Not for Camping

Wouldn't it be a little sad if we DO go home tomorrow and Harold Camping and his sect are left here?
I'd trully be so overwhelmed with joy at the presence of my King, that it's unclear how I'll feel about Mr Camping.

But Lord, speak to him tonight. Open his eyes that he may see You and may respond to Your Grace and Love. ...before his Judgement Day comes.

The Magic Roundabout

I was talking about this Civil Engineering wonder recently with friends.  Today I was  "Friday afternooning" and come across these pictures at CyberSalt.org
Enjoy!

 

"End of bus lane" - the least of your problems!

You can't believe it either?  There's more info at Wikipedia: Magic Roundabout (Swindon)

May 21

So what IS going to happen on Saturday?
We don't know. We cannot know.

We can do some clever maths, we can build in some stunning assumptions, we can create a hypothesis, but we cannot know.

Or can we?

When Jesus himself said that NO-ONE knows the day or the hour, but the Father alone, did he mean no-one at that time? Or did he mean no-one ever.

Because, when we start down the road of "well that is no longer true", where do we stop?
Those who are telling us that we are going Home on Saturday have already crossed the heresy line by saying that "the Church Age" is finished. Leaving aside the nonsense that is pedalled as "Dispensationalism", any idea that the Church is ever over is directly contrary to what Jesus taught. "The gates of Hades shall not prevail against it".
Ever.
Period.

These folk (who Jesus loves enough to have died for, by the way - just before we deride them unnecessarily), they also tell us that we have in recent years been living in the Great Tribulation.
Really?

True, there have been more Christians martyred for their faith in the last hundred years than in the previous 19 centuries together. But can we really say that things are so bad that, were He not to cut the time short, none of us would survive?
No, we can't. Not yet.

And has there been persecution on a greater scale than we can imagine?
Happily not.

Sorry, Brother Camping. The Great Tribulation is coming, and probably soon. But, with mixed emotions, it is not yet.

Bottom line, we cannot, and will not know the day or the hour of Jesus' return, our departure or "Judgement Day".
But that does not mean it won't be on Saturday. And if it is, there are a good number of Christians who will find their joy mixed with a little embarassment when they are raptured.
"No, it's not May 21. It's... Er, um, Hello Lord, I wasn't expecting you just yet".
He told us to be ready, precisely because we do not know the day or the hour.

And as I contemplate if it is on Saturday, or tonight, what a wonderful excitement I feel. Tinged with pain, yes. I have so many good friends who I don't honestly believe are yet ready.

But I know that He is still Sovereign.
He is still in control.
He will set the timing perfectly.

And I know in whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I've committed unto Him against that day.

Collective Blogging

And now for something completely different!

It was Thandi's idea. "Why not start a story blog where a whole bunch of people write the story, each writing the next section, and see where it goes?"

So we are seeing where it goes!

The blog is The Amazing Story

Thandi started, I've continued, and the story in my head is amazing.
Probably nothing like where we end up, however. That's the joy of it. That's the risk.

Come along. Take a read.
Better yet - join in!

Twenty-nine years ago...

Much has been written this weekend about Zimbabwe's 31st Independence Anniversary - much of it bemoaning how little we have to celebrate.
That's the Zimbabwean way.  Moan and wait.
It's easier that doing anything either constructive or destructive.

But my mind went back to 1982.
I remember sitting in my room at University, listening to a short-wave broadcast from ZBC. 
The broadcast used the Crosby Stills Nash and Young "Teach Your Children Well" theme.  It was a Zimbabwean Government propaganda broadcast, but it was up-beat!   It didn't speak of how other people were to blame for our woes.  It didn't try to ignore the problems faced.  It spoke of a utopian Zimbabwe powered by free universal education.

But reality happened.
Universal education cannot be free.
Universal nothing can be free.

Or can it?
It's Holy Week.  What better time to remember that the best ever Free Gift was given to the whole world.
God loved the whole world so much that He gave His only Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Sadly, not everyone will accept this Gift.  But that doesn't diminish it.
Unlike universal free education, eternal life remains a current reality.  Sadly, more people than necessary will not accept it.  Sadly, the Good News is not universally known.
There is still a need to "Teach Your Children Well".
To teach them the Truth.
The Good News.
There is a hope.
There is a God.

Conflicting evidence

What do you do when you have two pieces of evidence that cannot possibly both be true?
What if the one source says "Danger! Rectify now!" and the other says "Nah. Relax. Everything in fine. Moenie panic nee"?

Which do you believe? Which do you act on?
What if the fuel light in your vehicle is shining brightly and the fuel gauge shows a little over a quarter tank?

Step one - assume that the good people who serviced the vehicle broke something while working on it last week. This is obvious. Someone must be blamed to justify everything wrong or confusing in life.
Step two - to fill up or to keep driving?

This morning, as I walked to the fuel station from my now stationary vehicle, I had the time to ponder this question. Was it the optimism of "tank half full"?
Living in Zimbabwe, however much we winge,our survival has dependent on blindly trusting either that things are good, or that things will get better. I generally land on the former. Sure, life is not perfect, but it's fine. I mean, so what if there has been no water supply to my house since about July last year? Life is good! Godfrey gets water from the borehole down the road (when there is power for the pump!). I can shower at work or at the theatre. It's OK, really it is.
So did I therefore say "Hey, the fuel light is on. No problem. I'll be fine. Life is good"?

I don't think so.
On reflection, I think that I am driven not so much by optimism, but by selfishness. It is nicer if there is fuel in the tank, so I assume that this is so.
In the rest of life, there are warning indicators to tell me when to stop and when to proceed. But I choose to believe the voice in my head that says "You aren't hurting anyone, and no-one will find out so long as you are careful". This is the "nice" indicator. This path pretends to offer the most fun. The voice that says "Be ye holy even as I am Holy" is such a killjoy!
And it's not just my fuel tank status that brings me to a spluttering halt.

Will this experience change my life?
Of course!
As least as long as it's enjoyable to be changed.

20 minute interval and citizen journalism

Twenty minutes is too short.
I tried to blog the first half of the evening during the interval.
But ran out of time.
And afterwards...
Well, by the time I got home this morning, no, that was not the time for blogging.

But, in summary, a stunning evening.
Two excellent plays (not nearly as "dated" as some had feared) providing more than enough food for thought, however much thought one thought one might like to think
Two great casts doing fine things to them.
And then an evening of wonderful craic with amazing people who I am honoured to call friends.

Tired now
And the weekend is still a'comin in!

Happy birthday Tracey Garrard!  A day later, and many years younger than REPS, but also a very important part of our lives.

Links to REPS 80th

The Repertory Players turns 80 (H-Metro - 6 January) 
80th anniversary of The Repertory Players (Zimbabwe Lifestyle - 16 January) 
The Reperatory Players Celebrate 80th Anniversary (Herald -15 February)  
Chairman's Letter - 17 February (Zimbabwe Lifestyle - 17 February , ZimboJam - 17 February,  newzimsituation.com (link dodgy) )  
REPS @ 80 (ZimLemming - 17 February)
Reps turns 80, present plays that launched them in 1931 (The Standard - 26 February)

If you stumble upon any other relevant links I have missed, please let me know and I'll add them in.

REPS @ 80

80 years! Quite an achievement!

It was in 17 February 1931 that the Repertory Players staged their first production. As part of the celebrations, the two plays from that far off night are being presented tonight at a Gala Evening.

They are "Fame and the Poet" (Lord Dunsany) and "Magic" (G K Chesterton).

So it's black tie and party frock this evening.

And I expect more to write about afterwards.
But for now...

Happy Birthday, REPS!

Swanny rules!

So I was on the CricInfo site looking for stuff about the upcoming World Cup.
Some interesting stuff, including an elegant description of yesterday's AUS-RSA game where the "Australia bowlers were dealt a heavy snotklap (slap in the face) as South Africa chalked up a seven-wicket win"
Snotklap.  Good use of vernacular!

Then I spotted the article about the end of Graeme Swann's drunk driving charge.
Leaving aside any discussion of drink-driving (a generally bad idea) or the pedantry of legal process (a generally bad idea), I was struck by some of the humour of the incident.

Swann, ... was stopped near his home in West Bridgford shortly after 3.00am on April 2 last year, as he drove a white Porsche Cayenne towards a local supermarket, having arrived home to find his cat trapped under the floorboards.

Sorry? Read that again?
He had had four or five glasses of wine for his birthday, and it's 3am on 2 April.
Does that make his birthday....  No really?  Swanny?  1 April?  I might have guessed.
Any follower of Graeme on Twitter knows he is an arch-nutter.  Seriously - This is a twitter feed well worth following if you can even spell "English cricket".

But wait!  There's more!
He "arrived home to find his cat trapped under the floorboards"!
Like, how did...?  O never mind.  Put it down to a family likeness.

And to think that Graeme is currently home "on paternity leave".
Seriously, he's been allowed to breed?  Who dropped this catch?

But all the best wishes to the Swanns - both parents and baby.
And all the best for the World Cup (except vs Zimbabwe!)
And get yourself a chauffeur!


[For complete accuracy, Wikipedia tells me that Swanny was in fact born on 24 March 1979, not 1 April as I inferred. Such a pity to let the truth get in the way of a good story. And he's not even a "Born Free"!" ]

Valentines @ Pizza Inn

OK, so I'm a little cynical about 14 February generally.

But tonight I am waiting for two downloads and have popped out for a pizza.

Most tables at Pizza Inn tonight are either one man, one woman, or two men, two women (safety in numbers!). More than usual to my biased eye. And they are all looking uncomfortable.

A middle aged couple arrived - him in a neat grey suit with red shirt and tie, her with a pink suit over a red blouse. Put the kids to bed, dress up smart, and go out.... to Pizza Inn in a Food Court.

Zimbabwean romance is not dead.
Not quite.

(For Google's benefit, the one download is a backup of www.kingdompeoplechurch.org. The other is some CISCO software for one of my team.)

Bouncing

Mikey's funnies are not always the sort the knock you out of your chair, but you will normally raise a wry smile at the very least.

And they come with a "today'sTHOT" which can be quite stirring.

Like today:

Life is not about how fast you run, or how high you climb, but how well you bounce.

Remember the old DOS game "The Incredible Machine" where you had to make things bounce, blow, spin and roll to achieve certain results?  

Well one of the physics defying features was that, even without fiddling with the gravity, objects dropped on a trampoline could be made to bounce higher than the point from which they were dropped.  A cool trick!

And like life.

Your height of bounce may be higher than the point from which you fall.

It has to be Grace

A New Leaf

He came to my desk with a quivering lip,
     the lesson was done.
“Have you a new sheet for me, dear teacher?
     I’ve spoiled this one.”
I took his sheet, all soiled and blotted
     and gave him a new one all unspotted.
And into his tired heart I cried,
     “Do better now, my child.”

I went came to the throne with a trembling heart;
     the day was done.
“Have you a new day for me, dear Master?
     I’ve spoiled this one.”
He took my day, all soiled and blotted
     and gave me a new one all unspotted.
And into my tired heart he cried,
     “Do better now, my child.”

Author anonymous, “A New Leaf,” James G. Lawson, compiler, The Best Loved Religious Poems (Grand Rapids: Fleming H. Revell, 1961).

www.free-counters.co.uk

Still tinkering!

Now we have a Visitor Count thnks to www.free-counters.co.uk

All I need is some visitors to spin the turnstile..

Bonhoeffer, LoveZim and me

Earlier this year, Eric Metaxas published a remarkable book "Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy".
(Dear Santa, I wouldn't mind a copy....!)
 
Dietrich Bonhoeffer's story is remarkable, and beyond the scope of this post.  His commitment to God and to his country led to a quite remarkable series of choices and to his involvement in events that would change the passage of world history.

To quote from Metaxas' website:

As Adolf Hitler and the Nazis seduced a nation, bullied a continent, and attempted to exterminate the Jews of Europe, a small number of dissidents and saboteurs worked to dismantle the Third Reich from the inside. One of these was Dietrich Bonhoeffer—a pastor and author, known as much for such spiritual classics as The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together, as for his 1945 execution in a concentration camp for his part in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

(Aside:  Valkyrie is an excellent movie dramatising the events of that fateful assassination attempt.)
(Dear Santa, I wouldn't mind a DVD of this either!)

LoveZim is "a network of churches and organisations, established with a vision to invite the diaspora and the global church to support Zimbabwe in prayer and practical action."

Next Sunday, 26 September, there is a worldwide call to "The International Prayer Day for Zimbabwe".

A full description of LoveZim's vision and activities is also beyond the scope of this post.  The commitment to our country and the move of God in it are wonderful, and challenging.

Now, let me be clear to say that my intention is not in any way to try and equate Adolf Hitler with Robert Mugabe.  Nor would I presume to say that the Holocaust in anyway parallels the fact that so many Zimbabweans are in dire straits when it comes to health and food security.
I'm not saying that!

But what if...?

When Bonhoeffer arrived in New York in June 1939, he knew he was in the wrong place.

He wrote to Reinhold Niebuhr: "I have come to the conclusion that I made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people... Christians in Germany will have to face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose but I cannot make that choice from security."  He returned to Germany on the last scheduled steamer to cross the Atlantic.  (en.wikipedia.org)

Am I content to "just pray", or is God calling me to "share the trials of this time with my people"?

When will God call me to take treasonous activities to act against the Powers that He has placed in authority over me?
And when does "Thou shalt not kill" conflict with my ability to serve God?
I don't pretend to understand the immensity of the decision Bonhoeffer took.  But the attempt to assassinate Hitler was planned and executed, and this mighty man of God was part of it.

Now again, I am not saying that such action would be appropriate, necessary or justifiable in Zimbabwe in the 21st century.

But what if...?
Am I content to "just pray", or is God calling me to actions that mean I must be ready to be stripped naked and hung with thin wire?

Oh, I hope not.
Prayer is good.  There is no "just pray" when we realise that our prayers are direct petitions to Almighty God, the Maker of Heaven and Earth.
But forgive me if I start my prayers for Zimbabwe by asking that He accept my prayer and spare me the path He called Bonhoeffer to.

"Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”  — DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

New Blogger Layout

If you are used to the old layout of this blog, I'm surprised.
Gratified, but surprised.
You really are a regular reader here?  Excellent.
Thanks
Spread the word.

Oh yeah.  Do you like the new layout?
Now I just have to figure out how to get things like "hit counts" back.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Rice/Lloyd-Webber - a fine choice for one's first musical.


We're currently four days into the run of Joseph at Reps and having fun.
The show, Directed by Teri Grimmell with Musical Direction by Paul Shephard has not been without its little quirks.  The 'flu bug that has got into the team is being valiantly fought off and, with the help of electronic amplification (Rob Hollands and team), even the dodgiest and most damaged voices can be made passable.

Joseph is an interesting show.
Modelled remarkably closely on the original Genesis account (chap 37 and 39 onwards), all sorts of fun little side lights have been lifted from the Scripture straight into the script.  Supplement these with a rock-n-roll Pharaoh, a French café symbolising the hardships of Canaan and a calypso Judah, and it's a rollicking good fun show.

But what does it say to Joe Public?

As written, there are two portrayals of the underlying philosophy Tim Rice wrote into the lyric.
In the show prologue the Narrator tells us:

We all dream a lot.
Some are lucky, some are not.
But if you think it, want it, dream it,
Then it's real.
You are what you feel.

But all that I say,
Can be told another way.
In the story of a boy who's dreams came true.
And he could be you.

In other words, you are what you dream - existential humanism for Everyman.

Then, after Joseph is elevated to "Pharaoh's number two", he tells us that "Anyone from anywhere can make it if he gets a lucky break! "

And it all seems so real.
Salvation by fate!  You are what you turn out to be.

And this is where I need to come back to the source.  It isn't just your dreams or your lucky breaks.  Who controls your life?  Who do you choose to serve with your life?
In Acts 7, Stephen tells us the story again.

And the patriarchs, jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt; but God was with him and rescued him out of all his afflictions and gave him favor and wisdom before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who made him ruler over Egypt and over all his household.

(Emphasis mine)
Not luck.  Not dreams. God.
God was with him.

In his lifetime, Joseph was instrumental in saving many lives.  But that's all.  He was an instrument.  A willing tool in the Hands of the God who did not fail him in his time of horror.

To paraphrase

It's the story of a boy who's God is true.
And he could be you.

["Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" runs at Reps until Saturday 25th September.  Booking at the Spotlight] 

So, how does Mail2Blogger work?

I love the idea of being able to post to the blog from email.
You never know, I may even get round to posting more often!

Having recently been given a Smart Phone, email is now firmly "anywhere" - and so too therefore is blogging.
And, as this little beast (HTC Kaiser, re-badged as an AT&T Tilt) also has a camera, you never know, I may even start posting pictures.

Time will tell.

In Joburg for Christmas

(BTW - I'm in Joburg for Christmas)

2009 - the coming of the Green Back. Officially

2009 - the coming of the Green Back.  Officially

Noone would have dreamed, in the last days of 2008 that the coming year would shape up so very differently.  Few men would have believed that in the silent realms of hyperinflationary economics, minds immeasurable different to ours were watching us.  And slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us.

(With apologies to H G Wells' remarkable "War of the Worlds")

But early in the year, Zimbabwe suddenly staggered from a dollarised black-market into a legalised multi-currency environment which turned out to be predominantly USD in Harare and the north of the country, and ZAR in Bulawayo and regions closer to the Rand monetary area.

Suddenly, the few Zimbabweans with jobs and money became relatively rich and were briefly able to buy, buy, buy to their hearts' content.

But slowly, although the shops in the more affluent areas continue to be well stocked (certainly relative to the preceeding years of run-away zillions of Zim dollars), the available pool of green-backs has been sopped up.
It will be a hard Christmas again.  But, as various commentators have pointed, this is what Zimbabweans can cope with.  If we learned nothing else in the last few years, you now know how little we need to survive.