Photos of Reculver posted
While staying with Heinrich and Helen last week, we visited Reculver, a country park on the Kent coast. Dusk was beautiful, the moon was just right, and both made the perfect backdrop for the ruined church building. The camera (a Panasonic FX01) was struggling with the little remaining light, but the photos turned out reasonably, if you ignore the blotchiness.
We’ve just returned from a week in England. The seats in the rental car we picked up at the airport weren’t adjustable enough to support Mary’s back properly, and there were no other cars of the same category available, so we had to upgrade. I gulped when I heard that the only upgrade available was a Mercedes, but when I heard that it only cost an extra £8 per day, there was no question… I have now joined the ranks of the Mercedes drivers (and yes, the road does belong to me 😉 ).
We spent the first few days at Helen and Heinrich’s place near Canterbury, preparing for a camp we’re teaching at later in the summer. Due to minor misunderstandings, our visit turned out to be a surprise – they were expecting a visit, but didn’t know when! We had a good time talking, and managed to get the main points of our seminar nailed down.
From there, we headed across the country to Hereford, to visit my parents. We saw Dad for an evening before he left for the USA, and stayed at my Mum’s place, which was rapidly emptying as she was selling furniture before her imminent move.
On Saturday, while heading back East for our flight on Sunday, we dropped in to visit my aunts and uncle, who we hadn’t seen in several years. We had a great time catching up, and have resolved to visit more often! (Tony, we believe you’re not a football lout, honest…)
Ist Ungarn das Gegenteil von Garn?
(Sorry, that only works in German)
I just completed a 5-week professional certification course for the Avaloq banking system. It was tough going, partly because of the amount of information, partly because some of the topics were entirely new to me (accounting…), and partly because some of the teachers weren’t able to communicate the material very well. The certification test on Thursday went far better than I expected; I achieved a high score in the theory exam, and finished the practical exam – with 30 seconds to spare! I won’t know my final mark for another few weeks, but I’m confident that I’ve passed. I’m happy that it’s behind me, and that I now have time for other things again.
We’ve just returned from Romanshorn, where we attended (and helped at) the Forum Gemeindeinnovation (Forum for Church Innovation). It was an interesting three days, hearing Alan Hirsch (author of “The Shaping of Things to Come”, which I read recently) explaining his most recent thoughts about church and the changes we need to see. The main value for me was meeting a number of people, including Stefan and Evelyn Peter, Christoph Schalk and Jonathan Brutchin. Jonathan lives about 45 minutes from us, but we never found time to meet here, so met 2 1/2 hours away…
The main message I took away from the conference was the same thing I’ve been sensing for the past several months: get out and do it. We’ve decided what our next steps are going to be – now we just have to take them 😉
Today was a quiet day at work, as I try to organize the next project I’ll be working on. Quite in accordance with Proverbs 22:13, I suddenly realised that there were lions outside my office!
OK, so they’re only Dandelions, but isn’t that dangerous enough?
I’ve been looking for a new digital camera for some time now. Every time I looked at a new camera, I decided that the improvement over my current camera (an old 2 megapixel Olympus!) wasn’t worth the money. Mary-Anne decided to buy me a new camera for my birthday last week, but didn’t know which one to choose. We went to a camera store, where the owner advised me. I wanted something with a good zoom range and good picture quality, and expected to buy a digital SLR. The store owner convinced me to buy a Lumix DMC-FZ30: 8 megapixels with a 35-420 Leica zoom lens. I’d heard that the Lumix cameras had a rather ‘noisy’ sensor, but the owner showed me some photos he had taken, which looked good. I was convinced, and walked out of the store with the Lumix.
My first photos were something of a shock. Continue reading “Looking for a camera”
It’s Easter. People are eating Easter eggs and chocolate Easter bunnies, and some are going to church for the first time this year. (The second time will be Christmas.) In Europe, Friday and Monday are national holidays in most nations. But why?
Christmas is good news: God born as a man, God with us. Easter, though, is the Good News: the central message of the Gospel. We all know that we have done wrong in our lives: lied (I ‘ve done that), stolen (that too), hit our sisters (and that) and our wives (that too). And those are just the first things that come to mind. God’s standards are easily summarized: love God with all your heart, mind and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself. But we fail, time and time again. The penalty for that failure is permanent death; not the simple, physical death which we all face, but that which Revelation calls ‘the second death’: permanent cessation of our existence. At Easter, Jesus took that punishment on himself, dying in our place.
Easter originally coincided with the Jewish Passover; Jesus was crucified during the Passover celebrations. Passover is the celebration of the Jews’ exodus from slavery in Egypt. The last of the ten plagues sent against Pharaoh for refusing to release the Jews from slavery was that every firstborn in Egypt died in a single night. Only those who paid attention to Moses’ warning, slaughtering a lamb and spreading some of its blood on their doorposts, were spared. That was a foreshadowing of Jesus’ death on the cross; everyone will die the second death, because we’ve all fallen short of God’s standards. Only those are exempted who “spread the lamb’s blood on their doorposts”: claim Jesus’ death on the cross as the sign of desiring to live with God.
Jesus rose from the dead because he did keep God’s standards. The good news of Easter is that death has been overcome, and if we pay attention to God’s warning, we will live with him.
While in the USA with Mike, I started reading David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done“. I didn’t get that far with it, because it keeps telling me I have to do things ;-). I keep returning to it, trying to put his suggestions into practice; I think I’m improving, but I’m not there yet. Recently, I discovered the 43 Folders web site, a blog looking at Getting Things Done and related topics. This post is a good place to start, if you’re interested.