random thoughts

Tonight on the way out to dinner over at a college friend's house, the car ride conversation spiced up as we took an alternate route instead of King Street (which was surprisingly busy!)

1. what comes to mind when you think of the word "vulcan"

Reason for discussing this was because the question on ABC 702's quiz was "Dr Spock from Star Trek is half man, half what....?

The answer turned out to be half vulcan.

To which i mentioned to tree, 'Isn't a vulcan a type of bird too?' Enter tangent in conversation number 1.

(Apparently, it turns out that Google brings up no references to vulcan being a bird, although one of our hosts shared the same inkling as me, whilst the other said it was this)


2. Outside Enmore Theatre, there were three stormtroopers outside the front entrance! People were posing for photos and had Tree and I had our camera we would have done likewise!!! D'oh!!! They looked awesome


Anyway, its back to the essay for now........funny how my blogging becomes more regular during lecture free weeks!!!

I've set my self a deadline for the end of the week. This weekend, we've got our church weekend away (READ: NOT HOUSEPARTY. I'm trying to eliminate this term from the vocabulary. Who's with me?)

Should be great. Looking forward to it was we explore "the body" in 1 Cor 12-14. Please pray that it'd be an awesome time of rejoicing in God's goodness.

Speaking of God's goodness, dinner conversation was varied but two things I took away were:

1. do we tend to often take people through a 'negative' stage (ie. pointing out how sinful, how rebellious, how lost we are) before presenting the positive (basically presenting the But, the awesome change that's on offer through Jesus) in our preaching and teaching? Is there a place to just focus on the positive?

Preliminary thoughts: Yes - a place for both. You could argue that by going through the negative, it helps us appreciate and value the positive even more. (It adds weight to the 'but' even moreso). Yet, i think we often tack the positive on to the end.

2. why is our singing in church so often unemotional?

Funnily enough, this month's Briefing deals with that topic and I've found it tremendously helpful so far. As someone who has only recently seen and experienced first hand the value and place of music personally for my own soul and feelings towards God, I really appreciated the discussion of our singing as 'a second sermon'.

Finally, a random thought to go out on.....

Stumbled across this post on Justin's blog which i though was slightly relevant (just better articulated) to my post on Engage

As someone who used to be a fanatical American sports card collector, I completely get the metaphor!!


(Sorry - another random thought that just came to mind as I was about to hit "Publish". I've decided to post up a "Theological college buzzword in my mind which gets mentioned a lot but I don't really understand in its entirety or would be confident using in a sentence". Last week's winner: "nuance or nuancing". This week's winner: "presupposition")

Which brings me to the point of essay writing which Adele helpfully pointed out tonight........there's no point trying to use big sentences to try and make me sound scholarly or learned. My aim is to be a clear communicator and to use simple sentences that convey the message for all to hear (even in a cross cultural setting). I wouldn't speak like that in general conversation, so why write like that?

On that note, its back to 1 Peter......