the mirror
Those of you with children or adolescent teenagers or those of you married to big kids (I pity my wife!) will no doubt know that it is frustrating when they don’t follow through on a commitment or a task that they promised. Look no further than me – guilty, your Honour. Well, there’s a great many more of us who do the same to God. Imagine what God feels like when we say yes to His face, but then go away and immediately fail to follow through or run in the opposite direction?
Take Jonah, for instance, whom God charged to preach repentance to the people of Nineveh. And what did Jonah do? He ran away, defying God Himself. Futile, Jonah. Futile. When I read through James 1:23-25, I… Continue reading ...
Lazy Myth: Christians believe because they are told to
This Myth has at its core one main assumption: Christians blindly accept what they are told – they are brainwashed. The follow-on for this myth is that children who grow up in Christian households simply adopt – without question – the beliefs of their parents. Seriously, are there any people out there today who still hold to this myth? I know the ardent Reverend (sorry, evolutionist) Richard Dawkins has gone on record as saying that your religion is dependant on where you are born in the world. For instance, if you’re born into a Muslim household, you’ll grow up as a Muslim; if a Christian household, you’ll grow up as a Christian.
With sentiments like that, I do wonder why Mr Dawkins never had aspirations to become a Rocket… Continue reading ...
Error 404s no more … blog’s up!
Phew! After a week of Thoughts out !oud dwelling in limbo, it looks as though things are back up and running as they ought to be!
Firstly, a thank you must go out to Rick of The Narrow Path who kindly leant some of his precious web developer time to help me figure out what damage I had caused my blog. Cheers, Rick! In the end, it seemed that just deleting everything off my host and reinstalling Wordpress v2.5.1 did the trick for me. (Which was by far the better option than paying my host $300 to restore my blog prior to cyclone Mathew!)
Although, the only draw back seems to be that my chosen theme no longer functions properly … so I have a… Continue reading ...
Blog ‘technical’ difficulties …
I attempted to upgrade my version of WordPress yesterday. It didn’t turn out so good, unfortunately. However, if you read my posts via your RSS reader or if you have subscribed by email, your reading should remain unhindered as those two avenues are still working, I believe.
If you’ve just found me today, things are looking pretty boring and bland. The links to any of my other posts are not working (return Error 404s), so only my most recent posts will appear in full on the homepage.
I’ve sent out an SOS to a friend of a friend, so hopefully everything will be back up and running sooner rather than later.
Thanks for you patience!… Continue reading ...
Pray like Jesus series – Pastor Mark Driscoll
My recent posts on prayer perhaps were somewhat influenced by a series on prayer that Pastor Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill Church, Seattle, has been delivering over the last few weeks. This is a great series. I would encourage you to give them a listen… Continue reading ...
Three simple tips for creating long-lasting prayer habits
One of the questions at the end of my article You don’t have to pray … you get to is quite obvious: how do you get your prayer life on track?
When I was an elder for my church some time back, I would occasionally lead the congregation in corporate prayer during the services. Now, if you know anything about me, I’m pretty lazy, in all honesty – I don’t prepare anything to read out loud for corporate prayer time (that just doesn’t work for me, anyway) and I’d only have a few sketchy ideas about what to pray about. You know, the usual stuff – missionaries associated with our church or members of the church, a prominent disaster in the news, the health of so-and-so, etc. etc… Continue reading ...
How to get your fear of death to drop dead
I wonder how many of us fear death? If even only on a subconscious level, perhaps? I think it would be fair to say that the majority of people really don’t give much time thinking about death. I mean, why dwell on something that is so morbid and dark, right? Wouldn’t we rather just think of the happier things in life and tend to what is present than to waste our grey matter thinking of death?
Since you’re reading this, do you? Are you scared of death? Or are you somewhat like me … not really fearing death itself but not looking forward to how it might actually take place?
At one point, I used to think that Christians had the monopoly of not fearing death. It stood… Continue reading ...
You don’t have to pray … you get to!
Prayer is essential to the Christian world-view and life-style. It is the heartbeat of a Christian’s spiritual walk with God and a hallmark of his spiritual maturity. The scriptures petition us to pray; we pray predominantly when there appear to be no other options open to us, yet we ought also pray with thanksgiving when times are good. Prayer is not about getting God to do what we want Him to do, nor is it about telling God what He doesn’t already know. Prayer is much, much deeper than these shallow misconceptions of it. Oswald Chambers says of prayer:
Is the Son of God praying in me, or am I dictating to Him?….Prayer is not simply getting things from God, that is a most initial form of prayer; prayer… Continue reading ...
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