These Lively Oracles

I remember sitting in school many, many years ago and being totally bored out of my head with the lesson. It was a music lesson. On the blackboard there were the musical lines with the various notes placed at intervals along them. I knew what their names were. Clefs. Crotchets. Quavers. Semi-quavers. Sharps and Flats. I could see them all making their wavy patterns along the lines. But they just looked like a row of tadpoles to me. I found it all very confusing. But I also knew that somewhere in all that row of dots, lines and squiggles there was a musical tune. But, for the life of me, I just couldn’t figure it out. To make matters worse, between me and that blackboard there was a piano. It sat there with the lid open and all the keys displayed to full view, and on many occasions I sat and looked at them both and just couldn’t see how they all came together. I guess the music teacher just took this as laziness or disinterest so he handed us books to read on the history of musical comp...

Anyone and everyone who knows me knows that I have a great love for technology. I spent my whole working career involved with engineering and technology of one sort or another. When I started my working career there was no such thing as a home computer. And calculators were only available to university lecturers and researchers. The mobile phone was non existant. We had to use real phones in phone boxes. I have witnessed the advent and rise of home computer technology from being non existant to the point now that any working person or business cannot function properly without one. And it has been an interesting time to watch. Schools and colleges have now taken this methodology and given it a definition all of its own. It’s called S.T.E.M. – Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics. And it has been fascinating to watch. I can go and get a little selection of electronic components and connect them all together so that they make a little buzzer. I can do the calculations so that t...

Many years ago I visited a foreign country. I had heard that there was a local pastor there who came from my area and had gone out there to do some missionary church work. And since we had some mutual friends I decided to contact him and go for a coffee. We met up and had a good chat and then he invited me to his Sunday service and gave me directions through the little streets of the town to his church. As I walked along the streets and followed the directions he gave me I saw nothing that would indicate there was a church nearby. Sometimes there should be a symbol of a cross, or a dove or a bible. Or a word on a sign something along the lines of “ecclesia” or “evangelista” written somewhere. But I saw nothing. Just some closed up facades of the shops and workplaces. I was just about to give up and return to my car when I heard a distant voice shouting “Hey you!!!!” What made this voice catch my attention was the broad local accent that I recognised. I turned around and looked up the s...

I’ve just recently watched a movie called “The Taking Of Pelham 123”. Not the original move, but the remake with John Travolta and Denzel Washington. Coincidentally, my other favourite train movie is called “Unstoppable” and also stars Denzel Washington. If I ever get onto a train and see Denzel Washington on it I’m getting right off the train again. Trains. I love trains. I’ve got several model ones of my own. I got my first wind-up toy train when I was about 3 or 4 yrs old. What is it that’s so fascinating about a simple motorised toy that only goes one way around a track and doesn’t really do anything else? However, unknown to me, the analogy of a train was to serve me well in later years when I was having a discussion with another Christian colleague. He didn’t know the trouble that I was in or the severity of the pressure that I was under in my personal life. There was a lot in my life that wasn’t right, and I knew this. And it was only my faith in Jesus that kept me convinced tha...