James's Weblog

I've recommended to several of my friends that they try the subscription service over at Has Bean Coffee. It's called In My Mug, and you can order to receive a different coffee every time - either weekly, fortnightly or monthly, over either a month, quarter, half-year or full year. The coffees are very different from one another, and are all absolutely first class (even if you prefer some to others), as you'd expect from HasBean and Stephen Leighton.

Last week, to appropriate fanfares, Drupal 8 reached Release Candidate stage. That means Drupal 8 tagged releases now have an upgrade path between them, and it also means (very nearly) complete API / hook stability - which means this is the cue for some serious testing and development of contrib themes and modules.

However I made one schoolboy error: I was still using Drush 7.

It's actually quite an understandable mistake - all you had to do was follow the development of Drupal Next, and Drush, but not quite follow it closely enough.

This post is unlikely to interest any of my regular readers, but I'll post it here for the benefit of those who search for the solution to this exact problem.

I've never used it, but I know a lot of people who do. For years, AVG have offered a free anti-virus product. You have to put up with the fact that it will put a signature on the end of your email messages, letting the recipient know that AVG Free scanned the email for viruses.

They offered a "Pro" version that you had to pay for. It has extra features that the free version does not. It doesn't add a note to your incoming and outgoing email. Anecdotally, it may get virus signature updates faster.

Question: Who said this?

Christianity isn't a list of rules to follow or a strict theological code. It is primarily about a relationship with a God whose character means that he seeks a relationship with you. The Bible is full to the brim of accounts of God seeking a relationship with people who fail, and are then rescued from that failure by the God who loves them despite the fact that they hardly love him back.

Psalm 33:3 says this:

Sing to him a new song; play skilfully, and shout for joy.

Note the three ingredients here of how we are instructed to sing to God.

God doesn't just need to patch us up, he gives us new birth and makes us brand new creatures.

Mounce quotes Chrysostom's fifth homily whilst commenting on Titus 3:5. Titus 3:5 says this:

My friend Steve Jeffery posted a short post on his minister's blog.

So short, it's hard to know which bit to quote.

And yet so wonderful, so true, and so necessary to be chewed over, that I think I'll just quote all of it.

I hope Steve doesn't mind - especially if I link to the original post where I got it from

John, in his Gospel, loves the motifs of light and dark. Nicodemus came to Jesus at night. When Judas slipped out of the last supper to betray Jesus, it was night.

John's account of the empty tomb records Mary Magdalene going to the tomb "while it was still dark".

This worries a few people, but it need not.

The worry is that Mark records 3 women going to the tomb "just after sunrise". He seems to want to highlight the fact that it was day time, so they could see where they were going and what they were witnessing.

... That was the question I was asked by a member of our church one Wednesday morning, during our midweek Communion service.

We had just had readings on the great Christian hope - that one day, Jesus will return to this earth and renew it. It will be freed from its bondage to decay, all pain and suffering will go, and we'll live with Christ on earth together. Our ultimate hope is not in heaven, but on earth - life as it was meant to be.