Watched this with the kids last night, and it got the needed amount of laughter. Had some delightful moments for those familiar with the 70’s series with David Carradine.
3/5
Monthly Archives: May 2009
40FP(19): 1 Peter 1.3-9
Resuming this Lenten series; hopefully it’ll be finished before next Lent!
1 Peter 1.3-9 (from the NLT)
3 All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is by his great mercy that we have been born again, because God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Now we live with great expectation,
4 and we have a priceless inheritance — an inheritance that is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay.
5 And through your faith, God is protecting you by his power until you receive this salvation, which is ready to be revealed on the last day for all to see.
6 So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you have to endure many trials for a little while.
7 These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold — though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honor on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world.
8 You love him even though you have never seen him. Though you do not see him now, you trust him; and you rejoice with a glorious, inexpressible joy.
9 The reward for trusting him will be the salvation of your souls.
Why is this a favourite passage?
The simple answer is that it was set in our Morning Prayer lectionary for Monday May 11 and was one of many examples at that time of feeling that God was talking directly to me (the fact that the previous day’s Gospel lesson was John 15.1-8 was another one). I wouldn’t have considered this a favourite passage before that moment; as it is, the message is now engraved on my heart. It has many applications for when people are suffering in all sorts of circumstances; for me, one key part of the reassurance that the passage contains is that these things happen in order for the faith to be shared more widely. God peels away all those things in our lives that are not built from a genuine faith, in order that the more genuine faith can be seen. We are called to trust that vindication will come, in God’s good time.
TBTM20090522
The Bucket List
Excellent script, good actors, unobtrusive direction and lots of material for theological discussion (as proven by watching it in church with a dozen members of the congregation). 4.5/5
Two quotations
The first from here:
“non intratur in veritatem nisi per caritatem (St. Augustine): no one has access to the truth except through love”.
The second from here:
“The spoiled adult, like the spoiled child, doesn’t want to do the right thing. Furthermore, he hates his better, revolts against authority, and embraces the path of self-destruction. He doesn’t want the rules applied to him. Resentment, said Kierkegaard, “becomes a constituent principle of want of character, which from utter wretchedness tries to sneak itself a position, all the time safeguarding itself by conceding that it is less than nothing.””
TBTM20090521
Hell on earth (one form of).
TBTM20090520
TBTM20090518
The Mist
This is basically an extremely good horror film with a lot of social criticism comfortably embedded within it. However, for me, it was spoiled by a hateful ending which I found cheap, cynical and gratuitously nihilistic. It is as if Frank Darabont wanted to remake Shawshank, except as a negative. 4/5
TBTM20090514
“…every time there are losses there are choices to be made. You choose to live your losses as passages to anger, blame, hatred, depression and resentment, or you choose to let these losses be passages to something new, something wider, and deeper…”
Henri Nouwen (via Maggi)