Happy Birthday & Top Gear

Yesterday was the second Birthday of OnMeBus and it was the day I was hoping to relaunch with the new look etc, however there have been a few set back but that should happen possibly later today but more likely early next week.

I also wanted to talk about Top Gear though. Yesterday also being Valentines Gill and I celebrated with a Chinese take away and watched Top Gear (how romantic I know, but then it was about 3 in the afternoon before we even remembered it was valentines!) This was a repeat of Sunday episode so if you saw it you will know what I am talking about if not you can see the relevant clip here (I would watch it no before you read on!) Now I know that a lot of Top Gear now is about stupid stunts etc but I felt this decorate each others cars to see if you can get the other arrested or shot was going too far and in poor taste only made worse by the fact that it is only a few months since Richard Hammond nearly lost his life filming for the show! But this act was set up to deliberately, deeply offend people, now some of their stunts have annoyed people, drive time radio show, road resurfacing, trying to play golf and keep arguing and holding up the whole course, but these were not offensive unlike this latest stunt in America, there was indeed one point where they did nearly get them selves caught by the locals who were not at all impressed. What’s more it had nothing to do with the cars or even what they were trying to show you could do (or not as the case turned out which was to do a fly drive holiday but buy a car instead of rent.) I personally think this was irresponsible and distasteful programming by the producers and the BBC and I was very disappointed that they would call this entertainment.

The slight redeeming aspect of the programme was finishing off in an area that a year ago had been hit by hurricane Katrina and they were supposed to be trying to sell the cars, however they were so hit by the devastation that still existed that they offered them to a local charity who put them in contact with local people who still had no car after the hurricane took everything they owned.

It only takes a few stupid people spoil it for others!

Yesterday was Gill’s birthday, I think she had a good day! we went out as a family for a meal in the evening which was really nice, a good local family restaurant but my meal which was very nice was slightly spoilt but a few stupid people. I like my steak to be shown the heat but not actually put it on! So I ordered my steak blue, to be told we can’t do blue steak! ‘WHAT!’ apparently the problem is too many people have ordered their steak blue and then complained because it wasn’t hot in the middle, I say it again ‘WHAT!’ people get real if you order a steak blue it means it’s still raw in the middle, heat cooks food, so a blue steak will not be hot in the middle, it is your moronic idea that you can have a blue steak HOT, when have you ever had hot raw food? Other than that it was a good meal and I ate way too much. Happy Birthday Gill.

Another year gone.

So here we are 2007, Christmas is over and soon all the decorations will be put away and everywhere will look bare again. I just can’t help wondering if every year we (as in the whole church) misses an opportunity. It seems to me that every year many people get Jesus out of the box along with the other decorations, they do the Church thing over Christmas because it’s a nice traditional Christmas story (even if the traditionally story is possibly largely based on bad interpretation, see my post from last Christmas). The problem comes about now, when Jesus goes back in the box with the decorations, and back in the loft to be forgotten about until next year. The question then comes as to what we can do during this brief period when people are actually thinking about the person of Jesus and wanting to remember him, whether out of quaint family tradition or a deeper desire to find more meaning to life and the Christmas season. Somehow during this period we need to challenge people to think about what the Christmas message is, taking it from ‘nice traditional story’ to a life changing historical event, we need to move them from leaving saying “wasn’t it nice to sing those carols” to saying “there was something about that, something there and I don’t know what it was but I want to find out”. I sometimes wonder if we have got so bogged down in the tradition ourselves that we have almost forgotten the Gospel. I remember Mike Yaconelly at Greenbelt talking about the church being full of the people it’s not meant for, Jesus himself said ‘it’s not the healthy who need a doctor’. Are we missing an opportunity so keen to offer the nice traditional Christmas services that we focus on this baby being born and we forget to tell people that he was born with a purpose. If you look at the web address above you will see the domain name ‘notashamed’ coming from Romans 1:16 ‘I am not ashamed of the Gospel for it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes’. Is this true for our services over Christmas if like Paul we are not ashamed then we need to show it, we need to tell people the gospel and Christmas is a major opportunity to do so, yes lets talk about the nice story of the first Christmas but lets put it in the context of salvation and the worlds need for it!

End of rant, hope you did have a good Christmas and pray that you might find peace and grace through the knowledge of salvation this year. God bless