Richard's Ramblings

You know those social media quizzes which show a photo of an item from the 1950s (or a bit later or earlier), and ask “‘Like’ if you remember what this is”?  One recently had a sort of small inverted tin just to the left of a clutch pedal. I’m sad to say that I recognised it straightaway as the foot-operated switch to dip your headlight main beam. I think the last car I had with that switch was a 1965 minivan. And it came to mind when the passenger side low beam bulb went on Leisa’s car while I was down last week. Our property is at the end of a 9km long winding (cue the Beatles)  unlit lane, so you need good lights on a car. With a dip bulb out, oncoming vehicles might think you’re a motorbike. But with high beam on, oncoming vehicles are dazzled. You see, car lights are not only to help you see the road but also to help other motorists see you. Straight after the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, Jesus tells his disciples (vv14 - 16) “You are the light of the world. A town built...

A break from the parish pew sheet rambling. I have a slim Les Murray volume (The Daylight Moon), but I need to revisit it and acquire a complete works. https://hughosb.com/2019/06/18/they-pretend-not-to-notice/

“No trial has overtaken you except what is common to man” (1 Corinthians 10:13)  The verse popped into my head this week while I was laid prostrate with manflu. You know, what a woman would call a common cold.  Our Cedar Creek property is surrounded by rainforest, so there’s always something flowering to trigger hay fever, and this week it progressed to a cold.  St Paul continues, “ … God is faithful; he will not let you be tested beyond what you can bear. But when you are tested he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”  My way out which God provided took the form of nurse Leisa, letting the chooks out in the morning before she left for work, so that I could stay in bed, and plying me with hot whisky, lemon and honey toddy (great manflu cure - should be available on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme - ask me for the recipe)  in the evening. A surefire way of getting to sleep, even with a blocked nose. The hot toddy helps you breathe through y...

It’s no secret that I love baked beans. Along with some other favourite comestibles, I see their existence as proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy  😊   The most recent tins which I bought are “English Recipe”. I didn’t know that baked beans come in different recipes, I can’t say that they taste any different to any other baked beans, they’re just a normal baked beany taste. I guess that it’s a marketing ploy to evoke imagined Pommie nostalgia for Marmite and deep-fried Mars Bars. But the “Whingeing Pom”, if s/he ever existed, was a creature of the 1950s. Nowadays, we’re grateful Poms, enjoying this wonderful country which is our real home. The bible has four sorts of people who left one country or state of being to make their home somewhere else. The Israelites of the Exodus did a fair amount of whingeing. “We had plenty to eat in Egypt”, they whinged, clean forgetting that they had been slaves. While Ruth told Boaz that she would be not just his wife, but that...

Every time a prayer needs mail lands in my inbox, it occurs to me that it’s easier to pray for someone else than it is to pray for myself. Perhaps you’re the same. What difference does it make? Does it really change God? Surely God does not change. Besides which, does not prayer contradict the most fundamental principle of faith, which is that we are called on to do God’s will rather than ask God to do ours? What really happens when we pray? Prayer has two dimensions, one mysterious, the other not. There are simply too many cases of prayers being answered for us to deny that it makes a difference to our fate. It does. In times of crisis we cry out from the depths of our soul, and something happens. Sometimes we only realise it later, looking back. Prayer makes a difference to the world – but how it does so is mysterious. There is, however, a second dimension which is non-mysterious. Less than prayer changes the world, it changes us. The Hebrew verb lehitpalel, meaning “to pray,...

Today as I write this, Thursday just gone as you read it, is Ascension Day.  Read Luke’s account in Acts 1  -  I’d take up both sides of Keep in Touch if I post the whole passage. It happens during one of the Bible’s “In between” times, between Jesus’ resurrection and the Spirit coming to the Church at Pentecost. The disciples, flushed with happiness that Jesus has conquered death and assuming that He will soon conquer the occupying Romans and give  them (the disciples) prestigious positions in the new Kingdom, ask Jesus when that will happen. But Jesus tells them that they will have power, just not the sort of power for which they were hoping.  “Go back to Jerusalem and wait”, says Jesus.  Back to the very place where He had recently been crucified. And the power which they would receive would not be to Lord it over their erstwhile enemies, but rather to witness to them, and to the whole world. The word, “Witness”, would carry foreboding because it has th...

Leisa and I have bought each other early anniversary presents  -  a pair of matching electric toothbrushes. We’re so romantic. Our old toothbrush batteries died within weeks of each other.  The bible mentions teeth loads of times, all except twice in a bad context (think “Gnashing of teeth”).  The two exceptions are in Song of Songs 4 and 6, each time the shepherd lover says to his peasant girlfriend the same, “Your teeth are like a flock of sheep which have come up from the washing; every one bears twins, and none is barren among them.” (This compliment in chapter 4 follows straight on from my chat-up line to Leisa, “Your hair is as a flock of goats cavorting down Mt Gilead”).  Although there is an uncomplimentary Year 7 variant of this, “Your teeth are like stars. They come out at night”, the shepherd’s compliment is genuine, his girlfriend’s teeth are sparkling and complete.  Which you might think is strange from a time without matching electric toothbr...