The Cat Came Back

We used to have a cassette that had lots of really funny, weird songs and stories on it. When searching through youtube yesterday Mum found this clip of one of the songs. It is really funny....I recommend it to you.

The Cat Came Back

C. H. Spurgeon Evening Devotion

Sunday, September 21, 2008
This Evening's Meditation
C. H. Spurgeon

"Gather not my soul with sinners."—Psalm 26:9.

FEAR made David pray thus, for something whispered, "Perhaps, after all, thou mayst be gathered with the wicked." That fear, although marred by unbelief, springs, in the main, from holy anxiety, arising from the recollection of past sin. Even the pardoned man will enquire, "What if at the end my sins should be remembered, and I should be left out of the catalogue of the saved?" He recollects his present unfruitfulness—so little grace, so little love, so little holiness, and looking forward to the future, he considers his weakness and the many temptations which beset him, and he fears that he may fall, and become a prey to the enemy. A sense of sin and present evil, and his prevailing corruptions, compel him to pray, in fear and trembling, "Gather not my soul with sinners." Reader, if you have prayed this prayer, and if your character be rightly described in the Psalm from which it is taken, you need not be afraid that you shall be gathered with sinners. Have you the two virtues which David had—the outward walking in integrity, and the inward trusting in the Lord? Are you resting upon Christ's sacrifice, and can you compass the altar of God with humble hope? If so, rest assured, with the wicked you never shall be gathered, for that calamity is impossible. The gathering at the judgment is like to like. "Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn." If, then, thou art like God's people, thou shalt be with God's people. You cannot be gathered with the wicked, for you are too dearly bought. Redeemed by the blood of Christ, you are His for ever, and where He is, there must His people be. You are loved too much to be cast away with reprobates. Shall one dear to Christ perish? Impossible! Hell cannot hold thee! Heaven claims thee! Trust in thy Surety and fear not!

Friedrich Nietzsche

I stumbled across a page full of Nietzsche (pronounced Nee-cheV) quotes this evening...... I have placed below some of them, and alongside a few have given my answers/comments (which are somewhat flavoured with sarcasm. God forgive me).

• What is more harmful than any vice? Active pity for all the failures and all the weak: Christianity.


• Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies....that depends if the convictions are based on truth or lies, and also whether the one holding the conviction understands the truth or lie behind their belief.


• What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome....he seems to lay a lot of stress on power here, like that is all there is to this life. Strife, resistance, a hold on the power for a time, defeat at last.


• There are no facts, only interpretations.......is that a fact? How does he intend for me to interpret that statement?


• In Heaven all the interesting people are missing..... Nietzsche is missing certainly.


• In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point....I would disagree with this certainly.


• I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.


• God is dead.....correction, Nietzsche is dead.

Enjoy....

Romans 5

I was reading this passage in the Bible last night:

"For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life." (verse 10)

It has really struck me. It appears to me on reading this passage that the life of Christ (life eternal, since His Resurrection from the dead) is the means by which we are saved from damnation. Not His death, as I had previously supposed. Christ's death is the means of reconciliation. As the verse says: we are reconciled to God by His Son's death.....but are saved by His Son's life. So without the Resurrection, there would be no salvation. Both the reconcilitaion and the salvation are integral to our relationship with God, so both must be given equal consideration when praying, when fellowshipping, when witnessing.

This morning I read Cath's post on The Resurrection and Worship which was timely. I recommend that you click on the link to have a look. It goes further to look at how Christ's Resurrection ought to affect Christian's worship.

In the words of the early Believers (thanks to Cath):

"Christos anesti!"

C. S. Lewis

I have decided to post a biographical note on some famous persons sporadically--or in other words, whenever I have the time, as I am also supposed to be posting some reviews and quotes from good literature when I can fit it in. I am ashamed to say that all I did was cut and paste from the C. S. Lewis website, but hey, if I had to do it off my own back it would never have come!

So I have decided to start with my favourite author: C. S. Lewis.

1898 Clive Staples Lewis was born on November 29 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to Albert J. Lewis (1863-1929) and Florence Augusta Hamilton Lewis (1862-1908). His brother Warren Hamilton Lewis had been born on June 16, 1895

1908 Flora Hamilton Lewis died of cancer on August 23, Albert Lewis' (her husband's) birthday. In September Lewis was enrolled at Wynyard School, Watford, Hertfordshire referred to by C.S. Lewis as "Oldie's School" or "Belsen".

1910 Lewis left "Belsen" in June and, in September, was enrolled as a boarding student at Campbell College, Belfast, one mile from "Little Lea," where he remained until November, when he was withdrawn upon developing serious respiratory difficulties.

1911 Lewis was sent to Malvern, England, which was famous as a health resort, especially for those with lung problems. Lewis was enrolled as a student at Cherbourg House (which he referred to as "Chartres"), a prep school close by Malvern College where Warnie was enrolled as a student. Jack remained there until June 1913. It was during this time that he abandoned his childhood Christian faith. He entered Malvern College itself (which he dubbed "Wyvern") in September 1913 and stayed until the following June.

1914 In April, Lewis met Arthur Greeves (1895-1966), of whom he said, in 1933, "After my brother, my oldest and most intimate friend."

1916 In February, Lewis first read George MacDonald's, Phantastes, which powerfully "baptized his imagination" and impressed him with a deep sense of the holy.

1917 From April 26 until September, Lewis was a student at University College, Oxford. Upon the outbreak of WWI, he enlisted in the British army and was billeted in Keble College, Oxford, for officer's training.

1918 On April 15 Lewis was wounded on Mount Berenchon during the Battle of Arras. He was discharged in December 1919.

1919 The February issue of Reveille contained "Death in Battle," Lewis' first publication in other than school magazines.

1925 On May 20, Lewis was elected a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, where he served as tutor in English Language and Literature for 29 years.

1929 Lewis became a theist: "In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed...." Albert Lewis died on September 24.

1931 Lewis became a Christian: One evening in September, Lewis had a long talk on Christianity with J.R.R. Tolkien (a devout Roman Catholic) and Hugo Dyson. That evening's discussion was important in bringing about the following day's event that Lewis recorded in Surprised by Joy: "When we [Warnie and Jack] set out [by motorcycle to the Whipsnade Zoo] I did not believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did."

1933 The fall term marked the beginning of Lewis' convening of a circle of friends dubbed "The Inklings." For the next 16 years, on through 1949, they continued to meet in Jack's rooms at Magdalen College on Thursday evenings

1935 Wrote the volume on 16th Century English Literature for the Oxford History of English Literature series. Published in 1954, it became a classic.

1937 Lewis received the Gollancz Memorial Prize for Literature in recognition of The Allegory of Love (a study in medieval tradition).

1941 From May 2 until November 28, The Guardian published 31 "Screwtape Letters" in weekly installments. Lewis was paid 2 pounds sterling for each letter and gave the money to charity.

1942 The first meeting of the "Socratic Club" was held in Oxford. Lewis gave five live radio talks on Sunday evenings on the subject "What Christians Believe." On eight consecutive Sundays Lewis gave a series of live radio talks known as "Christian Behavior."

1943 In February, at the University of Durham, Lewis delivered the Riddell Memorial Lectures, a series of three lectures subsequently published as The Abolition of Man.

1944 On seven consecutive Tuesdays, Lewis gave the pre-recorded talks known as "Beyond Personality." Taken together, all of Lewis' BBC radio broadcast talks were eventually published under the title Mere Christianity. The Great Divorce was published in weekly installments in The Guardian.

1946 Lewis awarded honorary Doctor of Divinity by the University of St. Andrews.

1952 In September, Lewis met Joy Davidman Gresham, fifteen years his junior for the first time.

1954 In June, Lewis accepted the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge. His review of Tolkien' Fellowship of the Ring appeared in Time and Tide in August.

1955 Lewis assumed his duties at Cambridge.

1956 In December, a bedside marriage was performed in accordance with the rites of the Church of England in Wingfield Hospital. Joy's death was thought to be imminent. On August 19 and 20, he made tapes of ten talks on The Four Loves in London.

1960 Joy died on July 13 at the age of 45.

1963 Lewis died at 5:30 p.m. at The Kilns, one week before his 65th birthday on Friday, November 22; the same day on which President Kennedy was assassinated and Aldous Huxley died.

His grave is in the yard of Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry, Oxford. Warren Lewis died on Monday, April 9, 1973. Their names are on a single stone bearing the inscription "Men must endure their going hence." Warnie had written, "...there was a Shakespearean calendar hanging on the wall of the room where she [our mother] died, and my father preserved for the rest of his life the leaf for that day, with its quotation: 'Men must endure their going hence'." --W.H. Lewis, "Memoir," in Letters of C.S. Lewis.

P.S. I am sorry that it is so long, I couldn't edit it any more!

Fungi Madness

These pictures were sent to me by a friend who lives just up the road from our place when the McLennans were staying at our house for a few days. Mrs. McLennan agreed with me that it was totally weird and freaky! I'll let my friend tell the story though.

"Something really strange happened the other day. Mum was in the garden weeding and pruning when this thing started to appear out of the ground in the outline shape of a soccer ball. It was unfolding out of a ball. She got Daddy and me. It was most bizarre. We found out that it was a fungi. We found another one. A small ball made out of the same stuff as mushrooms. Daddy split it open. And there was one of these folded balls but this one didn't unfold. It was really strange. Like something, not from this world."

Amy researched, and found that it was called Ileodictyon gracile. I did a google search on that term and came up with some pretty amazing facts:

• Fruit body--a lattice-shaped receptacle, initially within an egg.


• Egg--Subglobose to ovoid, smooth, whitish, with white mycelial strands extending into substrate. In the juvenile stage the receptacle is tightly packed within the egg in a jelly-like layer.


• Receptacle--Emerges from the egg (sometimes explosively) to form a hollow, spherical, lattice-like network, with 10-30 meshes. Arms white or cream. The receptacle eventually becomes free, and then has no obvious top or bottom, and can roll free along the ground.


• Smell--Foetid, like sour milk or Camembert cheese.


• Spores--Forming an olive brown, slimy mass on the inside of the arms of the cage.


• Habitat--On the ground, or amongst mulch or wood chips. Common in gardens, and on the edge of tracks, also in native forest.

Have a look at the website. It has a map of where the fungi is most often to be found in Australia (South-East, so basically right in our vicinity!), and some other facts that I haven't put up here.