James's Weblog

Lots of people's discovery of the Christian faith goes something like this:

They start out thinking that it's all about being good. If we're good enough, God might just accept us.

They then discover the wonderful news the Bible calls "grace". Jesus did not come to call people to be good; he came to show us we could never be good enough, so that we can receive God's kindness as a gift we could never earn. We need Jesus as our saviour.

But then that leads to confusion: If God's grace is free and undeserved, does it matter how I live? Can't I live as I please?

Oh, the pain of leaving things out.

I'm preaching on 1 Kings 11-12 on Sunday. As is always the case with preaching, the aim is to help people to hear what that part of Scripture is saying to us today. And in order to be clear, you have to be ruthless. So often, there are all kinds of really interesting things you've learnt and discovered in the text, and they have to go on the proverbial cutting-room floor.

The BBC News website headlined an article with this picture of some of the European political leaders today.

What's missing?

I'm preaching on 1 Kings 2 this Sunday, and it's a trickier passage than it first looks.

David had previously overlooked two murders committed by his commander in chief, Joab, and pardoned the insolent Shimei.

Then the time comes to hand over the kingdom to Solomon. (So thank you to King Juan of Spain for choosing this week...). He urges Solomon to bring justice to these two.

So here's the question: Why did David change his mind?

If I'm right, the so-called "story of the widow's mite" (Mark 12:41-44) is one of the most abused passages in the New Testament.

We must read this story in its context.

As you read the 4 gospels, there are a number of pressure points: Will Jesus and his disciples be faithful to how God says the world should be saved? Or will they turn from God's way of doing things?

These all seem to happen in threes.

Yesterday, Drupal 7.28 was released.

People rush to upgrade, knowing that there will be a tranche of bug-fixes that may resolve longstanding issues.

People hesitate to upgrade, because updating Drupal core is not as simple as we'd like.

Other times, the core update is a security release, and you can't afford to wait.

This does not need to be painful!!

Upgrading core in Drupal 7

You have probably read the official documentation on doing this.

I've never noticed this before. Sometimes, you notice something in the Bible, it's then so obvious that you wonder why you didn't see it there before. That's a good sign that it's on the right track - it's noticing what's there, rather than reading in things that are not there. It also means it's highly likely that lots of other people have seen it before, and that I'm just playing catch-up - so there are no claims to originality here.

The opening of the book of Samuel anchors the book firmly in its context, as a book following on from Judges.

Today is the day that Microsoft's Windows XP reaches "EOL" (End of Life) status. That means they won't be issuing any more updates for it. If security researchers (good guys), or hackers (bad guys), find vulnerabilities with it, Microsoft won't be issuing a fix for them.

This has been widely covered in the media. Apparently, a third of computers worldwide still use XP.

I'm not sure what to conclude from this data, but I've just looked through the 4 gospels to identify the occasions on which Jesus was offered wine to drink, in one form or another.

It seems that he was offered wine 4 times. He refused it the first time, we're not told what happened on the second and third times, but he drank it the fourth time. On the first occasion, the wine was mixed with gall (an analgesic); on the other three times it was soured wine (wine vinegar).

Anyway: