I don't know what the problem is with comments. But my experience (having logged out to try this out) is that if at first you don't succeed, try, try and try again. I know that's quite annoying and you may feel that your comment isn't worth the effort. But it will be, I promise! Plus it does seem to get easier to comment the more you do it (so there's an incentive!) Will update if I get any more techno help. Sorry for the inconvenience. Hope the pink flowers make up for it.

without Linda Smith on the News Quiz, I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue or in her own 'A Brief History of Timewasting.' Clever and funny, she made me giggle a lot and, I think deservedly, was voted the wittiest person on the radio. You can hear the News Quiz tribute here.

Life will be a lot less fun for her now. She was (I have just learned) President of the British Humanist Assocation. Presumably, she is even now finding out the consequences of suppressing the truth about God, not honouring him as God and not giving thanks to him for life, laughter and all good things. Sad. Very sad.

Lord of Lords
Holy of Holies
Age of Ages
Work of Works
Vanity of Vanities
Locust of Locusts
Song of Songs

Any more?

How about you all write to Tony Blair and recommend me for a Hereditary Peerage? I'd like to be known as Rosalind, Countess of Mercia. Perhaps someone could start a campaign.

when Hebrew is so much more useful? And interesting. And fun. And most of the bible is written in Hebrew.

I take it that one of the things we do when we share the communion meal with our brothers and sisters in the Lord is look forward to the great wedding feast, the marriage supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:9).

So why don't we enjoy it more? Certainly, the most common expression on people's faces at the communion meals I've eaten is solemn. And usually there's a determined attempt to keep it a private experience,to avoid catching anyone else's eye, to acknowledge others at the table.

But that's not the way we celebrate the wedding feast. The bridegroom invites his guests to 'Eat friends, drink, and be drunk with love' (Song of Songs 5:1). Sounds like a proper party to me.

So, maybe next time you eat and drink, and rejoice in the Lord's death which has brought you into this family, you could try smiling at the people around you. Just a thought.

My favourite bits...

Duties are ours, but events are the Lord's.

Sorrow, loss, sadness, death, are the worst of things that are, except sin.

It is neither shame nor pride for a drowning man to swim to a rock.

Heaven is no dream.

Apparently John Locke proposed in 1690 that the right to property comes through the labour of those who work it. Since labour is 'owned' by the person in whom it is embodied, then anything that labour is applied to, is naturally "owned" by the labourer.

Now the bible tells us that 'the earth is the Lord's and everything in it' (Psalm 24:1) and, specifically with respect to Israel that 'the land is mine' (Leviticus 25:23).

But within that general principle of God's ownership, the possession of land by people does indeed seem to be linked with working that land. So Adam in Genesis 2:15 is placed by God in the garden of Eden 'to work it and keep it'. And the Israelites, when they are given the land, are given it to work (Leviticus 25:3).

And, it seems to me, the point of the Jubilee regulations is not to relieve debt but to reunite people with their land. It is the same land, whether fertile or barren, which is restored. Land which has been worked by the family, land which is known and understood, land which is cared for and fed, land which yields food for the family, even through the sabbath year. City property, which doesn't have this same reciprocal relationship, is not subject to the Jubilee regulations.

So what?

If all the earth is the Lord's, we need to tend it in the way which he has commanded. Remember why the Israelites went into exile? In Leviticus 26 it's pretty clear that it's because they don't let the land have its sabbath.

And we need to recognise the importance of working the land in experiencing God's blessings. This is what we're here for - to rule and subdue, to work the land and keep it, and in so doing to bring glory to God, our landlord.

Easy and yummy: pork and lemon meatballs.

3oz breadcrumbs
1lb pork mince (if you can't buy mince, just get a cheap cut, chop it and then stick it in the food processor)
lemon
parsley
thyme
grated parmesan
1 tin anchovies

Chop herbs. Grate lemon zest and squeeze juice. Chop anchovies. Mix everything together. If you're doing it in the food processor, don't bother chopping too finely; if not, chop everything quite fine. Add salt and pepper.

Shape into meatballs using about 1 dessert spoon of mixture for each. Flour them. You can cover them and stick them in the fridge for as long as you like at this stage.

Fry in a mix of oil and butter (go on, you know it tastes better), not turning too often. They take about 10-12 mins, starting with a medium-hot pan then lowering the temperature after a few minutes. Near the end, pour about half a pint of chicken stock over the meatballs and cook until it's reduced into a sticky sauce including all the bits that have come off the meatballs.

Serve with tagliatelle and salad.

Time for something a bit more heartwarming...

My God, thou hast helped me see
that whatever good be in honour and rejoicing,
how good is he who gives them and can withdraw them;
that blessedness does not lie so much
in receiving good from and in thee,
but in holding forth thy glory and virtue,
that nothing is good but thee;
that I am near good when I am near thee,
that to be like thee is a glorious thing:
this is my magnet, my attraction.

Thou art all my good in time of peace,
my only support in time of trouble,
my one sufficiency when life shall end.
Help me to see how good thy will is in all,
and even when it crosses mine
teach me to be pleased with it.
Grant me to feel thee in fire and food and every providence
and to see that thy many gifts and creatures
are but thy hands and fingers taking hold of me.

Thou bottomless fountain of good, I give myself to thee out of love,
for all I have or own is thine to do with as thou wilt,
to honour thyself by me and by all mine.
If it be consistent with thy eternal counsel,
the purpose of thy grace and the great ends of thy glory,
then bestow upon me the blessings of thy comforts.

If not, let me resign myself to thy wiser determination.

I'm struggling to understand the reasons behind the traditional understanding of God's immutability. Here's my summary of the best reasons I can find:

1. Everyone you'd ever want to agree with in church history believes it.

2. Clark Pinnock doesn't.

3. If God is simple then all his attributes are essential. So they cannot be lost or gained. So they cannot change. And since God is his attributes, he cannot change.

4. If God is eternal (in the specific sense of existing 'outside time') then he cannot change since change necessarily depends on time.

5. If God is utterly reliable, so that he can swear by himself and his word, then he must have absolute knowledge of himself, not just as he is at any given moment but at all times. But this kind of absolute knowledge is what we call experience. So God must experience himself as he is at all times, and therefore be what he is at all times. And therefore not change, since he experiences all his life simultaneously.

6. Which is quite similar to: If God is maximally alive, there can be no experience which he will experience in the future or has in the past that he does not experience now. He can neither gain nor lose experience, therefore he cannot change.

7. If there is unrealized potential in God, then the actualization of this must either add to him (making him less than God now) or decrease him (making him less than God). So he must be 'pure act', i.e. all that he ever will be, he is now. And therefore, unchanging.

Here are my problems:

1. We seem to be presuming a particular understanding of God's eternality which has time as a created thing rather than as part of God's essential nature. What evidence is there for this? Why couldn't time be essential to God in the same way that, for example, number is essential to God?

2. Even though God clearly cannot change in his essence or attributes (since he is simple), surely it is evident that he does change in his relationships? Now, if we say that this is just us as timebound creatures experiencing differences which God experiences all together in his timeless eternity, then in what way is he reliable or unchanging towards us? How do we know what other different experiences are in God which we are yet to experience?

3. And if we say that the change in relationships is ad extra, not requiring any change in God-as-he-is-in-himself then in what sense is God actually relating to us? It's not the same as the kind of impersonal relation that the Cambridge change offers. Relationships are correlative: to be Father does demand the existence of the Son; to be Creator does demand the existence of the creation; to be Saviour does demand the existence of those saved... God cannot be 'creator' in the abstract, but only the creator of the creation. So either: this is essential to his nature, he's always creator and there's always been a creation for him to be creator of... Wrong!! Or it's not essential to his nature, he's never been creator and there's no creation... Wrong!!

4. We seem to have got quite a long way from the biblical presentation of 'the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob' who identifies himself in relational terms as if these are an important part of him ad intra, not just ad extra.

5. And from the biblical material which does seem to talk about God in temporal (though infinite) terms. 'your years are without end' (Psalm 102:27); 'I am the Alpha and the Omega... who is and who was and who is to come' (Revelation 1:8); 'God decreed before the ages' (1 Corinthians 2:7)

Help!

Quite an important question, since Jesus tells us that it is by loving our neighbour as well as loving God that we will live (Luke 10:27-28). And, as we all know, Jesus answers the question by telling a story.

It is the story of a man who fell among robbers, was stripped and beaten and left for dead. He lies helpless, waiting for someone to show him mercy. Not the priest, not the Levite but the Samaritan, who binds up his wounds, pours on oil and wine, lifts him up onto his own donkey and takes him to a place of safety, paying all that it costs to restore him to health.

So, who is the neighbour? Jesus ends his story by asking the lawyer this question. And the lawyer, surely, gets it right. The neighbour is the one who shows mercy. Not just a way of avoiding naming the Samaritan but a way of showing his understanding of the story. The neighbour is the one who shows mercy on the one who is helpless and needy.

But here's the thing. The command which the lawyer quotes correctly tells us not to be a neighbour but to love our neighbour. In other words, love the one who shows mercy.

So who is that? Who is the neighbour who binds our wounds, lifts us up, takes us to a place of safety and restores us to health when we are lying helpless and dying? Who is the neighbour we must love? Surely the neighbour is the Lord Jesus himself.

Seems typical of human pride that we automatically identify ourselves as those in a position to help, those who are able to give, those who dispense mercy rather than as the one needing help, needing mercy.

But here's the question, what does Jesus mean when he tells the lawyer to go and do likewise? Is it a rhetorical question, making the point that the lawyer couldn't keep the law like that? Or is it a command for believers, for Spirit-enabled obedience? Or is it a command to 'do' what the injured man did, i.e. nothing but receive mercy?

... to the pressure to have a blog. Suddenly it will become very evident to everyone just how shallow and trivial most of my thoughts are. Or perhaps I'll learn the art of self-censorship and preserve a modicum of dignity.

Anyway, here will be a few thoughts and very many questions which I hope other, wiser people will be able to answer for me. And (vain hope, I know) perhaps it'll rid me of the temptation to take two hour coffee-breaks in the academic centre foyer. Or maybe it'll provide a 'virtual' foyer which will be of some comfort when I leave.