You are now leaving Sermon City.

Two sermons in Galatians down. And that's the end of my sermon-load for a little while now. Both sermons came together pretty well. Thanks for praying.

In preaching those sermons I realised for the first time just how intimidating it is to preach to a member of College faculty on a text in their particular area of study. Check out Philip Kern's research focus! He goes to my church.

On a lighter note, remember this guy?


I snapped this poster in one of my regular haunts.

A Sleepy Little Commuter Town

So the Mercury reckons there is no happier place in Tassie than my hometown, Margate. You can't argue with high quality research, people.

Kaboom

The other day I bought some Bob Dylan.

I've a hunch about buying the greats. Unless you're going to buy Bob's entire back-catalogue, you have to decide whether to buy a couple of albums, or a compilation. Some say that the compilations never have the best tracks. I think that's rubbish in the case of Dylan, at least. His compilations don't lack his best songs, they just don't include all of them. A tall order for a single compilation, I'd suggest. I think rather, the choice between compilation and album is the difference between (primarily) knowing about his place in music, and knowing the man.

If you buy a compilation, of course you'll be better positioned to 'get' the overall contribution of the artist to their time and have a sense of how they matured and changed over the years (if you pay attention to release dates and history, that is). A worthy enterprise.

But if you buy a couple of albums, I think you get to know the person, more personally. You sit with them for a time. You'll never get all Bob's best songs this way; he has too many. And you won't get the sense of the whole. But there's something nice about sitting with the man for the year 1965, or whenever.

I bought albums.

On Con's recommendation, I also bought James Muller's Kaboom.

Muddled through Hebrew

A quick update on this week...

1. Thankfully, my Hebrew mini-exam went pretty well. The questions were basically what I expected, and I think my answers were ok, too. That's two Hebrew mini-exams down; two to go.
   
2. Still working on my sermon for Sunday. Plenty of work ahead :)
   

Drug Dealers Hassling your Kids?

These posters, which suddenly popped up all over the Inner West last week, made me laugh out loud.

Term 1 Resumes...

Back at College for the last week of Term 1 (to be immediately followed by the first week of Term 2. Go figure).

This week is set to be rather busy on account of two deadlines:

1. A Hebrew test on Thursday. I basically need to know all the weak-verb paradigms. For those who are in the know, it's geminates and hollows that are doing my head in at the moment.
2. A sermon to write for church this Sunday. It's on the opening paragraph of Galatians. I should go work on that right now...
   

Plenty there for prayer folks :)

In other news, a couple of church planters spoke at college this afternoon. I've posted a small reflection on the session over at the MTS Tasmania blog.

The Vibe at Bondi

I have to admit I was a bit surprised by the vibe of Bondi. I know it's not exactly peak season, but I had probably expected the glam-but-soulless feel of Surfers. It was not to be, I am glad to say.


The place was remarkably... real, settled. I guess there aren't massive hotels. And you don't get the sense that every shop just appeared yesterday and might be gone tomorrow. That permanence begets a certain depth to the cultural experience of it all, I think.