Pilgrim Heart

Useful Website

I've just come across this website www.bible-researcher.com

It has a wealth of resources from some excellent writers - check it out!

Kingdom Notes

For all School of the Word students, there is now a link below right called "School of the Word Notes" where you can get the long promised notes! The link will open a forum where you can access notes and leave any comments or messages relating to the course.

You can also get there by clicking here.

Blogging's better than Facebook?

Apologies for such a long absence. 2 weeks in France and a look of DIY are 2 of the reasons, the other is Facebook! Things are well in the Ling house, thanks for asking!

Having recently signed up to Facebook, and spending the first couple of weeks working out what on earth it was for, I have now been sucked in (especially because you can play scrabble online with friends!).

So is this current new wave of internet development (social networking) a good or bad thing? Well communication on the whole would seem to me to be a good thing: we do it because we are made in God's image - one of the first things the Bible tells us about God is that he is a communicator, "And God said..."

Also, as social networking (in a large part) is about been more intimately (or at least frequently) involved in the lives of people you know, there does seem to be elements on true koinonia in these virtual meeting places.

So I shall persist with Facebook (and maybe others) so long as it serves the King and his community and my part in it. PLUS - if you sign up you can see me 'oliday photos!

A Little Bit of Politics

I've just taken a test on political compass which says that I inhabit the Left-Libertarian quadrant of the political compass [Economic Left/Right: -4.50, Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.21 to be precise]. My nearest neighbour in that quandrant is Nelson Mandela - the person I seem furthest from is George W Bush!

Why not take the test yourself? I tried to answer the questions with the attitude of seeking first the Kingdom; but is my understanding of the Kingdom of God the only, or even major influence on my world-view? Let me know how you scored (if you dare!).

The Spiritual Power of Music?

On Sunday afternoon I caught a Radio 4 programme about music and spiritual experience in the Christian, Jewish and Muslin traditions.

As a firm believer in the spiritual nature of music, as something created by God to better enable mankind to relate to and communicate with him, I found it very interesting!

You can listen to it here.

Free Books

In yesterday's post I included a link to a site where A. A. Allen's book could be downloaded. Having had a further look, there are a number of interesting books available there to download for free as their copyright has expired.

Obviously I cannot personally recommend all the books there, but there are a few well known authors and interesting titles. The site is here and I will add the link to the sidebar for future reference!

Take That Are Back and Good!

I turned the radio in the kitchen on this morning and found that the baby-sitter had left it tuned to Radio One (thanks for cleaning the kitchen Jen!). I was about to turn over to Five-Live when I heard that Take That were going to be on in a few minutes for the first ever play of their new single. Now this is more than just a few nostaglic arena dates to an audience of 30-something women (my wife is still miffed that we didn't go!) - this is real new music.

The single ("Patience") is great - confirming my long held opinion that Gary Barlow is just about the best pop writer in the world. My admiration of Take That stems from having been commissioned to arrange a 15 song medley of Take That songs about 12 years ago - perfect pop in my opinion.

Anyway, I'm sure that the single will be played wall to wall and quite possibly be Christmas number 1 - listen out for the Strawberry Fields reference in the final pre-chorus.

For Christian song-writers, including worship song-writers, listen to the melody and harmonisation of the chorus and ask yourself, "why is that a great chorus?" - and when you get some insight, use those ideas!

Better Than The Original?

I found this link on Jonathan Cooper's Blog. I think it's funny!

Ladies (and guys!), how big is yours?

New (Old) Bible Translation

Well this 150 year-old bible translation is new to me, the Ferrar Fenton Bible. It is kind of available on line in the form of PDFs with scans of the pages - a little cumbersome!

I plan to speak on "The Song of the Well" this Sunday and came across this translation in my research. Anyone heard of it before?

The Old Ones are the Best - Part 2

CHH stuck this link in a comment on the previous post. It's a presentation I did a few years back on being a MAN.

Check it out!