So there, see.

In a recent poll to find the coolest person on television, the results are as follows:

1)The Doctor in Doctor Who (David Tennant)
2)Jack Bauer in 24 (Kiefer Sutherland)

I'm just guessing that this might be contentious... :-D

How are things?

Well, quite a bit better than my last substantial post, thankyou for your prayers. I wanted to share some pictures with you.

Here is my little Reuben, not so little. He's about 7 weeks old, and filling out very nicely. He's sleeping for about 5 hours in the night, and going straight back after his night feed, so things are definitely moving towards all night. I am so thankful to the wise mother of 12 who introduced me to simple, flexible routine with my second child! Ant and I are doing alternate nights, but he's very gracious with me, and given me an extra night tonight, because I slept badly last night. I didn't ask him, he just told me. Oh, these patriarchal, head of the household types are awful, aren't they?


This is the patriarch of our entire family. He's Ant's grandad, and he's 93. He's largely immobile now, and this is first meeting with his first great grandson. He spent the entire time on the verge of tears, praising God for the great blessing of being surrounded by his great grandchildren.

Pro 17:6 Children's children [are] the crown of old men; and the glory of children [are] their fathers.

I want to publically honour him here, and say how tremendously humble I am to be part of the family of this faithful, praying Christian.

btw, my children do generally smile their faces off, but there was a yappy dog on the other side of the room, and they were rather transfixed...

I received a gift from someone anonymously through my church today, and I want to thank them again here on the blog.

Truly - The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous and his ears are open unto their cry. Psalm 34

hmmm

I've been in a troubled sort of place of late. There have been a number of times when I have started to write something here, and then just lost confidence before getting to the end of the piece and shoving it in the bottomless draft bin.

It's most likely a combination of post-natal depression, the strain of my physical condition, and the psychological battering of months on trippy drugs. I realized yesterday that I couldn't remember Reuben's birth. I can tell you the facts, but all I can recall of the actual event is the phrase 'But God is Sovereign' floating around my head. I keep having flashbacks that I cannot make head nor tail of, but they always leave me in tears.
I simply haven't felt like myself for weeks. I couldn't even tell you who 'myself' actually was. This is a deeply unpleasant experience, and, whereas the Lord was an ever present comfort to me during the inordinate difficulty of the pregnancy, I find myself groping in the dark for Him now.

I would value your prayers.

Even committed muffins need a bump sometimes.

This was just the slap upside the head I needed today. Sometimes we need gentle encouragement, sometimes we need a kick in the derriere. It's often difficult to gauge which one is appropriate for other people, but when the appropriate exhortation hits the spot for us personally, we know. I knew today, and it was very good.

So, pink. So pink.

As if the PINK blog wasn't enough, I've now got a new bible.

It's my Mothering Sunday gift, and it's an ESV. So, I suppose I've come out now... as not KJV only ;-)

twiddling with the blog

Bear with me - I'm reorganizing a few things around on the blog, so it'll look a bit sparse cos I decided to just start from scratch again on the side bar and freshen things up a bit. At the moment you can just access the archives and countdown how long until the new series of Doctor Who {enormous grin}, but I'll be adding a bit more over the next few days.

HaShem - repost

I was wandering through my archives today, and I found a few things that I thought were worth saying again, and, with a young baby and three under 6 girls in the house, I can well afford to be a bit economical and recycle. Besides, most of the things I think worth reposting were written way before anyone read this blog :-)


I remember vividly how the name of Jesus Christ made me feel when I wasn't a believer. It made me cringe. Not when it was used as casual cursing, you understand, but when someone who actually believed in Him used the name. Something inside me twitched. It's one of the reasons that the phrase 'cringe-free evangelism' makes me smile, because as a pre-evangelee, any mention of that name was embarrassing.

Now I am a believer, and I have two very different reactions to it. The first is excitement, joy, and a real inner calm. It makes me happy to hear believers use that name.

The other is apathy. If I'm not careful, I can be really glib with the name. Jesus justs slips by like 'Bob next door'. It's familiarity of course. Intimacy with Christ is a beautiful thing, but it's important not to get chummy. Yes, the Lord Jesus Christ is my friend, but He's also THE LORD JESUS CHRIST.

If I focus too much on being a friend to God, I get lazy. Because, after all, He's my friend, he'll understand if I haven't called for a couple of days...

One of the ways I find helps me out of a rut like that is not to use the familiar term 'Jesus'. I call Him Lord Jesus Christ, or The Messiah, or Christ, or The Lord... It's not that there is anything wrong with calling Him 'Jesus', of course, and I don't think there's anything more spiritual about using titles. It's just a good reminder to me that as well as being my friend, He is God Almighty.

In fact, it makes it even more amazing that He is my friend.

A deterrent doesn't work if it deters something, then? *confused*

There's a new kerfuffle today about replacing Trident, the UK's nuclear defence program. I am not remotely excited about being vaporised in a nuclear war, and even less excited about dying of radiation sickness in the aftermath of said war.

However.

The argument for replacement is because having a nuclear arsenal is an effective deterrent, even without the slightest intention to 'push the button'. I keep hearing opponents of the plans insisting that a nuclear deterrent doesn't work. Which confuses me, because I was under the impression that we haven't had a nuclear holocaust in the past 50 years.

Did I miss it?

Are these the same people who are insisting on a 'raft of measures to tackle climate change' (i.e. tax). Man-made climate change that is largely backed-up by computer programmes postulating the future threat?

Let me get this straight. Because we no longer have to worry about the Russians having a nuclear weapon, we should get rid of ours. Because, like, no-one else will ever build one. Mr Iminadinnerjacket just thinks nuclear fission is a hobby, like cross-stitch, etc. Having a nuclear deterrent should be scrapped because no-one will ever be mean to us if we smile a lot at the world.

But we should certainly tax the populace of a teensy tiny island to the hilt and encourage everyone to go to work in a Sinclair C5 to avert something that the computers say is, like so our fault, but actually may just be a natural phenomenon that we just need to adapt to.

Do nothing in the face of the homicidal paranoid loonie?
Do something in the face of the infallible computer model?
Proven deterrent, wrong, possible deterrent, right.

Ok, I think I understand. I need to have a lie-down now.

One step..two step.. suffocate. Doh!

How about this eh? My favourite part of the report is where the scientist tells us that for a fish to learn to walk on land using its four mutated fins wouldn't take a great leap in brain power.

Riiight.

It might require them to be able to breathe out of the water, though, I would have thought.

Nice Meccano salamander though...

You mean this doesn't run on steam?

I don't have much time for the Compact Disc format. Audio-tapes seem infinitely preferable, not least because I have CDs that have skipped within two weeks of purchase, and audio-tapes 16 years old that might warble on occasion, but that's about it. It's not because I'm a technophobe either. I'm on a computer aren't I? I admit that I've not bothered with MP3s and iPods and Blackberries or Blueberries or whatever they are. This is largely due to cost issues, and a complete lack of actual need for such devices.

I rarely leave the house, and already have a serviceable Hi-Fi system, so what would be the purpose of an iPod, really? If I have some sudden insatiable yearning to hear a piece of music I don't currently own, there's always the computer. I don't actually know what a Blackberry is, to be honest, but if it's a palmtop device, I can't imagine anything more intensely frustrating than trying to type anything into a microscopic display.

Anyway, I had a conversation with my frustrated 5 year old the other day, in which she expressed the same dislike for CD's that I have. She is adept at the use of both DVD's and videotapes, and can quite clearly see that the benefits of videotape are actually way better than the DVD. Special features, schmeatures. Videotapes are practically indestructable. CD's are thwarted by a single fingerprint. What kind of Hi-tech is that?

She asked me why people liked DVDs so much, and I told her it was because the picture was clearer, and they are a lot smaller to store. She was unimpressed - picture-quality is a bit of an irrelevance when it comes to Laurel and Hardy, and, as she pointed out, small isn't better, small gets lost more easily.

Now, I actually think that the problem with CDs is that they're a bit like selling celluloid without a reel and tin to keep it. Yes, you've got the basic technology you need, but no thought has been given to the fact that real people are going to need to use it in cluttered, dusty houses.

I was also musing about digital telly. The latest idea is all about TV on demand, where you just buy the programmes you want to watch and set your own schedule. This is so not going to replace what we have already, for the same reason that albums haven't killed radio.

It's one of the little ironies of life that, while we attempt to control every aspect of our lives we don't really like it that much. There are telly programmes that Ant and I will set aside a little time for in the week. Doctor Who and Life on Mars is pretty much our entire repetoire, so it's not like we're glued to the set.

But there are occasions when we're physically worn out, and just have the energy to 'see what's on tonight'. A few weeks ago I discovered a really interesting programme about what was the staple diet of people living in the UK many years ago, when people were properly living off the land (I am, I confess, a bit of an archaeology geek). It was tremendously interesting, and I wouldn't have known anything about it if I had complete editorial control over what was on screen.

Now, obviously, I'm not talking about anything obscene - we certainly should have the good sense to avoid pouring utter filth into our eye-gate. But totally on demand television narrows the scope of everything which makes multi-media a tool for good - experiencing things you wouldn't normally be able to, or things you'd maybe never considered before.

As you can tell, I'm not about to take the television out and stone it. In fact, we've just replaced the old one which had turned everyone onscreen a peculiar shade of orange. John MacArthur was looking astonishingly ruddy, and he jumped up and down all through Grace to you and I'm sure he doesn't actually do that in real life.

But we haven't replaced it with an LCD tv the size of Venezuela, we've got a simple small tube telly, albeit with a flat screen, that we can still lock away in the telly-cupboard out of sight if needs be. Here I am, on the blogrolls of techno-savvy people who can do fancy graphics, a complete Luddite.

Must end here, I need to go and wind up the gramophone again...