Summer Tanning Advice

Well this is the wrong time of the year for us antipodeans but due to the hole in the ozone we need this advice year round.


It was doing the rounds on facebook, no idea who the creator is, happy to be informed so I can attribute.

Freedom from wages, freedom to build something beautiful

When I saw this fascinating video


it made me think of this Biblical instruction

Luke 10:1-9 (NIV)

10 After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. ² He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. ³ Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. ⁴ Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.

⁵ “When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ ⁶ If someone who promotes peace is there, your peace will rest on them; if not, it will return to you. ⁷ Stay there, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house.
⁸ “When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is offered to you. ⁹ Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’

A challenging juxtaposition - does a caberet-punk singer who loves to take her clothes off in public have something to say to us Christians bound by our wage slavery and need for security and respectability? Surely not.

Brunner on praying as sinners

In his sermon on Luke 18:9-14, the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, Brunner writes

Does this imply that we are continually to come before God with this prayer on our lips: "God , be merciful to me a sinner"? Yes , this is implied. Even more. Only in this humility do we actually stand before God in prayer. You see to stand before God is a great mystery. It is not enough to say the words of prayer. We stand before God at the very moment when the thought strikes us: I am a sinner; God have mercy on me! And as soon as this thought, this insight, vanishes from our hearts, do we vanish from the presence of God, even though we may go on praying for hours.

Emil Brunner, Sowing and Reaping, Epworth 1964, p23

To which I'd add that the Lord's prayer commits us to our position as sinners before God every time we pray "forgive us our sins."