» The Coins
28/03/24 12:14 from Living In Grace
How much is Jesus worth to you?  When Judas approached the chief priests and negotiated to hand Jesus over to them, we note the value he placed on Jesus' head - 30 pieces of silver. According to tradition, this was the sum of money ...

» Duties at Boarding School
28/03/24 07:58 from Urban Ministry Live And Unplugged
History. So often it's the detail that gets lost. So this is interesting as a list of new boys' duties at boarding school for the first year they were there (I wrote this list at the time, in 1975). This in fact was the last year that th...

» Striking Church
27/03/24 09:56 from Urban Ministry Live And Unplugged
I have at least 30 photos of Dutch Reformed Churches on this blog. They appear under the label "Local Churches". Out of all those Churches, the most striking is, I think, the Dutch Reformed Church Prince Albert (pictured). OBSERVATION: &...

» Need for Numbers
26/03/24 21:12 from Urban Ministry Live And Unplugged
The times they are a'changin'. Wife E is involved in arranging a banquet in South Africa's Eastern Cape. Ten years ago, when booking a venue, one did not generally need to declare how many people would be there. It was (and is) the cultu...

» Birth of a Son
26/03/24 19:00 from Urban Ministry Live And Unplugged
I put this photo up on Facebook today. It is son M before he was even discharged from hospital -- in 1986. He weighed 2.925 kg at birth (6 lbs 7 oz). His name was derived from the Hebrew מתתיה Mattathiah: Gift of God. I wrote to my paren...

» The Crown
26/03/24 13:21 from Living In Grace
The closest I have ever come to wearing a crown is at Christmas time, when we don the paper crowns that come out of the crackers. I find them a little annoying at times, mainly because they don't always fit so nicely. After a while, I us...

» A Free Country?
25/03/24 20:31 from Urban Ministry Live And Unplugged
It's a free country, they say. There's a long wooden bridge nearby, that I like to cross. A resident warned me today, don't cross that bridge. You deliver yourself to thugs. What happened to my freedom? Is it a free country? I took the p...

» The Crowds
25/03/24 15:54 from Living In Grace
Wherever Jesus went he was followed by a crowd of people. The more the news about him spread, the greater the crowds became. The Bible tells us how Jesus felt about these people: " When he saw  the   crowds , he had compassion ...

» Dressing Up and Down
24/03/24 19:09 from Urban Ministry Live And Unplugged
I visited my old city Church today. In my time, it was well attended. It was sparsely attended now, as it has been for years. What struck me today was that most people dressed down . This gave it the look of a working class congregation....

» Signs in Letters
24/03/24 12:22 from Urban Ministry Live And Unplugged
There has been a surge of interest in analysing people's non-verbal language. One finds it very much in writing , too. There are both the enduring messages of writing, and immediate revelations. In the Church, people are passing notes to...

» Creating a Buzz
23/03/24 10:26 from Urban Ministry Live And Unplugged
Here's something worth advertising. My publishers felt that an ad campaign for my new philosophy "for adults and teens" was "not creating the necessary buzz", so reduced the Kindle price from $11.49 to $3.44 -- just for 30 days. The book...

» The Lamb is presented for inspection.
23/03/24 08:21 from Living In Grace
It was customary for  the Passover Lamb to be kept for four days before the actual Passover (see Exodus 12). This allowed the people of Israel the chance to present their lambs to the priest for inspection. Is it not incredibly prof...

» Salt Marshes
22/03/24 20:29 from Urban Ministry Live And Unplugged
I took the photo earlier today, a few minutes' walk from my home, in Cape Town's Table Bay Nature Reserve. These are salt marshes, of which one finds patches all over Cape Town. 

» Real-Time Editing
21/03/24 17:19 from Urban Ministry Live And Unplugged
I had a session today with an editor in Virginia, trialling real-time on-line video editing. It took us about 20 minutes to connect between Africa and the USA -- that was a problem. The editing worked. She correctly picked up a few detai...

» Speak up for the rights of the destitute
21/03/24 11:19 from Living In Grace
  As we remember Human Rights Day (in South Africa) on the 21st of March, it is good to remember a few important things:  Proverbs 31:8 - Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitu...

» Cost of Passports
21/03/24 09:01 from Urban Ministry Live And Unplugged
I applied for two passports this month, one South African and one British. The process of applying is ongoing for the British passport, but I have paid the requisite fee. How much did the passports cost? The South African passport cost R...

» Revamped Website
20/03/24 21:48 from Urban Ministry Live And Unplugged
I revamped my author website a little this week. Above all, one doesn't want to waste people's time with superfluous link clicks or circuitous routes to things, so I have added some short cuts. My author website is here:  https://th...

» Wave after wave
20/03/24 11:06 from Living In Grace
The image of waves crashing onto the seashore is a beautiful picture for us all. There is something therapeutic about hearing the waves washing onto the sand or crashing onto the rocks. When we read these words from Luke 1, in a paraphra...

» Poor Photo
19/03/24 20:53 from Urban Ministry Live And Unplugged
I had a passport photo taken today at Superfoto. I asked them, Can you take a photo for a British passport? Oh yes, they said, absolutely. This is what His Majesty's Passport Office thought of it (pictured). So I took my own photo with a...

» Trust And Distrust
19/03/24 20:21 from Urban Ministry Live And Unplugged
A young married couple came to see me. She said: "He told me that if I continue to mope, he'll go ***** his old girlfriend. How can I trust him after he said that?" OBSERVATION:  Well, this husband fails Matrimony 101. Yet "How can ...

» Dealing with distractions this Holy Season
19/03/24 13:11 from Living In Grace
As we embark upon this sacred season of Holy Week, there are many things that threaten to distract us from doing the most important of our tasks. And for any believer, the most important task we should be doing at this time of the year, ...

» Engineering Puzzle
18/03/24 20:13 from Urban Ministry Live And Unplugged
Some time back, I attended the synagogue (shul) in Paarl, near Cape Town. This posed an engineering puzzle for me. How did those matchstick pillars hold up all those people? Personally I suspect that the engineers built something into th...

» A big misunderstanding?
18/03/24 13:24 from Living In Grace
When Jesus had set his mind and heart towards Jerusalem, he pronounced: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified" - John 12:23 (NIV) It is believed that in saying this, Jesus was referring back to the words of Daniel an...

» Annual Philosophy Lecture
17/03/24 19:14 from Urban Ministry Live And Unplugged
I read that the Philosophy Sharing Foundation's Annual Philosophy Lecture was an all-round, resounding success on Friday—hosting Matt Qvortrup. I hold the Lecture in 2025. Here is an impression of Friday's event on (click here) LinkedIn ...

» A thought for Saint Patrick's Day
17/03/24 19:06 from Living In Grace
Most of us are aware that Patrick is the patron Saint of Ireland, and yet he was not technically Irish at all. He was born in Britain and taken captive by Irish raiders in the early 400's. After spending 6 years as a shepherd/slave in Ir...

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