Le Tour du Jour no more!

Now I can get some sleep at last.

I liked the punning newspaper headline: "Cadel Evans Has Second Thoughts About The Tour"

Second two years running to a Spaniard. But he will be back next year for another try. Hopefully with a better team. As someone I know remarked, Silence Lotto was a good name. They were very silent. With a better team, he would have won. He was very gracious, not mentioning his team mates' weaknesses, and blaming only the crash on one of the early stages, which sapped his energy as his body healed itself. But even so, if he'd had even one team mate able to chase Sastre down in the final Alps stage, it would have been very different. The way Evans came second single handedly, almost as though he had no team at all, to the main rider of what was far and above the best team of the Tour, speaks volumes of his courage and ability.

The failure of Silence Lotto is ironic for another reason. Lotto itself works on the principle of almost everybody who participates winning nothing.

Loosing those e-chains!

Today a friend forwarded one of those e-mail chain letters to me. Nothing against the friend who sent it, he's a lovely guy, but I have to say I am really sick of the ridiculous lengths purveyors of chain letters will go to in order to induce enough guilt to ensure the perpetuation of these viral pieces of e-junk echoing exponentially around the cyberworld.

Here's some of what it said. I have taken pity on you and removed the pictures:

Jesus said, 'If you are ashamed of me, I will be ashamed of you before my Father.'

Not ashamed? Pass this on ONLY IF YOU MEAN IT!! Yes, I do Love God.

HE is my source of existence and Savior.

He keeps me functioning each and every day. Without Him, I will be nothing.

But, with Christ, HE strengthens me. (Phil 4:13)

This is the simplest test. If You Love God... And, are not ashamed of all the marvelous things HE has done for you...Send this to ten people and the person who sent it to you! Now do you have the time to pass it on?

Easy vs. Hard

Why is it so hard to tell the truth but Yet so easy to tell a lie?

Why are we so sleepy in church but Right when the sermon is over we suddenly wake up?

Why is it so easy to delete a Godly e-mail, but yet we forward all of the nasty ones?

Notice the unwarranted assumptions here.

First, that this is a "godly" email.

Second, that if you don't pass it on you are ashamed of Jesus.

Both are untrue. It is not godly to assume an authority that only God has. That's ungodly. Who is the author of this chain letter to say that you are sinning if you don't pass it on? Unfortunately the leadership of some churches assumes a similar position when it comes to their pronouncements, but at least you can argue with them. Chain letters are just an infuriatingly non-personal and anonymous waste of bandwidth.

As for me, the last question simply does not apply. I never forward nasty emails, because I don't forward any emails. When it comes to e-chains, I work strictly on the 'anfata' principle - "absolutely never forward anything to anyone!" Never ever. It's the only way to break these chains of guilt with their false gospel of obedience to some unknown self-proclaimed 'e-prophet'.

Lounging Around

We got a new lounge.
Took the old one to the tip.
Wrote a lounge haiku.

It's Frooooozing!

It's cold! Currently 3.5 degrees according to the Elders weather page and feels like minus 1.7 with the wind. Only six degrees in our bedroom. We didn't even get up to double figures today. But at least we're a bit warmer than Hobart with their range of 3-7 today. Remind me next year to go to Queensland in July. See Hobart Mercury report.

What Is an Evangelical?

I don't think the term means what it once did.

I've found the blogs of people who claim to be "evangelical Christians" yet believe and do things that even twenty years ago would have been called "liberal" or even pagan. There are "Evangelical" individuals and churches who:
- promote homosexuality as a valid lifestyle choice
- don't believe Adam and Eve were real people from whom all humans are descended
- hold to a doctrine of Scripture that is increasingly indistinguishable from that of Liberalism or Neo-Orthodoxy
- promote Polyamory as the loving biblical position and declare that limiting sex to marriage is unrealistic and even legalistic
- teach and practice mystical and spiritual experiences and hold to doctrines of ongoing revelation that used to associated only with Pentecostal movements or Eastern Orthodoxy or cults
- don't believe in the substitutionary atonement of Christ

...and much more.

Ironically, on the other hand, the opponents or detractors of evangelicals tend to use the term to mean Fundamentalism. At the same time supposed evangelicals themselves are moving the definition to the left, the mass media are moving their use of it to the right.

Near as I can work out, calling yourself an evangelical these days doesn't mean much more than
that you're not a Roman Catholic. And there are even some of them who call themselves evangelical, so what does it mean? Is there any such thing as an Evangelical Movement any more?

Edit: Phillip Jensen has written in August about this on his blog. And a followup article here.

Living Water

Today's OT reading at church was from Jeremiah 2.
Jer 2:13 says:

"My people have committed two sins:
They have forsaken me, the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
broken cisterns that cannot hold water."

Water is the source of life. Recent droughts here in Australia, particularly in the Murray-Darling Basin crisis, have highlighted that for us. Water has another function basic to our life. We use it for cleansing, for getting rid of dirt. The bible uses water as a symbol in both those ways (and a host of others). God as the spring of living water is the source of life, and of cleansing.

In the Old Testament, Almighty God says only He is the source of living water. He tells those who are spiritually thirsty to come to him and drink. Yet Jesus says, " If anyone is thirsty, let him come to ME and drink. Whoever believes in ME, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him" (Jn 7:37). How can the JWs & Unitarians teach that Jesus is not fully God?

Judah's twin sins were forsaking the true God and worshipping human gods. It's the same for us. Are we making up our own gods, or our own way of worshipping God? Are you looking for your own tailor-made source of spiritual truth?

This is the sin of humanity as a whole. It is true of those who build physical idols and worship them. But it also true of those who say, "well I like to think of God in my own way." Who think they can improve on the God they find in the bible. That's a mental idol. Even as Christians we can do this. Jeremiah speaks to God's people, not the pagans. God says, "MY people have forsaken me..."

A mental idol is anything that springs from not trusting in Jesus. Romans 14:23 says, "every act that does not spring from faith in him is sin." But Jesus was poured out like water (Ps 22, Jn 19) as an offering for our sins. It's not a matter of building better cisterns for ourselves, but of simply drinking of, and washing in, the Spring that God provides. Revelation 22:17: "Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life."

Tailchases and Tailraces

Last night the dog kept chasing his tail until he fell down. Must have had a flea on it. Only seems to know how to go clockwise. A lot of human behaviour makes as much sense and gets us just as far.

From tail chase to tailrace, we took the Pooklings here today, walking along an old tin mine tailrace that goes for kilometres through the bush:








It's currently 5 degrees celsius here and I have my thermals on!

God's Waiting Room

Today I took my monthly turn at leading two nursing home services.

I try to impress on these people, most of whom are godly believers who are no longer able to make it to the church services they used to attend, that they have not been forcibly retired from 'The Church.' This meeting together is every bit as much their church as whatever denomination they once belonged to, and just as important in the eternal purposes of God as the other congregations in the town. Sadly, this is also actually true in terms of numbers! At the first one there were 20 people. This is a larger congregation than half the churches in our town! But that's not what I mean of course. The bible reveals God as the one who will not put out a smouldering wick, and the champion of the 'Little People.' No not leprechauns, I mean the powerless, the overlooked, the forgotten people. The people others have put on the shelf. In this case the ones we perhaps somewhat patronisingly refer to as those in God's Waiting Room, forgetting that we ourselves are in the same room, even if on average we may have a slightly longer wait.

Some of my colleagues over the years have seemed totally uninterested in ministry to the aged, and have even expressed doubt at its relative worth (which is a polite way of saying it's a waste of time). Others have simply voted with their feet by never going near a nursing home. But I think we need to regard these people as being as much worthy of our time and respect and gospel ministry as others who may be more interesting, dynamic and, well... young.

Cleaning for the Cleaners

The Pookwife won three hours of cleaning in a competition. Two cleaners came today for an hour and a half. But of course we had to stay up until 1am last night cleaning up so the cleaners wouldn't be totally disgusted at the filthy pookhouse! The only advantage was watching le Tour while we did it and seeing Evans retain the Yellow Jersey for another day.

I wonder whether we act the same way with other Christians? Do we pretend to be someone we're not? Or do we invite one another into our lives just as we are because we know that Christians accept their brothers and sisters in the Lord unconditionally? What do you think?

who is the pook?

they ask who's the pook
the pook is the pook he is
all will be revealed

well now you know i like writing bad haiku at least.

who am i, mikey wants to know. seriously, i just haven't got round to saying more about myself yet or adding links that will make it more obvious, so for now i'm just enjoying being just the pook. but you do know me mikey.

oh, and 'why the pook?' was the other question. it's a long and boring story. i could tell you, but then i'd have to kill you...

The Maillot de Jaune

Today Cadel Evans gained the Yellow Jersey in the Tour de France by just one second from Schleck after an epic uphill battle on the Col du Tournalet and Hautacam in the Pyrenees! The first Aussie since Anderson in 1982 to gain the Maillot Jaune this far into the Tour, and one of only five altogether to have worn it at all.

The professionalism and utter dedication of these guys is stunning. Some of the other riders from other teams, such as Fabian Cancellara and Jens Voigt, were willing to sacrifice themselves completely for their teams so that their main man would have a chance at the overall win in Paris in two weeks time.

But all of their extreme efforts pale into insignificance against what the Son of God did for us at the cross. He wasted himself utterly so that we could be forgiven and have the victory over sin, death and the evil one, not just in a stage of the race, but at the final podium on the last day. We are more than victors with Christ. But, like Le Tour competitors, to finish the race, we have to keep on going so we can stand with him on That Day as part of his team.

I reckon I can squeeze a couple more sermon illustrations out of this, actually. In his 2nd letter to Timothy, the Apostle Paul uses the illustration of athletes competing several times. He says "...if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not receive the victor’s crown unless he competes according to the rules." Already this year has seen at least one competitor disqualified as a drug cheat. What are the 'rules' of the gospel? Faith in Christ. When they asked him what works they must do to please God, Jesus replied "the work of God is this - to believe in the One He has sent." (John 6:28-29) If you try to justify yourself by your own good works instead, you will be disqualified for the prize.

There is another way in which the Christian life is like riding le Tour. The bible calls on us to give up everything for the team, to get others over the line in one piece with us. We are not riding individual time trials, but going for the team prize. Again from 2nd Timothy:

2Ti 2:10 Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory. 11 Here is a trustworthy saying:
If we died with him, we will also live with him;
12 if we endure, we will also reign with him.


This is my first blog post, but it may well be my last. I didn't really intend to start a blog. Just seeing how it works. We'll see.