James's Weblog

See my earlier post weighing the textual options for Matthew 18:15.

I love discovering new hymns.

Like this one by Josiah Conder, entitled My Lord, I did not choose you.

I have huge respect for Christopher Idle. I love the hymns he writes. And he's a godly man with a wise, pastoral heart. I was searching for some of his hymns, when I found something rather different.

Doubtless, many readers of this will be familiar with Henry Scott Holland's poem Death is Nothing at all. For those who don't know it:

Death is nothing at all. It does not count.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
Nothing has happened.
Everything remains exactly as it was.
I am I, and you are you, and the old life
Death is Nothing at all

Leithart again:

Historically, a pastoral candidate’s desires often had little to do with the Church’s call to serve in pastoral office. Far from seeking out positions of leadership, the greatest of the church fathers resisted with all their strength.

Lovely quotation from Leithart in Against Christianity on what a Spirit-filled church looks like:

Christian myth and ritual shape the people of God, by the power of the Spirit, into conformity to Christ, creating within the Church a palpable aroma of love, peace, purity, joy, ministry, mission and forgiveness. That aroma spreads from the Church to the city around it.

blockquote

Sorry for the extended downtime over the weekend everyone - all the maintenance is now complete. Thanks for your patience.

Enjoying R T France’s commentary on Matthew yet again.

Reading him on Matthew 18:15-17.

I haven’t posted for ages – partly very busy, partly nothing to say.

But I thought I’d post briefly now, because this has encouraged me.

The parable of the weeds and the wheat in Matthew 13:24-30 shows (I think) that the world is a mixed place – it contains true disciples and it contains unbelievers. We need to wait until the end of the age to see truly who is who.

CAPTCHA has become a standard device to trap and block spam on sites like this one.

The idea is that if someone writes a computer program to drop spam comments on this blog, the computer program will be asked to solve a problem first. That problem (like “what letters are below in this squiggly image?” or “what’s 4+12?”) is not Turing-computible. So only a human being will solve it.

At long last, I’m please to present a new piece of software, Bible Reading Plan Generator.

There is a page dedicated to it on this site: http://www.oakleys.org.uk/software/bibleplan.

Visit the software’s homepage for more information.

In essence, though, it’s free software that takes a list of Biblical books, and devises a reading plan for you over any number of days you want.