The Lord's Supper is the world in miniature; it has cosmic significance. Within it we find clues to the meaning of all creation and all history, to the nature of God and the nature of man, to the mystery of the world, which is Christ. It is not confined to the first day, for its power fills seven. Though the table stands at the center, its effects stretch out to the four corners of the earth. (Leithart, Blessed are the Hungry, page 11)
For those of you who belong to a small group at church, Richard Perkins has a couple of excellent posts on how you can belong to one so as to make it thrive, and how to belong to one so as to make it struggle.
Back in June, I changed my web hosting provider.
As there are a fair few pitfalls to choosing a new web host, I thought I'd put this post up here to help others through the issues. I'm sure there are more worthwhile tips out there, so please free free to leave a comment.
As this has turned into a fairly lengthy post, let's start with:
The Bible repeatedly says that idols, being false gods, are little use. There is plenty of mockery of them to make the point. I love this detail...
The next day, when the Philistines came to strip the slain, they found Saul and his sons fallen on Mount Gilboa. And they stripped him and took his head and his armour, and sent messengers throughout the land of the Philistines to carry the good news to their idols and to their people. (1 Chronicles 10:8-9)
Anybody interested in fractals: Version 3.2 of Mandelbrot Explorer came out at the weekend.
I've recently been experimenting with a technique known as HDR Photography, short for High Dynamic Range.
Here's the idea: Not long after I arrived in Kemsing, I took a photograph of the interior of the church to use on some printed materials. I used an ordinary digital camera, and took a single photograph. The result is below:
We are forever looking for things God has done for us for which we can give him thanks. Things he has done for us and for no other people. That could be a temporal thing - we want things he has done for our generation and not for previous ones. That could be a spatial thing - we want things he has done for our village / town / county / nation and not for others. It could be both at once - things he has done for me and me alone.
Psalm 105 is a total contrast. It starts
Oh give thanks to the
Lord ;
call upon his name;
I find Motyer's proposed structure of Exodus 32-34 more convincing at some points than at others, but it definitely contains some useful observations about how the section as a whole is working:
A1 Moses doubted (32:1-6)
B1 Covenant under threat. Moses’ intercession (32:7-14)
C1 The broken tablets (32:15-19)
“It is most fitting that the Sabbath be the sign of this covenant. Israel, as we have noted, is a new creation. This is a new people of God, whom he intends to use to undo the work of the first man. Also, the tabernacle is a microcosm of the created order, a parcel of edenic splendour established amid the chaos of the world. The Sabbath is not just a reminder of the original creation in Genesis 1 and 2, but a reminder of God’s re-creation of the cosmos in the tabernacle.”
