I was at the Potteries Museum on Saturday with the rest of the family. Tabitha has been learning about the Tudors in histroy at school, and they had a Tudor day at the museum, so we all headed along to see what was going on. Well, there were a dozen or so people in Tudor costume, talking with lots of thees and thous, and generally being Tudorish. Including, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.
They had some Tudor musical instruments, they had a drum, and some pipes and they might even have had a trigon, but I'm not sure what one of those is, so I couldn't swear to it. Having played the gathered company a couple of tunes, they asked for volunteers to teach a Tudor dance to. As part of this, the victims / eager volunteers where taught the correct way to bow and curtsy. The dancing master insisted that gathered crowd ought to learn as well because we all needed to bow to the King. So he showed us all how to do this, and then instructed us to reverence the King. Which about half of us did, the rest being distracted or bored or just indifferent. At which point the King barked, “Those who do not bend to the King will break”. We had another go, and far more people made some attempt at the correct bow.
Nebuchadnezzar did more than bark a pointed comment, he threatened execution, and quickly to Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. If they didn't get down on their knees, and pronto they would be toast.
Continued here...
Showing posts with label idolatory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label idolatory. Show all posts
Thursday, 2 April 2009
Monday, 16 March 2009
Disciplined Worship
I wonder if you have house rules? And if you do, I wonder how they came to be decided. Let me give you some examples. In our house it's my job to load the dishwasher and put it on before I go to bed. We didn't need this rule before we had a dishwasher, and after we got one it soon became clear that it was going to be my job, because when Liz did it, I get cross about it not being loaded correctly, and I was informed in no uncertain terms that if it mattered that much, then I could do it. So I do.
We also have house rules about bedtime for the kids, and I expect that as they get older, we will have to negotiate curfew times that we expect them to be home by. I guess the first set of house rules we ever had as a family were the ones that Liz and I agreed to when we got married. The love, honour, cherish, be faithful vows that underpin our marriage and which sum up the values that form the basis for our whole family life together.
The thing that all these house rules have in common is that they all, in some way, are in place to enable us to live together happily and in a way which allows our our relationships within the household to flourish. Not all of them were there to start with, and some of the ones that we will need in the future are not yet in place. As family life goes on, the details of our house rules might change, but the underlying principles of love, faithfulness, and integrity will remain.
In our reading from Exodus, God is laying out some house rules for the family of the people of God God has sent Moses to Egypt, to rescue the people of God from captivity, and they are now three months out from Egypt, and they have reached the base of the mountain of God, Mount Sinai. Previously God had spoken to the ancestors of the people of God, people like Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, and made promises that their children would become a nation.
Now God has bought those children to the place in which God will start to forge them into a nation. That nation needed some house rules to enable the people that were part of it to live together with flourishing relationships, with each other and with God.
Continued here...
We also have house rules about bedtime for the kids, and I expect that as they get older, we will have to negotiate curfew times that we expect them to be home by. I guess the first set of house rules we ever had as a family were the ones that Liz and I agreed to when we got married. The love, honour, cherish, be faithful vows that underpin our marriage and which sum up the values that form the basis for our whole family life together.
The thing that all these house rules have in common is that they all, in some way, are in place to enable us to live together happily and in a way which allows our our relationships within the household to flourish. Not all of them were there to start with, and some of the ones that we will need in the future are not yet in place. As family life goes on, the details of our house rules might change, but the underlying principles of love, faithfulness, and integrity will remain.
In our reading from Exodus, God is laying out some house rules for the family of the people of God God has sent Moses to Egypt, to rescue the people of God from captivity, and they are now three months out from Egypt, and they have reached the base of the mountain of God, Mount Sinai. Previously God had spoken to the ancestors of the people of God, people like Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel, and made promises that their children would become a nation.
Now God has bought those children to the place in which God will start to forge them into a nation. That nation needed some house rules to enable the people that were part of it to live together with flourishing relationships, with each other and with God.
Continued here...
Thursday, 14 August 2008
What do you see in the world around you?
Preached on August 13th 2008.
Almost one hundred years ago two women died. On this day, in 1910, Florence Nightingale's life ended. On this day, in 1912, Octavia Hill gave up the ghost.
Both of these women had looked at the world as it was in their day, found it lacking, and set about changing things.
Florence had seen suffering people, and had taken to nursing. As her career progressed she saw more and more people suffering and dying. Famously, she went to the Crimea and worked tirelessly in some real hell holes. She spent time and effort investigating why these people were dying. When she could show that over crowding and insanitary conditions were causing more soldiers to die in hospitals than wounds inflicted by enemy action, she invested her efforts into getting hospitals designed differently and introduced professional training for nurses.
Octavia saw poor people with inadequate housing and no green spaces to enjoy. She campaigned about these issues and set up schemes for leasing good quality housing to those who had been living in slums. She was one of the founder members of what became the National Trust, with the aim of securing green spaces for everybody to be able to enjoy, regardless of whether or not they could pay for the privilege.
Continued here...
Almost one hundred years ago two women died. On this day, in 1910, Florence Nightingale's life ended. On this day, in 1912, Octavia Hill gave up the ghost.
Both of these women had looked at the world as it was in their day, found it lacking, and set about changing things.
Florence had seen suffering people, and had taken to nursing. As her career progressed she saw more and more people suffering and dying. Famously, she went to the Crimea and worked tirelessly in some real hell holes. She spent time and effort investigating why these people were dying. When she could show that over crowding and insanitary conditions were causing more soldiers to die in hospitals than wounds inflicted by enemy action, she invested her efforts into getting hospitals designed differently and introduced professional training for nurses.
Octavia saw poor people with inadequate housing and no green spaces to enjoy. She campaigned about these issues and set up schemes for leasing good quality housing to those who had been living in slums. She was one of the founder members of what became the National Trust, with the aim of securing green spaces for everybody to be able to enjoy, regardless of whether or not they could pay for the privilege.
Continued here...
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