Vertical and Horizontal Communion

Sunday night saw an awesome time at church. We did some worship, then I spoke about thanksgiving and how important it is that we give thanks to God. We then had a time of communion. I had been thinking lately that we 'miss out' on one part of communion. We so often take communion and in a quiet solemn time, reflect on what Jesus has done for me and thank him for dying for me. We are encouraged to have some time, just God and I. That is the 'vertical' relationship - the relationship between God and an individual.

But I believe there is suppose to be more. The idea that we are one body (Paul talks in Corinthians about the significance of breaking one loaf to signify one body) seems to often be missed.

So on Sunday night after sharing how I imagined the last supper to be (a bunch of blokes having a good time, telling jokes, retelling stories etc) I asked people to come and get a cup of juice and some bread and to find two other people that they had not spoken to in the last month. I encouraged them to 'catch up', have a yak, talk, tell a joke, tell a story and finish up by sharing some stuff that they are thankful for. That is the horizontal part of communion - the relationship between two or more people in a community in the name of Jesus.

What a great time it proved to be and the feedback from people was positive.

STOP..caption time!

"Although Henry hated the dentist, he just excelled at the 'open wide' part."

OK people, you know the drill. Captions, headlines, explanations etc etc....

Camping!!!!

Over the long weekend, I had the opportunity to go camping...so a camping did I go. Friday night saw representatives of the Baldwin, Stewart and Toohey families travel to the Cathedral Ranges, about 1.5 hours from Eltham, near Eildon.

The highlights were many (including wildlife, fire, coffee, fire, unsuccessfully warding off kleptomaniac Kookaburras from Ness's breakfast, fire and coffee). I also learnt that Kathryn just LOVES tuna. The girl can't get enough of the stuff!!!

On the down side, Matty got sick and fair to say, the weather was a little 'fresh'!

The thing I love about camping is that it is so slow!!! For example, If you want a cup of coffee (which I often did), you can't just press a button and have boiling water 1 minute later. You first have to go to the river and get some water, boil it on camp burner etc etc. The whole process takes a lot of time. As a result of everything taking longer, you basically only have time to sleep, eat, drink coffee and build and maintain fires. I LOVE THE SLOW LIFE!!!

I think the thing that makes or breaks a camping trip is the people that you camp with. In this case, excellent people made an excellent trip!

So Close......

Today I hand in my last assignment. It is an Exegetical Notebook' That is basically the whole semesters work. Exegesis is just a fancy-shmancy word for extracting the meaning from a text. In this case, the bible. It is a technical subject, but is absolutely fascinating how often we (I) actually insert meaning into the bible (its called eisegesis).

After I finish off this assignment, perhaps I will give some examples as to what I am talking about....yes, yes I will. That is a good idea Billy, you should do that. Ok I will, thank you...me.....for the encouragement. I really appreciate it.......

OK So I can't be bothered studying..Can you tell?

Stuck in my head....

I am in need of serious help. You know when you have a song stuck in your head and it is really annoying? Well I have something else stuck in my head. The "special" SMS alert on a Nokia Mobile. Do you have any idea how enraging it is? The worst thing is, that I can't just sing another song to get it out of my head!

I know someone that had the sound of the pedestrian crossing stuck in their head.

Any solutions? (that don't involve surgical intervention...WIRE!)

Back by popular demand

"yes Mum I know you told me not to pick up hitchhikers, but since I upgraded my wheels, I couldn't very well claim not to have room for a passenger!"


Captions/headlines/thoughts/explanations?