Every Friday I’m posting links to things I’ve read this week that I think you might find interesting too, next week I want to start sharing some links readers of the site are finding interesting…If you read something you think should be featured here submit it here, starting your message LINK LIST SUGGESTION.

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What I posted recently

• What’s your inheritance? A Short thought on prodigals, inheritance and salvation
• Why I side-stepped the Book of Revelation and 5 Things to know about it
• Why Christ centredness might be the very reason we can’t grow
• 4 Things I learned about fruitfully facilitating a group process
• A syrian Refugee, an elderly Turk and a Pharmacist | An early hour excursion into Istanbul

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• We enjoyed our yearly christmas tradition (apart from when we are away from Cape Town), of singing Carol’s at kirstenbosch botanical gardens last night, amazing how carols singing remains one of the most culturally celebrated forms of publicly proclaiming the Gospel.

#SummerChristmas is a little counter-intuitive for a northern hemispher-ite but it's also hard to beat our #christmas tradition of singing carols in one of the most beautiful places in the world #CapeTown @kirstenboschnbg | Funny how carols singing remains one of the most culturally celebrated forms of publicly proclaiming the Gospel

A photo posted by Liam Byrnes (@byrnesyliam) on Dec 17, 2015 at 8:59am PST

Time lapsing a few thousand glow sticks getting swung in time | Admittedly not as picturesque as candle but I think that got quashed after @janoc007 (accidentally) set a bush on fire a few years ago 😉

A video posted by Liam Byrnes (@byrnesyliam) on Dec 17, 2015 at 11:35pm PST

Theology

• Well this year we have engaged the rhythms of expectation that advent invite more than ever before. Mostly due to facilitating some gatherings in our church community around this season of the church calendar. In putting it together I came across lots of useful resources that I found (although too late for you this year). One of the finds of my research into advent was this song, written by Dustin Kensrue and sung to the tune of auld lang syne. It was the perfect combination of a tune everyone could sing to and new words which captured the season, we sung it to end each of the three ¹ advent services we gathered for.

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• It’s Great that Andrew Jones (the Tall skinny Kiwi) is back on the blogging train. Back in the early 2000’s he was up there as a daily read and is posting with his usual excellence in these two recent posts; 5 Reasons why Falwell’s advice is wrong and Yoga and the untold story spoiler alert: missionaries helped to invent it

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• The tendency to think highly of our own and negatively of others

Drawing insights from psychology, sociology, biology, and (mainly Jewish) theology, Sacks– himself a deeply religious man–understands well the maxim made famous by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn that the line dividing good and evil does not run between groups but through every human heart. Still, the tendency to hive off into groups and define one’s group against others constitutes the heart of the matter and disposes us not only to great evil but to great good. And this is the rub. Or, as Sacks puts it: “what is best in us and what is worst both come from the same source: our tendency to form ourselves into groups [and] to think highly of our own and negatively of others.”
Most would recognize this as all-too-human tendency but know, too, that groups can inspire and enable our better angels. The path to violence takes shape when three additional items are added. First, group formation must occur around our deepest convictions, which are often religious or metaphysical in nature; Sacks employs a line from Pascal to underscore this point: “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do so from religious conviction.” Second, one has to experience or at least be persuaded that the “other group” has committed grave wrongdoing against your group—your family, your clan, your religion. Finally, you need unscrupulous leaders to enflame a pervasive, righteous feeling of victimhood, enabling one to see the “other group” as utterly despicable, subhuman, malevolent.

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• Emerging Scholars blog has been posting advent reflections, this was one of my favourites.

Lasting glory cannot be gotten, but it can be gazed upon in God’s Story. The Story of the Tree, which began as a Twig, and became a Roman Cross, to save us from ourselves. This Story is invisible to the proud, to the faithless, Who this small Bethlehem Babe really is; God in the flesh, Immanuel, God with us.

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A recently made friend Steve Cochrane, both a pioneer missionary to india and a early church of the east scholar has been writing excellent things recently, none more than this post on meeting Mother Teresa here

“In these times when so many seek attention and promote themselves or their own agendas , Mother Teresa’s desire to be a “pencil in God’s hands” rings out so powerfully.”

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I read a listened to a couple of things about racial diversity in the church this week which are worth your time;

• This post on the book “High definition leader for high definition churches”

and

• The Phil Vischer Podcast who spoke to Charlie Dates

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Geo-centrisim upside down from Think Theology

The personal and political shenanigans behind the Galileo affair are far more interesting, and indeed amusing, than the traditional Science vs Religion narrative would have us believe. It certainly was not a matter of “ecclesiastical cover-up” against “intellectual freedom” (as fancifully narrated in one of the most garish abuses of history ever seen in The West Wing); it was actually Pope Urban who had asked for openness to the evidence, and Galileo who had refused to provide it.

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Imagery

Flickr Blog posted the top photos by country in 2015, fascinating to see which photos are liked across cultures and nations like this.

Big Picture on shadows and silhouettes.

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