Public money

When writing about money it is like sharing about ones sex life? You don’t talk about it in public. What we do with our money is our business and nobody else’s and maybe if this attitude changed we would find spiritual release. If fellowship groups would allow members to express how they spend their money, how they struggle with what to purchase, and how purchasing may have become an end in itself, it may help us realize the struggle we all face. To spend money can quickly become an addictive means of satisfying us, but only for a temporary measure. A crime situation helped free me from what I owned. They wiped me out of all the usual things in the Pretoria manse and we had to claim from insurance to get all the appliances etc. back. Every item I replaced in that house I felt I would never be able to own. There was no saying when the next burglary would be, and when I would have to replace it all again. There are some positive things that come from a crime epidemic? To serve God or to serve money was the choice Jesus asked his disciples to make. To be disciples of Jesus one has to make this choice. 1 Tim. 6.9 speaks about those who want to be rich. This is a choice that is not exclusive to those who have lots of money. The don’t haves can just as easily place all their hope on material things and fall prey to the same temptation as the haves. The “kingdom of God” that Jesus warns is difficult to enter if we are money obsessed. This kingdom is not something that is realized only one day in ‘heaven’. It is a reality being realized everyday through our faith that can be experienced by the wealthy and not wealthy. That is if our focus is not on material possessions but on the God in whom we love and the people whom we are called to serve.

Two tongues

Sitting in a closed room this week with people who spoke a different language to me was an eye opener for one who always has his language in English and somehow unconsciously demands it. I was watching the “Jesus” film as it is commonly referred to, but translated into Zulu of which the only words I understood were “Sawubona Jesu!” There was not only a language problem. The video was stretched and the voices muffled by a perpetual noise in the background. It was going to be two hours of endurance by the looks of things. The experience was quite other than I assumed it would be. It got me thinking about the Pentecost story and how it translated into this micro situation in Mpophomeni. Here I was flummoxed by the Zulu whilst everybody else was glued to the TV despite the apparent difficulty to hear it. One lady in the corner of the room was in tears by the end. The Gospel message was being translated for her via a TV set and a film in her own language. The whole experience reminded me of the importance of translation. Firstly of the great importance of translating the message we have into the languages of all people so they may understand the scriptures in their own mother tongue. Then there is the need for Christians to cherish this gift of different languages and inspiration to learn the languages of the context so they may truly understand the hearts and needs of the people they are with. There is nothing more edifying than a person who is prepared to call somebody by their real name and not another language name. Mistrust and misunderstanding is so quickly built up when we cannot talk one another’s language. The great thing about the Pentecost gift was that they actually spoke the languages of the world. It was not some ‘heavenly’ language that was later practiced by the Corinthian Church that nobody could understand. Pentecost is all about translation issues. The Church’s role in many ways is a translation bureau that helps our world communicate effectively. Without it, we will always stare at each other from opposite sides of the fence, smiling but never understanding, nodding but never grasping, and with the slightest excuse we can turn away, because we never really understood.

A burnt tongue

There is ‘wordplay’ (R.N.Donovan) on the word ‘tongues’ in the first part of the Pentecost story. I have not really taken notice of it before. They saw what seemed like ‘tongues’ of fire that rested on each of them. Then they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to ‘speak in other tongues’ as the Spirit enabled them. I like the expression ‘tongues of fire.’ It somehow powers up the image of what the early disciples began to do as they shared the ‘hot’ message of the Gospel. Peter’s tongue started waging straight away in the first Christian sermon that brought in thousands of people. This gift rested on all of them by the way. The Spirit filled each of them. It was not reserved for particular people. They all began to use this ‘tongue of fire’ and they spoke in different languages as the Spirit enabled them. The theme of tongues, languages, and translation are very dominant in Acts chapter 2. There are of course others dimensions and roles of the Spirit, but the focus here is on how movable this message of resurrection was outside of Jerusalem. Note, it was not the message of the Spirit’s filling that is the message of Peter’s sermon; the message is salvation through Christ. The Spirit’s filling comes with this ‘and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.’ The closest analogy I can find that describes the goings on here is the Unite Nations translation unit. I don’t know all the ins and outs of it, but the nations gather and as one person speaks his/her language the translators in the background convert the message into the languages of all seated there. Pentecost and the concept of a “United Nations” are very closely linked. The greater vision of Revelation speaks of the river flowing through the city of God, where on its banks grows the tree of life, and on which the leaves grow for the ‘healing of nations.” The Mission vision is reborn in that ‘hot’ room in Jerusalem. A vision of old, but a vision of the future, that would translate itself into all the nations of the world, and into all the languages of the world

The Pentecost tree

Jesus left his “peace” with his disciples. There was little else he could give; it was all taken from him. There was no wrapped up parcel with flashy paper and psychedelic ribbons. If we picture Jesus on the execution hill with his clothes stripped from him, the soldier's playing dice for them, he had very little to offer anybody. What kind of inheritance was this? All Jesus could offer them was the Spirit who would remind them of what he had taught and done whilst being with them. He left them with his teachings on how to pray, how to live, how to love and how to remember him always by sharing in that last supper tradition he gave. There was very little than his ‘way of life’ that he could give them. The Shalom gift is the gift of his Peace, Joy, Love, Faith, and Hope. These are the Pentecost gifts as opposed to the gifts beneath the Christmas tree - Gifts of nature, of being, of presence, of destiny, of affirmation, of self worth and integrity. Receive your gift, embrace the Spirit, our inheritance.

Another day in paradise

The beauty of Kwa-Zulu Natal where I live is a haunting combination of the sublime and the sacrificial. So many are watching it with eyes that reflect their status. The view is magnificent. Although starting to dry off for winter, the Mooi river winds its way along curvy banks with overhanging Willows. The sky is alive with birds of all nature. Crested eagles, Bokmakerie's, Bald Ibis, to name a few. The poverty still remains, the trails of which are corrugated homes scarcely 10 x 10. A rabbit runs across the road. The workers are getting home late as usual along dark roads with no lights. They wave as you dip your lights. The dust of the road leaves their eyes blind. The nano ipod needs charging. It is another day in paradise. Who's I don't know?

The end is nigh

My Apple Mac had a breakdown last week. It is now in the computer garage in JHB having a Geek check out its pistons. One is always grateful to have done backups on a regular basis. Warning to all who don't! As soon as it returns (hopefully), I will not have to share a computer with the wife. Pray for peace in the home.

A resurrection proof

Thoughts from - John 13:31-35
The readings on loving one another in the lectionary for this week are at first glance a pattern of words and meanings that seem to be a cliché that even a cliché is not able make cliché. This religious thought is not new as Jesus suggests either. Well, that is in the way we understand new. There are other commands to love, found in the first testament of the bible q.v. Leviticus. I don’t think Jesus (a Rabbi) would have slipped up here. The new would no doubt be the newness that is freshly expressed in the new testament of our bibles viz. the law of love now written on our hearts in flesh. The example given before this text is Jesus washing the disciples feet. A love that is not written down to achieve, but a love that moves from the deep interior of our hearts. A love that is so powerfully entrenched that it sacrificial in its dealings, and is glorified in its death. The latter is because it is a love-death that will never die. The glorification that is evident in the betrayal/death of Jesus is not the death itself. That is the first part of the equation that ends with resurrection proportions. The best evidence of the resurrection of Jesus is the love that is shown in and amongst the disciples. It is a sacrament. It is a command by Jesus that we often neglect because it is firstly not easily done, secondly it is not something we want to do under law, and thirdly we unaware of its connection with the Resurrection. John speaks of a love amongst one another, not a love for the world, or for ones enemies. He is speaking of a love at its source. A love before it streams out to the world and gets bogged down with other meanings and dammed up with selfish intentions. The love that is witness to the Resurrection of Jesus in the world.

Morning prayer

We gather this morning as Your community. Our hearts are ready to receive your Word and accept the challenge that brings into our lives. We seek not to be proud or arrogant about our faith but we long for you to wash our feet and help us understand the principles of Your Kingdom. Your ways are not our ways. Your power is not our power. We come this morning to learn that this life of ours is not so much about us, but about You and Your purpose for us. We thank you today that You have been faithful to us and have not let us forget the joy of worshiping You. We raise our hearts today, despite us feeling weary or sad. We raise our hearts despite us feeling happy or filled with the joys of life. We dutifully pronounce that You are God of this creation. That Jesus is Lord and Saviour, and that the Spirit of God is at work in our hearts, this Church and the World. We are humbled by our sinfulness and our perpetual need of You. Our minds are distracted at every turn, and we often find it difficult to accept that You Love us with such a degree of forgiveness and mercy. We are at pains to find such forgiveness amongst ourselves. We thank you God for setting us free from the agony of our sin, its twisted lying self and its ability to steal life from under our very nose. We accept and receive Your Forgiveness even though we find it so hard to be forgiven. We accept Your voice of comfort even though we find such peace a foreign concept in our world.
You have shown us such mercy in the giving of Your Son Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. He died and rose again in victory, and to those who have believed You have forgiven us our sin and freed us to live lives that are a healing ointment to this world. Amen.

Simple pleasures

Evil is around me and within me. The casual denial of human evil and the evil that compounds when humans agree to evil is a terrible mistake. The exposure and light that Christ brings sets these things back to where they came from. Help me realize that these dark forces are perpetually at my door, waiting their return. Let me walk this life of mine with the freedom that Christ brings but always aware that the trap of evil is ever near. Christ wills and has brought me to freedom. The light of Christ is my stronghold. The simplest of things in life I treasure, the beauty of life that is so often numbed by selfishness. The smallest and innocent of pleasures made waste by sin, but in Christ the pure nature of things unfold. The crippled child is honoured, the fragile senior is upheld, the repentant murderer is released, the spouse is loved for who they are and the world rejoices and sings once more. In Christ we live - simply.

Crickets or Money?

This is an illustration taken from a sermon posted by Tim Zingale...

"Two men were walking along a crowded city sidewalk. Suddenly, one of the men remarked, "Listen to the lovely sound of that cricket," But the other man could not hear the sound. He asked his friend how he could hear the sound of a cricket amid the roar of the traffic and the sound of the people. The first man, who was a zoologist, had trained himself to hear the sounds of nature. He didn't explain to his friend in words how he could hear the sound of the cricket, but instead, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a half-dollar coin, dropped it onto the sidewalk, and watch intently as a dozen people began to look for the coin as they heard it clanking around amid the sounds of the traffic and the sounds of the crowded city living.

He turned to his friend and said, "We hear what we listen for."

A Silent Voice

I cannot lie and say I hear God’s voice directly but I hear a voice in the world that sounds life giving. I hear a voice amongst the Christian’s that is liberating and comforting. The voice is amongst us and not ethereal. God calls me through the testimony of the Church and the Jewish nation. A voice written and shared from one to another. A testimony so thick it lies within my deepest conscience, being taught to me as early as I could comprehend. The voice of God in the voice of my mother as she nursed me to bed. The voices within my head are the voices of the community long dead, but live again in my genetics, my generation.

His Master's Voice

Thank you for the response Linda. Linda is an old friend who writes a response to yesterdays blog. I asked her if I could share it...

"When I say that I hear God, its not that I hear an audible voice in my head, but rather in the workings of my life, in the fabric and tapestry of the people that surround me.

I get frustrated from time to time, especially in traffic when I inevitably get stuck behind a learner driver. At the peak of frustration, its as if there's a gentle tap on my shoulder as if to say, once upon a time, that was you. Equally, when coming upon an accident, I'm grateful for the driver who for some unknown reason, was driving slowly in front of me that particular day.

Throughout my life there have been moments when things could have gone very badly (a rapist had been terrorising the area we lived in when I was in my teens. His MO was to open the transam window and using some contraption hook the keys out the door. When we woke up in the morning the windows (which we'd closed the night before) were wide open and the keys were missing from the door, but we were unharmed. Other victims were not so lucky. The good news is that he was finally apprehended), but something has stepped inbetween. I see God and hear Him through my friends and see the effect He has on their lives.

God has a way of speaking to us each in a way that we can individually comprehend. Those that need an audible voice will hear Him, those that are able to read between the lines will see hear in their bible readings and see Him in the fabric of the lives as the pattern unfolds before them. It is for us to be patient, to open our hearts, minds and souls, before the message becomes clear."

God said to us

How do I cope with people who tell me that "God said this and God said that to them?"
I talk to God as if God is listening to me but I am not that bold to claim that God spoke directly to me. It is a frightful thing to claim such high revelation, as if irrefutable. Somehow and somewhere in the reflections of my life I see the thread of the divine interlaced in the fabric of my doings. In the grandeur of those moments before lakes, trees, and high calling birds, there I sense the peace of something beyond. In my reading of what I deem inspired, I hear the movement of God between each page. The collect wisdom of many who pen their God given hopes to the archives of history, a distant voice that moves through the ages. The call to belong to the community that draws on something higher than itself. The realization that even if I am not the privileged one who hears God direct, that I will be satisfied with the testimony of the many. To rejoice amidst God’s faithful who share God’s voice collect. May I be content in my own holiness and my own dealings with God and this world. Let me not be discouraged if God has not "spoken" directly to me, let me rejoice rather that God has spoken to "us". Those of you reading this blog I challenge to leave a comment of how you hear the voice of God in your life. I may even use it in this weeks sermon (with your permission of course).

Prayer - Let me care

My prayer today is a prayer for my soul to find love in the avenues and byways of all my relationships. To find a heart that cares when people hurt and eyes that are prepared to cry when people leave me. A prayer that I may see in the eyes of each person I know the glimpses of something I can treasure and care for as if it were the most exciting part of my life. As much as I long for the freedom of open spaces, mountain vistas, and silent spaces, may I too long for the joy of sharing my life with the lives of others. May I find peace not only in my own quietness but peace when in the company of strangers and those I know so well. My prayer today is that you will help me to become less satisfied in my own desire and self achievement and better fulfilled in the service of others.

Break on through to the other side

The story in John 21:1-19, reminds me of a fishing adventure my brother-in-law went on off the coast of Cape Town. He was fishing for Yellowfin Tuna on the one side of the boat whilst another tourist was swimming behind the boat in the hope of becoming one with the sharks. Some people I will never understand. Similarly, the disciples are catching fish on the one side of the boat whilst Peter is going for a swim on the other. Not something one would ordinarily do. There is no walking on water, Peter just jumps into the “sea.” I also find it quite amusing. Peter puts his clothes on before he swims, usually we take our clothes off before we swim. What is also of interest is that these seasoned fishermen are prepared to listen to a strangers voice giving them instruction. I don’t think I would too readily listen to somebody I did not recognize hollowing instructions from the sideline. I remember fishing for bass in a small dam in the Drakensburg when a man walked by and started giving me endless instructions on how I should be fishing. My response was not to go and have breakfast with the guy. I wanted to rather hit him over the head with my fishing rod. These dispirited disciples are prepared to change course and direction with just the slightest whisper of a chance of catching fish. We can read our bibles and go over the same verses for years without the slightest hint of changing our course of direction. These disciples were prepared to change their long learned habits and try another approach. Maybe they had fished that side and had caught nothing? How many times do we hear the cliché, ‘but we have tried that before and it didn’t work.’ Maybe it was not the time to fish that side yet. They would do the other side only once they had fished this side for half an hour. How often are we so caught up in our routines of things that we miss out on life because it was not the time to do it. I was talking to my sister the other day and I was impressed to here her say, “when my teenage daughter’s want to talk to me, I drop everything I am doing and listen. At times it is very frustrating, they want to talk at the most inconvenient moments, but our relationship and their future is of utmost importance.” Routines are life-giving and life-destroying. They keep our life from falling apart, help us steadily work towards goals, but if not checked and made flexible, can rob us of opportunities that capture new forms life.

Resurrection physics

Am I truly blessed because I have not seen Jesus risen, but yet believe it? It is much harder yes. A scientific paradigm cannot calculate mystery and wonder. No science textbook has ever wowed me into anything greater unless it has helped me ponder the indescribable and mysterious otherness of creation. Our secular brains are not meant to believe in such things as the resurrection. We are not trained to believe this way. You are blessed because you can observe life objectively. That is today’s blessing. To distance oneself from the event studied and find oneself lost in relative skepticism. I would rather be lost in mysterious wonder really. To believe that there is a greater being ushering in something more beautiful than quarks and other less appealing subatomic particles.

Gospel Gossip

Easter tomorrow and I am preaching on the God who seeks life rather than suffering. The woman at the tomb were instructed that Christ was not to be found among the dead but the living. The God-man Jesus spent most of his life "giving life" in all manner and means and not sitting with only a sympathetic ear. Another aspect of the scripture account came to me this morning. After realizing the risen Jesus, the woman rush back to tell everybody. This also includes Peter who goes back to tell. There is no ways you can contain the import of such an event within yourself. There are many things in life that are wiser kept closer to the breast, but the surprise of life offered to us by God should be imparted with enthusiasm. The response will no doubt be with cynical retort, but the heart alive in the risen Christ will blurt it out non-the-less. It is important that we move from Church on Sunday blurting forth the Good News. It is the one day I encourage folk to Gossip as much as they want. But, that is Gossip with a big “G.” Gospel gossip. I have asked worshipers leaving our Tenebrae and Good Friday services to leave in quietness and reverence, but will not do the same tomorrow. Christ is risen.

Palm Sunday in Zimbabwe

Lk19:39 "Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, order your disciples to stop." He answered, "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out."


There comes a time when you just have to do what is right. Regardless the circumstances or the consequences you must do it. If you don’t you will loose face or you will not account for much. It is the difference between whether you want people to like you or you want people to respect you. This final push into Jerusalem for Jesus was that kind of moment. A Spiritual revolution was afoot. The religious climate was draconian and stifling to the average worshiper. It was now time for something to be done. Somebody had to pay the price to make a difference. Negotiations were not going to work, it would take a person prepared to sacrifice himself for the sake of freedom. Just on the border of South Africa lies a country Zimbabwe that is on the verge of political revolution. The leader Mugabe, a geriatric tyrant has dragged his country into the worst of crises. Turning on his own people he has used racial rhetoric to justify his own hold on power and privilege. Palm Sunday is happening in Zimbabwe. The people once opposed are rising up for truth and are prepared to be brought down with the crack of a whip or tied up from trees and be beaten. The colt is walking its way to the capital Harare. The people shouting the praises of truth and real power. Our hope is that God will rise supreme in Zimbabwe and the praises of the people will not be manipulated to suite another power struggle and yet another self important political regime. May Easter come for Zimbabwe in 2007.

Somebody needs it

John 12:7,8 Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."

The table is set for extravagant love. Who would not host the most expensive meal for the one who gave you back your life. Jesus had wept over the death of this man Lazarus, tears more precious than expensive perfume. Tears of life. The costs of things are the discussion at this table. The cost of showing your love through tears, fragrance and abandonment of action. There is no wisdom when appreciating others completely. Surely the poor should get the benefits of a luxurious aroma sold for cash and hard cold coin. Not so with love, its costs are priceless and its timing is divine. This story helps us take the most and give it away to somebody. It is not an exchange for faceless cash in an envelope to be sent to names called poor. Those who we are through guilt made conscious of. Where can I break open the bottle of perfume today. On whose feet will it fall and what will be my excuse not to do it? Who will dissuade me from extravagant love? May our hearts rule.

Hilton Manse

Hi there you blog people. I know some of you in Gauteng would like some info on our Hilton manse. Here it is front and back. Great home, but no fence. Working on it.