These Lively Oracles

There is an urban myth connected with Sir Edmund Hillary. It was he who conquered Mount Everest in 1953. The myth says that the New Zealand born man had previously tried to climb the mountain in 1952 but that the expedition was turned back before reaching the summit. Hillary returned the following year to complete the task with his Sherpa Tensing Norgay. Apparently on the descent from the top Hillary is supposed to have turned and looked back and said “I climbed you because you have not grown. But I had”. Life is replete with stories of people who could be known as “overcomers”. And church history provides us with countless examples of it. I love to study the history of the church. Not so much doctrines, beliefs or practises. But I love to study the church lineage and see where our beginnings were. Kind of like a family tree for churches. Each church fellowship was born out of another church. In 1735 two young brother preachers boarded a ship for the New World, now known as...

I love this time of year. The cool clear nights allow me to sit out in my back garden and gaze up at the night sky. I have always loved astronomy. I’m not very good at it but I enjoy it anyway. When I was younger I just used to look and see if I could identify any of the constellations. But now as I am older and know a bit more about The Heavens I find myself wondering about the distances and depths of space. Every year, around late September, there is a very familiar star pattern appears in the sky. It is the constellation of Orion and it is very easily identified as having three bright stars in a row. This is known as Orion’s Belt. Orion, along with some other star constellations are mentioned in the Bible… Job ch9: (9) He made the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades… Amos ch5: (8) He made the Pleiades and Orion Other ancient lore tells of the legend of Orion. He moves up from the horizon around September time and then makes his journey across the Autumn and Winter night sky ...

I have some very distant memories from my childhood. One memory is of my parents walking me around the city centre when we came across an old man who was playing music while sitting at the side of the street. We call them “buskers” nowadays. This was an old man who was sitting on a chair. He was wearing a long coat and had a cap on his head. Intertwined between his legs was a carpenter’s saw. The saw was bent at a peculiar angle and he was drawing a violin bow across it. And it made the most beautiful warbling music. As he vibrated his leg it caused the music to produce a vibrato sound which made it all the more hypnotic. And it was beautiful. It was just a distant memory in the depths of my mind when for some strange reason it connect with another distant memory from my childhood. In this memory I was a small child and I was being shown around my Dad’s workplace. He worked in a very large timber yard. There were acres and acres of wood piled up and ready to ship out to the vario...

Many years ago I was sent to work on a particular job. It was to install overhead lighting in a large department store. “Should be easy enough”, I thought. ”I’ve worked on several jobs like that”. And in my mind I was thinking out the basic processes that I had encountered before. Easy job. Run the cables and pipework along the overhead steel beams. Consult the drawings for where the lights are to be situated. Hang the lights down from chains that have been screwed into the ceilings. Dead easy. Everything is in straight lines and everything is squared off. Alas. It was not to be. This building had been built as a wedge shape and none of the beams were parallel. They ran out like the lines of a fan. But the aisles of the store were all straight lines and right angles. All my plans and measurements were criss-crossing everywhere. What I finally had to do was make my measurements on the floor between the aisles and then the apprentice was up on the scaffolding with a plumbline...