Eaton Ford (day) - New skins for new wine

Paul and I met at his home and enjoyed a great mix of talking, thought and prayer for friends and family, and Bible study. We're picking up in Mark's gospel where we left off back in the spring.

We read Mark 2:13-22, here are some of the main things we thought about together.

There seems to be evidence here that Yahshua didn't plan what he did in quite the way we might do. It seems much more likely that he was just responding to his Father's guidance on a moment by moment basis. He went out for a walk by the lake and people gathered there, so he started teaching them. Then, still walking along, he spotted Levi at work. He called him to follow - and Levi did. He must have left the tax booth with the money and equipment - and just walked away!

Levi clearly invited him for dinner that evening, and Jesus went!

Doesn't he call us to live the same way, not planning but listening? He wants us to say what he says, and do what he does. He wants us to pay attention to him and then live his life in the world day after day. He wants to live inside us so that our words will be his words and our actions his actions. He wants the world to know him by seeing and hearing us! That is awesome!

The Pharisees asked Yahshua's disciples, 'Why does he eat with people who do wrong?' They thought that living according to rules would make them righteous and acceptable to the Almighty. But Jesus tells them that he came for sinners, not for the righteous.

The fast referred to would have been a religious festival and the righteous were certainly expected to adhere to it. It would have been like Ramadan for the Muslims, failing to take part would show contempt for the accepted religion. In that case, why were Yahshua's followers not taking part?

His answer must have been perplexing. He refers to himself as the bridegroom. Perhaps they wondered if he was going to get married!

Verses 21 and 22 are fascinating. Yahshua mentions an old garment and old wineskins. Surely he's referring to the rules of the Pharisees, the idea of fasting because it's customary, the need to avoid eating with sinners. These old patterns of behaviour will be utterly ruined and broken by the new thing that Jesus is ushering in! He's turning the world upside down.

The old rules no longer apply. For example, it's no longer enough to use a ritually cleaned cup to avoid defiling yourself; from now on the words that come out of a person's mouth will determine whether they are holy or profane.

Watton at Stone - Doing battle

It was an exciting evening. Jim had offered to drive and as I walked towards his house I fell heavily on the paving. I have two minor bruises to show for it, but nothing more serious. Perhaps someone didn't want me visiting Watton this evening.

Jim drove down to The Bull at Watton at Stone and David arrived soon after we did. A round of drinks started the proceedings and we chatted about events in our lives.

We also discussed the world's way of doing things as opposed to the Kingdom way. It's not that we need to make a better job of living according to the world. We actually need to live according to the Kingdom instead. Of course the world doesn't like this! The systems that the prince of darkness has put in place are bitterly opposed to all that is good or true or right.

What does it mean to turn the other cheek, or go the extra mile? How do we fight evil with good? How do we love our enemies? We touched on some of these issues and we also gave some thought to the need to obey Father in the moment. David and I shared some things from 'The Grace Outpouring', especially a story about a young American who, having met with Christ, immediately and simply began obeying him.

We invited David and Heather to join us for a meal next Thursday with Jim's family, Sean's family, and mine.

Eaton Ford - Accused in the garden

Sean came over and we watched the DVD of Paul Young speaking about the events in the garden when Yahweh, the man, the woman, and Lucifer faced one another over what had happened. (Part of the DVD set for the House2House Conference 2008.)

Paul sets the scene by first telling a ridiculous (but funny) story to show how theologically impressive he is. In a way, this suggests that Paul thinks theologians may sometimes get things a bit mixed up and make something out of nothing. He follows it up with another story about an experiment with monkeys wearing shock collars, and this time the point seems to be that theological tradition may sometimes be based on little more than thin air.

Then he begins his analysis of Genesis 2 and 3. He has studied this material long and hard, perhaps for some 35 years in all. Everything he says made sense to us although Sean wants to investigate some of the Hebrew words and concepts for himself. I'm very interested to hear what he discovers.

To condense Paul's address into just a sentence or two, his conclusions are as follows.

Lucifer begins by asking Eve if it's true that Yahweh had really said they mustn't eat the fruit of any tree in the garden. She ate and she gave some to Adam.

Questioning them about what happened, Yahweh asks Eve, 'What did you do'. She answers (correctly) that the serpent deceived her and she ate the fruit. But when a moment earlier he had asked Adam what happened, the man joined Lucifer in accusing Yahweh saying, 'The woman you gave me offered me the fruit and I ate it. Eve accused the serpent, but Adam accused Yahweh.

They had both depended on Yahweh to give them worth and value, but now with the relationship broken Eve will look to Adam (from whom she was taken) for these things. He will look to the ground from which he was taken. So which of them is the most damaged, Eve or Adam? In Paul's view Adam has to be in a worse place.

TECHNOLOGY - Dragon readies for launch

Most people are aware that the American Space Shuttle fleet is being retired. The last flight is currently scheduled for next year, 2011. After that, the only way Americans will be able to travel to orbit and dock at the International Space Station (ISS) will be to buy seats from the Russians.

The Constellation Program that was intended to replace the Shuttle has been cut and modified several times and is unlikely to provide a crewed launch facility soon or, perhaps, ever. China has a crewed vehicle, and Europe and Japan both have operational cargo craft from which crewed vehicles might be developed. India is planning and building a crewed launch system.

What the USA does have however is something quite unique. It has several businesses designing and building crewed spacecraft as commercial ventures.

One of these is SpaceX, based in California. They launched the first of their Falcon 9 rockets carrying a dummy Dragon capsule in June 2010. In November they plan to launch another Falcon 9 with a fully functioning Dragon cargo capsule to test the re-entry and landing systems. If all goes well, next year they will be in a position to begin carrying and returning cargo for the ISS - and they already have a full order book from NASA and other clients around the world.

Dragon was designed from the ground up to be capable of carrying seven astronauts in place of cargo. SpaceX is hoping that once Dragon is proven as a reliable cargo system NASA will decide to fund its upgrade and testing as a crewed vehicle.

I wish SpaceX well and hope the mission in November will be a complete success.

(For full details and more photos visit the SpaceX Updates page.)

See also: Up, up, and away

SCIENCE - The biggest collisions

We all know what happens when two objects collide, don't we? It depends on the speed of collision and the nature of the objects. Two balls of dough will stick together, billiard balls will bounce apart, slowly moving cars will stop one another, fast moving cars will crumple.

At some of the largest scales imaginable colliding galaxies pass through one another in a shape-distorting ballet that takes tens of millions of years. Where there were once two spiral galaxies, eventually there will be a single elliptical galaxy. To understand this process it becomes necessary to take into account the presence of dark matter in and around the two galaxies as well as the collisions of gas and the gravitational interactions of countless stars.

But what happens at an even larger scale? What happens when clusters of galaxies collide?

To understand this process more clearly, scientists at three prestigious labs in the USA have run a very large, very complex computer simulation. It took a long time to create and run the model, but you can watch the results in a movie that takes less than three and a half minutes.

What are you watching? First you will see the dark matter interactions, then the mixing of the intergalactic gas, and finally the combination. I should mention that what you see is a series of stop-start movies. In each one some interaction is shown, then the movement stops while the stationary scene is rotated to give you a better view and help you visualise the shapes, then the action moves on again.



For more information about the simulation and what you are seeing, visit Ian O'Neill's article on Discovery News.

THOUGHT - Planting the seed

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As we have already seen in previous posts on church planting, a seed has been found and the ground is prepared and ready. But how do we go about sowing the seed?

We should remember that the plant that will grow is not an individual, but a church. It will be composed of individuals and it may be quite small, even as small as two or three people. The maximum is probably about twenty, but such a large number is less likely.

Father has remarkable ways of arranging things. Jesus said quite clearly, 'I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.' It might well be that he is already building this particular manifestation of his church. Planting a church may already have been done, in secret, by the Lord himself.

Remember that the person (seed) that we are working with is a hospitable, open, caring sort of person. They will already have a community around them, perhaps family, friends, work colleagues, neighbours or a mixture of all four. This community or part of it may itself become church. So the work you will be doing might be planting a church or it might just be recognising the baby church that is already there.

Now do you see the importance of not attempting to draw the person into your existing church? That would just add one person to a group. Instead there is a golden opportunity to add an entire new group. If this is what Yahshua is telling you to do - don't miss it!

It would be foolish to prescribe a church planting method or a series of steps to perform, but there are one or two guidelines. Planting a church is just as much a miracle as is the establishment of a plant in a field. We know that it grows, but we have no idea how. What we can do is encourage the growth as much as possible.

So encourage the person you are working with to share their story with their natural community. They'll listen to someone they know far more attentively than to a stranger. Meet with them and be prepared to answer questions, but don't bring a list of topics to be covered. Be available, but be careful not to meet with them every time, especially so as the new church begins to be established and finds its feet. Give them space to discover for themselves. Their roots are in what Jesus will reveal to them, not in anything you might say.

Encourage them to listen to Jesus, they can do this by reading the gospels together and sharing their thoughts on what he said and did. They need to be willing to put what they learn into practice, they can pray for one another and help one another with practical aspects of their lives. They can begin to eat meals together, do things together, and read Acts and the New Testament letters to find out how church worked in the early years. Again they should begin to put these things into practice. The emphasis will naturally be on loving the Father, loving Jesus, loving one another, and loving those around them.

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