I haven't uploaded sermons for sometime - largely because I have been on leave and so haven't preached many! My sermon for last week and today are now available. Last week I focused on the question, "What do we require of God?" and this week on "How do we respond to God's response?" Essentially, we are largely aware of what God requires of us, at least in general terms - the Scriptures paint God's requirements in broad strokes. However, what are our expectations of God, and can we dare to think in such terms? When God responds to our expectations, our requirements, do we recognise his response, and how do we react? Click on the highlighted words above and they will direct you to the related sermon.
Rennie D
29 July 2007
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Saturday, July 21, 2007
port & poetry
It's time once again for Port and Poetry @ Rivermeade. Last year's theme was "Rugby", this year's is "Cricket"... but this is South Africa (Southern Hemisphere) and time for everything other than Cricket. Cricket in July? Perhaps in the cold reaches of the Great North? I have reflected on this theme:
Poetry and Port
an engagement of friends
sharing words head-scratched
borrowed and acknowledged
funny serious rude and prude
laughter Port-enhanced and real
a theme both comical and surreal
Cricket – in July!? when Tennis, Rugby
even Cycling does entrance
with Venus on the rise
and Hunter on the stage
Super XIV won and Tri-Nations lost
a World engagement immanent
our theme: Cricket – in July!?
Yes, Cricket! that game
of gentlemen and rogues
one team in and one team out
eleven men in until they’re out
a ball a bat an umpire or two
bowling batting fielding catching
Yes, Cricket! that mark of Empire!
our theme – in July!
In "researching" this poem I came across the following explanation of the game, one I saw years ago:
The Clear & Understandable Rules of Cricket
You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out. When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have been given out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!
Rennie D
21 July 2007
Poetry and Port
an engagement of friends
sharing words head-scratched
borrowed and acknowledged
funny serious rude and prude
laughter Port-enhanced and real
a theme both comical and surreal
Cricket – in July!? when Tennis, Rugby
even Cycling does entrance
with Venus on the rise
and Hunter on the stage
Super XIV won and Tri-Nations lost
a World engagement immanent
our theme: Cricket – in July!?
Yes, Cricket! that game
of gentlemen and rogues
one team in and one team out
eleven men in until they’re out
a ball a bat an umpire or two
bowling batting fielding catching
Yes, Cricket! that mark of Empire!
our theme – in July!
In "researching" this poem I came across the following explanation of the game, one I saw years ago:
The Clear & Understandable Rules of Cricket
You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out. When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have been given out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!
Rennie D
21 July 2007
Sunday, July 08, 2007
faith? reason?
A comment on Faith by Terry Goodkind in his novel Chainfire (pg 540); Zedd, the First Wizard, addressing his grandson Richard, the first War Wizard born in three-thousand years, also the Seeker:
“Faith is a device of self-delusion, a sleight of hand done with words and emotions founded on any irrational notion that can be dreamed up. Faith is the attempt to coerce truth to surrender to whim. In simple terms, it is trying to breathe life into a lie by trying to outshine reality with the beauty of wishes. Faith is the refuge of fools, the ignorant, and the deluded, not of thinking, rational men.”
It is a statement that undermines Richard's belief that his wife, Kahlan, the Mother Confessor, is alive despite the fact that no one remembers her, underlined by the reality that at this precise moment in the story they are looking at her decomposed corpse freshly dug up from the below her gravestone in the Confessors Palace graveyard.
The story goes on to prove that Richard's belief is not based in "the beauty of wishes" but in the reality of relationship and memory (and thus also experience), and that reality is not what we see, but what we know to be true. What we see can be manipulated, what we experience cannot? Essentially a negation of the age of reason, and a judgement on those who seek to place reason and faith in opposition. An interesting perspective.
Rennie D
8 July 2007
“Faith is a device of self-delusion, a sleight of hand done with words and emotions founded on any irrational notion that can be dreamed up. Faith is the attempt to coerce truth to surrender to whim. In simple terms, it is trying to breathe life into a lie by trying to outshine reality with the beauty of wishes. Faith is the refuge of fools, the ignorant, and the deluded, not of thinking, rational men.”
It is a statement that undermines Richard's belief that his wife, Kahlan, the Mother Confessor, is alive despite the fact that no one remembers her, underlined by the reality that at this precise moment in the story they are looking at her decomposed corpse freshly dug up from the below her gravestone in the Confessors Palace graveyard.
The story goes on to prove that Richard's belief is not based in "the beauty of wishes" but in the reality of relationship and memory (and thus also experience), and that reality is not what we see, but what we know to be true. What we see can be manipulated, what we experience cannot? Essentially a negation of the age of reason, and a judgement on those who seek to place reason and faith in opposition. An interesting perspective.
Rennie D
8 July 2007
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