PCQ State Assembly

Another State Assembly over and done with this week. It was good to catch up with some friends, but overall it was a disappointing time. Nothing dramatic, but in the last few years there has been a sense of excitement regarding new ministry and evangelism. This time round round, however, there was just a lot of wrangling about property and legal matters, and unfortunately some difficult but ministry minded decisions that were made last year were reversed.

Still, I suppose it's a blessing that we're not fighting over the fundamentals of the Gospel, and Mike Raiter's expositions on Judges each lunch time were very encouraging.

It hurts so bad (it really does!)

I've been inspired by Simone to try my hand at lyric writing. What do you think?

It Hurts So Bad
It hurts so bad,
I can't stand the pain.
I'm standing alone
out here in the rain.
This cannot be
the end of the line,
I'm down on my knees
Tell me will you be mine.

Chorus
Take your time
say you'll be mine
After all we've been through
You know I'll be true
Take your time
say you'll be mine
After all we've been through
You know there'll only be me and you

Open the door
Let me into your heart
I know I've done wrong
Now I'm falling apart.
Forget what I said
all my foolish games
And let me come in
I'm calling your name

Chorus x 5

Check out here for my inspiration

The Twighlight Phenomenon

Had to speak at an assembly for the Clayfield College Girls School this morning. And in an attempt to engage with the girls I started with an illustration about Robert Pattinson, the actor from Twilight. Well it certainly got a response. I almost had a riot on my hands everyone got so excited! I couldn't go on for a couple of minutes because a couple of hundred girls were talking at once.

But after they settled down I think they even listened to most of what I had to say about Acts 2 (which as you might have guessed had only a very tangential connection to Twilight....)

Musical Injuries

Mmm - Went for a pretty good 1hr25min run this afternoon. The hip's feeling good. But now I've got a sore foot!

I've got two new albums on my phone which helped to dull the throbbing of my foot during my run this afternoon. The new Garage Hymnal album is generally well produced and an enjoyable listen.

The other album is called Mixing Metaphors by an independent US band called the Dailies. I really enjoy the album as a whole, but there are two songs I particularly like.

"A Soveriegn Nation Sleeps Beside Me" (you can listen to a demo version here). You wouldn't think international diplomacy would make a great metaphor for relating in marriage - but it's really really good. Poignant and thoughtful. The other song I like on the album is "She Goes". It's a fun kind of song and I feel like I can relate to exactly what it's saying.

Marathon in six weeks and I've hit the injury wall

You may have noticed a distinct lack of training posts lately. That's because the news is all bad. A hip injury combined with a very stressful, wet week last week means I've hardly been running at all in the last two and a half weeks. The new shoes have hardly had a workout at all!

Would your ethics be different if you weren't a Christian?

This is a question raised by Richard Dawkins and others in arguments about whether athiests have any good foundation for their ethics. The argument goes that Christian (or other religious people) say they wouldn't rape or murder even if they weren't Chrstians, and therefore their faith has no impact on their ethics. In reality, Christians simply do what everyone does - follow the moral zeitgeist.

The thing about this argument is that in part it relies on an element of surprised shame. If you're suddenly confronted with the question of 'Would you rape and murder if you weren't a Christian?' Of course your immediate response is 'No I wouldn't.' If you're not murderous now, it's hard to imagine becoming so. And no one wants to be thought of as a murderer being held back by a thin veneer of religion.

But as I've thought about this a bit, I'm convinced that my ethics would be different if I wasn't a Christian. It's hard to say exactly how. But knowing myself and also looking at our society, I think I would be more judgmental, less generous and I'm pretty sure I'd have the 'do whatever you want as long as it doesn't hurt anyone' attitude to sex.

I perhaps wouldn't immediately be rushing out to murder, rape or rob a bank. There are some very strong external motivations against those things. But I think I would lose my key motivation for resisting the root causes of murder, rape and robbery - hatred, lust and greed, and I'm sure they would begin to flourish in my life. And you never know where it would end up.

What do you think? Does faith make a difference to your ethics?

Just like an Iphone

I've previously blogged on some of the programs I like to mess about with on my phone. My latest favourite is Ifonz, a program which changes the boring old fashioned Windows Mobile interface (left screenshot) into a trendy, finger friendly, iphone-like interface.

The front screen (middle screen shot) has the clock and icons for eight key functions which include phone, sms, calender, Bible, internet and music player.You can then use horizontal finger swipes to scroll through to other pages of programs that you use.

You can choose whatever programs you want the buttons to link to, and there are lots of cool sets of button graphics you can download from the web as well. You can also change the backgound picture/colour of the screen and all that kind of thing.

The program is still under development, but I've found the latest version runs really well on my phone, and it is definitely the most useful peice of software I have at the moment. And the great thing is you can get it for free here