Deep Creek Anglican Church Blog

Well it’s Melbourne Cup day.  The church’s Annual Report is due to be released this coming weekend.  So with seemingly all of Melbourne caught up in Cup fever, I sat down this morning to pen some words on the last twelve months.  Here’s how I began:

“We have just experienced a dramatic year in the life of this church.  There have been many truly wonderful spiritual highlights and blessings.  And we have grieved together at the home call of my wife, Sheryl.  It has been a dramatic year both for our church community and for myself personally.  ”God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble….The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.” (Ps 46:1,11)”

I didn’t get much further.  But I have cleaned out the tear ducts!

Then as I sought to resume my writing, I came across the eulogy given by Steve Jobs’ biological sister, Mona Simpson, at his memorial service held on 16th October at the Memorial Church of Stanford University.  It has just been published in The New York Times.

It is wonderfully written and expresses the deep love that Steve Jobs had for his family and Mona.  Here is a particularly moving and inspiring recollection by Mona:

“…Steve became ill and we watched his life compress into a smaller circle. Once, he’d loved walking through Paris. He’d discovered a small handmade soba shop in Kyoto. He downhill skied gracefully. He cross-country skied clumsily. No more.

Eventually, even ordinary pleasures, like a good peach, no longer appealed to him.  Yet, what amazed me, and what I learned from his illness, was how much was still left after so much had been taken away.

I remember my brother learning to walk again, with a chair. After his liver transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear him, arms pitched to the chair back. He’d push that chair down the Memphis hospital corridor towards the nursing station and then he’d sit down on the chair, rest, turn around and walk back again. He counted his steps and, each day, pressed a little farther.

Laurene got down on her knees and looked into his eyes.

“You can do this, Steve,” she said. His eyes widened. His lips pressed into each other.

He tried. He always, always tried, and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man.”

Hmm. Still need to finish that Report…..

The devastation of northeastern Japan is nearly beyond belief.  Samaritan’s Purse has initiated an urgent appeal:

“As the death toll mounts and the crisis in Japan deepens from Friday’s devastating earthquake and tsunami, Samaritan’s Purse is rushing personnel and aid to the grim scene. A 747 jumbo jet is being loaded with tons of emergency supplies to be sent immediately.

Working with local Japanese churches and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Samaritan’s Purse is distributing food, water, medicine, blankets, weatherproof plastic, and other essential items in communities along the northeastern Japanese coast, where some officials have estimated casualties at more than 10,000. There is no electricity in many regions; the nights are cold; and the suffering is great. Evacuations over nuclear power concerns have only compounded the problems.

Samaritan’s Purse will be laboring alongside church partners to show survivors the compassion and mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

We need to be praying for these teams and for the plight of the Japanese people who are wondering how they will ever put their lives back together.”

If you would like to contribute financially, you can donate online:

http://www.samaritanspurse.com.au/2011/03/catastrophe-in-japan/

I notice today that my favourite software company has also launched an initiative to assist the suffering people of Japan.  DEVONtechnologies has great products and are wonderfully responsive to their customers. I received today this release from the company:

“Last Friday, Mar 11, 2011, Japan was struck by a catastrophic earthquake followed by a tsunami and the likely melt-down of at least two nuclear power cores with yet-unknown effects on life in the region.

Official sources report more than 10,000 people dead and more than 500,000 homeless, but as of today the concrete number of victims is still unknown.

We will donate 20 percent of all March, 2011, revenues to a disaster help organization sending people and material to Japan, likely Doctors Without Borders, and would like to strongly encourage you to join in and donate to international disaster help organizations, too, to help the survivors of the Pacific Ocean earthquake and their families. You can find a list of organizations on our home page or in newspapers or on news web sites in your home country.”

I use DEVONthink extensively as an information manager.  It has an artificial intelligence engine that is super useful for search, classification and relationship links between subjects.  It also operates seamlessly with scanning/OCR.

You can operate multiple databases and it will handle a wide variety of file formats.

Great product, great company with a genuine community heart.  I’m a bit of a fan!

The Exodus event is one of the great Old Testament miracles and functions through Scripture typologically of God our Deliverer and especially the spiritual deliverance won through Jesus’ death and resurrection.

A scientist, Carl Drews, from Bolder, Colorado, has researched how the movement of wind as described in the book of Exodus could have parted the waters.  The study is part of a larger research project by Drews into the impacts of winds on water depths conducted by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.

The UCAR News Release gives helpful insight on the research:

“Studying maps of the ancient topography of the Nile delta, the researchers found an alternative site for the crossing about 75 miles north of the Suez reef and just south of the Mediterranean Sea. Although there are uncertainties about the waterways of the time, some oceanographers believe that an ancient branch of the Nile River flowed into a coastal lagoon then known as the Lake of Tanis. The two waterways would have come together to form a U-shaped curve.

An extensive analysis of archeological records, satellite measurements, and current-day maps enabled the research team to estimate the water flow and depth that may have existed 3,000 years ago. Drews and Han then used a specialized ocean computer model to simulate the impact of an overnight wind at that site.

As soon as the winds stopped, the waters would come rushing back, much like a tidal bore. Anyone still on the mud flats would be at risk of drowning.”

The following simulation demonstrates how a sustained east wind over the Nile Delta for about nine hours could have pushed back the waters:

Have you heard of Culturomics?  Google has scanned about 15 million books and in conjunction with some Harvard researchers, a database has been built containing 500 billion words used in publications over the last four centuries.  You can read more about this fascinating project here.

By graphing the time frequency of the usage of a word or phrase, the researchers suggest you can obtain insights into cultural changes in societies.

The Google Labs Books Ngram Viewer simply requires you to type in the word/phrase, time period and language.

What conclusions would you draw, if any, from the frequency of use of the following words: Jesus, charismatic, expiation, propitiation?  Here are the charts:

Jesus:

Charismatic:

Propitiation:

Expiation:

Theological rich words describing the atonement are on the slide(!) but ‘Jesus’ isn’t!! Happy nvraming (a lovely verb).

Here’s one pastor who’s not a big fan of Facebook!

I often find Fareed Zakaria an insightful analyst.  His recent article in TIME on ‘How to Restore the American Dream’ is well worth reading.

Not only does he present in understandable terms, the stunning growth in household debt (“household debt rose from $680 billion in 1974 to $14 trillion in 2008″), but also the deadly pincer movement (not his words!) of the American society’s demand for more government and less taxes!

Zakaria presents some case studies that suggest that perhaps there is real structural change occurring rather than a deep recession that will correct itself.  The pincer movement (his words!) of technology and globalisation  is squeezing “people who get paid a decent wage for skilled but routine work in manufacturing or services.”

Zakaria refers to David Autor, an MIT economist, who “is cautious and tentative, but it would seem that technology, followed by global competition, has played the largest role in making less valuable the routine tasks that once epitomized middle-class work.”

Is there a positive way forward?  Zakaria has some suggestions – none of which are easy or painless!

Sometimes numbers can be very humbling.  This blog is one of ~144 million blogs on the internet!  If you like stats, then check out Who’s in the Blogosphere?

Are we sure that covetous is a sin?  Surely the ipulpit would bring more power to the message!!  With this sort of innovation from Little Mountain Productions, perhaps the American economy will bounce back?

Seriously, what America, Australia – indeed every nation needs is a Holy Spirit empowered proclamation of the gospel and Christian living that commends the message to the listeners.

About two years ago, I bought my first D-SLR camera – a Pentax K10D.  It has started me on a new photography hobby.  Which has then stimulated me to get into graphic design (for sermon slides and website etc) and the odd (?) movie or two.  All of this of course has been stimulated by our visually creative Youth Pastor.

So where does a beginner in digital photography and photoshop turn to?  Well, I simply followed the advice of one of the founders of Deep Creek’s Photographic Club – ‘buy Digital Photo each month’.  And what great advice.  The mag is chock full of useful photography hints, and typically at least four Photoshop tutorials on CD.  In the February edition, there were tips on making borders less boring.

So I tried it out on a shot I took of Volterra, Tuscany, Italy on a very cold January morning a few years ago.  Italy is beckoning again!