Category Archives: snippets

Never able to wait

This week has demonstrated once again humanity’s inability to wait. We’ve entered on the last year of the decade, and almost the entire world has celebrated a new decade a year early. It’s a bit like the ingrained credit habit — buy now, pay later.

The UK is currently largely under snow. Just a foot to a foot and a half at most, but enough for things to grind to a halt in many places, and slither along in others. And we can’t accept that normality may not be resumed for a few days. It’s not necessarily anyone’s fault. I watched the evening news last night with incredulity as travellers at Gatwick Airport bemoaned the fact that they wouldn’t be able to take off on their skiing holiday. Didn’t the authorities realise that they had paid for ski passes? They weren’t going to accept that a foot of snow on the runway was a problem. They wanted business as usual — NOW!

Granted, younger people have never seen real snow in Britain. But many of the most vociferous complainants on what is euphemistically called “The News” should remember the conditions in 1963, 1955 and 1947. I recall my father recounting how he had to dig the family our in 1947. The snow was over half-way up the front door, and they lived in the city, not the country. And then he had to walk 5 or 6 miles to work, and then the same back. Somehow the trams couldn’t cope with the snow!

It’s ironic that so soon after Christmas the world has forgotten that waiting is part of the human experience. God has made it so. It took some 4000 years for God to fulfil his Garden Promise (Genesis 3:15). I often wonder just how small the band of those “waiting for the consolation of Israel” (Luke 2:25) or “waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38) when Jesus was born. And as I reflect on the general impatience of contemporary society, I wonder just how many are truly waiting for Jesus coming again.

Subversive, and proud of it

Doug Groothuis (who blogs at The Constructive Curmudgeon) explained last week how is attempting to subvert Twitter by using proper grammar, eschewing abbreviations and avoiding trivia. I’m with him on that, not that either of us are recent converts to using proper grammar.  I even do that with text messages. I’m not sure either of us will succeed, but we may as well die trying.

Web Roundup

Some gleanings from the past month:

  • Are we heading for ecological disaster? Or is it all hype? Or perhaps there is a hidden agenda. It’s not often that dissenting voices are reported, and usually they’re written off as crackpots. That might be a little hard when they come with environmentalist pedigrees like Bjørn Lomborg and Indur M. Goklany. The Kairos Journal article “Is Economic Progress Killing Our Planet?” makes interesting reading. I’ve had a growing suspicion of the popular view for some time. It looks like there might be hard evidence to back up scepticism. Lombord has his own Web site at http://www.lomborg.com/.
  • Justin Taylor posted ‘On the Distinction between Christ’s “Passive” and “Active” Obedience‘ (Between Two Worlds, 15 May 2009). Very helpful in making the distinction clear.
  • The Soul in Cyberspace: An Interview with Gouglas Groothuis (Tim Challies, 6 May 2009) was an interesting piece that got me thinking again about the effects of technology. The quote that struck Tim forecefully, “Chistians are specially equipped to think rightly about technology,” also struck me.

Web Roundup

I’ve appreciated some miscellaneous postings and sites over the past week:

  • Philip Brown has written a good summary article about capital punishment, entitled ‘Capital Punishment within a Christian Worldview‘ (Exegetical Thoughts & Biblical Theology, 24 Apr 2009). While I would largely agree with what he says, I found he came up with some fresh and stimulating arguments.
  • Tim Challies had a stimulating reflection on/quote from Ligon Duncan’s book Fear Not!, entitled ‘Eternity Without a Mediator‘ (26 Apr 2009). Hell is a provocative subject, but Duncan has some fresh thoughts that are pretty thought-provoking.
  • 360 Cities is an impressive site of panoramic views at various locations worldwide. James Darlack has some targetted links to areas of biblical interest in ‘Panoramic Views on 360cities.net‘ (Old in the New, 12 Mar 2009).


    Ephesus at 360Cities

  • Reformed Praise is a site with new and updated hymns, mainly by David L. Ward. I liked many of the hymns, and most are easily learned by any congregation. Most come with mp3 and piano score or lead sheet.

Ephesus on 360Cities

Carson on his own books

Mark Dever has interviewed Don Carson about his own books, and a few by others. Just under an hour in length, it is well worth the listen for his insights, and Dever’s comments. One thing, among several, that stood out for me was the need to make use of indexes to get to the information you need. I made the mistake of listening while doing something else, so I’m going to have to listen again some time to get the most out of it. But on reflection, I think I would have needed to do that anyway. Now I’ve added to my wishlist!

A new home

Welcome to the new home of Captive Thoughts. I decided it was time for my own domain, so here I am.  Everything has been brought over from the old WordPress site which I will leave frozen at this point.

I’m still in the process of tweaking the new theme to add a few things that I like, but that are missing. It may take a few weeks, but eventually I’ll get there. It’s just like moving into a new house. There’s usually a little bit of decorating and DIY to do.