Category - Faith

Reading through a few more blogs today and came across rick & 1j13.

Rick highlighted something that I find quite disturbing. Worship Leader – 2003 Praise Awards. Now people can be judged by other people as to how well they praise God? Has it really gone this far? We’ve turned worship of the true and living God into an industry – a tacky one at that. How is it that these people can’t see that what they’re doing is wrong? How do we stop this kind of nonsense?

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I recently stumbled upon the I See Jesus website. Interesting.

I’m sure it’s all tongue in cheek but it reminded me of visiting a small church building with an ‘apparition’ on the wall. No matter how long I looked at it, it simply looked like a bad plastering job with rising damp. The locals were adamant that it was a clear representation of Mary and Jesus.

The walls of the church were filled with small prayer cards. Obviously hundreds of people were convinced that God would hear their prayers better if they were offered up in the building with the bad plasterwork. (My favourite was someone who had placed a card asking for prayer for their sick ferret.) I can’t think of any rational reason, much less a scriptural one, that God would choose to work in this way yet people had traveled from all over the world to see this building. I just happened to be in town for a few days and dropped in to see what the fuss was about.

It’s sad that we let people get so distracted by stuff like that when we should be introducing them to the living Jesus, not some image on a wall that needs a good deal of squinting and imagination to see.

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I’m constantly amazed at how we can let our time with Jesus slip away or be crowded out.

When I’m spending time with him each day everything seems to make more sense and life is decidedly more agreeable, yet so often I let things slide for a while before I suddenly realise what’s going on. Sometimes it can be a day, sometimes a few days or even longer before I have to give myself a slap in the face and get things back in order. Why would I let something so important and so ‘life giving’ slip down my list of priorities?

Time to start spending quality time with my Lord a priority again.

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I like what the Catholic Archbishop of Western Australia has to say most of the time. I reckon he’s one of the good guys when it comes to making public statements on matters of faith.

In this morning’s West Australian newspaper he has an ad that promotes the church and the true menaing of Christmas. Great message but I was a little bemused to see that almost half the ad is a taken up by a picture of the Cathedral in Perth. Surely after 2000 years we have something better than the front of a building to symbolise our faith. Maybe they didn’t want to go with all the cliched Christmas type pics but I reckon they could have found something a little less cold. Even if the pic of the Cathedral had people in front of it welcoming others.

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I went to the city on Friday night armed with video camera. A friend and I got reactions from a number of people on their thoughts about Christmas.

It’s now professionally edited down to a 6 minute DVD we’ll show as part of our Christmas service on Thursday.

Some great comments. One guy, with a great sense of humour and a deadpan delivery, told us that he was eating up big to get into training for Christmas Day. He said, “You’ve got to know when to push, when to hold back, when to take on fluids.” He went on to explain that the fluids help to avoid dehydration and to lubricate the aesophegus. His preferred lubricant for Christmas Day is beer.

A group of three young people told us that Christmas is the same as Easter – only with chocolate. They also showed us that they had purchased a “Black Super Jesus Action Figure” at a hippie shop in Fremantle.

A young guy in a santa suit rtied to tell us that Christmas was all about free giveaways from the Vodaphone Shop. He tried to lure us into the store with a hearty Ho Ho Ho.

We even met a guy who explained how to get a free coffee at McDonalds. You simply wait until someone else finishes their cup and walks off. You then go and get the free refill, thus saving yourself $1.50.

We also had a couple of people who gave the ‘correct’ answers. We were told that “Jesus is the Reason for the Season.” I don’t know that he’d be too keen on claiming all that goes on in his name but it’s good to at least a couple of people with something Christian to say.

It’s very late notice but if you’re in the Perth area and want a dub of the DVD to show on Thursday, email me pronto and I’ll arrange it. It will be used as a springboard for the pastor’s sermon in our case but you may like to use it to add some humour and to provoke a few thoughts as part of your service.

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