Follow the instructions

Christianity

I once bought a new kitchen for my house. It was a self assembly kitchen. I was never very good at woodwork and stuff like that in school, so I was really pushing out the boundary of my ability, to say the least! I asked the guy at the store if it was easy to build the units. “Oh yes!” he said, “once you’ve done the first unit, the rest is easy.”
He wasn’t joking! I think it took me three or four days to assemble the first one successfully. I did it lots of times, a different way each time – but I was always left with an extra bit at the end, and the extra bit wasn’t always the same extra bit! Finally, I understood what the instructions were trying to tell me – it wasn’t my fault, you see – they just weren’t speaking to me clearly enough. I hate instructions that mumble, don’t you?

Riches to Rags

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The story of Ted Williams, which has gone viral on YouTube, is the kind that we all like. A down-and-out, begging on the street, is discovered and his voice is wonderful, just perfect for TV and radio. A film of him speaking is posted on the net, and suddenly everyone wants to listen to him, everyone wants to give him a job. He is famous, his life is turned round. He has a great future. He will make millions. A great story of rags to riches!

Fear is the lock

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I have blogged a couple of times on the subject of fear (Fear is the Key and Fearful Delight) and the subject keeps coming up in my reading. It’s hardly surprising – I did a quick scan of the concordance and the word appears in well over 200 passages. That is not to mention all the similes and adjectives associated with it. It’s not just the Bible either. Fear is a big element in our society – Google the word, and you get 146 million results!