You are in the supermarket, by the stationery counter, and someone walks up to the shelf, picks up a pen and puts it in his/her pocket, then just walks out of the store. Your natural reaction is to think, “He stole that.” You might even start to shout about it, or run to the security man and tell him. People shouldn’t be able to do that. They shouldn’t get away with it. It’s stealing. It’s wrong. It’s sin. “Thief! Stop thief!”
The more I think of what Stephen Hawking has been saying, the more I am at a loss as to why he is so far from the truth! What does he see when he looks up? An equation? Has he ever seen a sunset and marvelled at the beauty of it rather than thinking that it is merely light passing through dust particles? I am not just getting at him. I feel sadness about the power of a theory which is blind to the beauty of creation.
I have just finished reading Riven by Jerry B Jenkins. It was a long read, a hard read and at times I wasn’t too sure that I wanted to keep going, since it had a theme running through it that I just felt wasn’t going to be easy. I like my novels light and this…
Stephen Hawking says there is no need to invoke God to set the Universe going. He adds: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”
Sorry, God, you are not needed – someone greater than you has spoken. Never mind the fact that he doesn’t say where the law of gravity came from in the first place.
I remember the first multi-choice exam I ever sat. It was in History, and I thought it was a brilliant idea, especially when I got the result. As far as I can remember, each question had four possible answers, so my chances of getting the the right answer went up from zero to one in four! It was easier to think about which one to pick than to think up an answer. History and I parted company soon after.
We all like choice, and the more choice we have the better, eh? Sometimes we make the right choice, sometimes the wrong one. Sometimes we get spoiled for choice, and we end up flipping a coin. Sometimes, though, we are spoiled by choice, not for it.
There is something totally different about Cambridge, and when my son, Simon, was at university there, Libby and I really enjoyed going down to see him, especially in the summer. The River Cam runs through the town, and one of its real attractions is punting.
A punt is a shallow longboat with a short platform at each end. The punter is not the guy who goes and places a bet on the horses for you while you go in the boat! The punter is the one who makes the boat move. He stands on the platform at the back of the boat, and pushes it along with a long pole. It takes a bit of time to learn, but once you master it, you feel great. You glide through the water and the only sound is the drip of water as you pull the pole up out of the water, move it forward and push into the bottom of the river with it again. If you are daft, you can also sing “O Sole Mio” and think of Cornetto ice creams.
Those who know me know that I am follically challenged, and it is good when I find a passage about things outnumbering the hairs on my head. It gives me a chance to make light of it. I have never had a problem about being bald, so it doesn’t worry me when people make jokes about it. It is obviously something I cannot deny, so why should I? If people have a go at me, I can always point them to this passage and ask where they stand.
Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.
(Psalm 37:5-6)
The Hebrew for the start of this text is “Roll your way upon Yahweh.” It makes me think of those vehicles which lay tracks in front of them, so that they can move forward over a bad surface, and so that others can follow the same way.
Watch this brilliant video from Cumnock Baptist Church –
I have been reading an amazing book – Faith and Doubt, by John Ortberg. In part of the book, John explains that there are three kinds of faith: the faith that we say we have. This is what I call “Sunday faith”. It is where we tell people that we have faith for something, but…
Then they said to each other, “We’re not doing right. This is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves. If we wait until daylight, punishment will overtake us. Let’s go at once and report this to the royal palace.” 2 Kings 7:9 (from The Holy Bible: New International Version. Copyright…
We were all playing football or something one day, when the two brothers ran straight into each other. After picking himself up, one started screaming at the other for being stupid, so the other screamed back, “You bumped into me first!”