Shane & Shane are a prolific duo who seem to have settled into a niche of supporting local church musicians.
A recent release is Hymns, which features a number of contemporary hymn-like songs.
I’ve featured His Mercy Is More a couple of times.
I’m sure that it being featured by these guys will see it have an uptick in popularity.
Just when everything was settling back to how it should be with NRL and AFL correct tip ratios we enter the winter silly season of State of Origin and bye rounds.
I’m a bit sad North Melbourne robbed me of a perfect round by sacking their coach. That only works for one round, though.
This makes things a bit more of a raffle because NRL teams are missing representative players and some AFL teams have the benefit of a week off while others haven’t had their turn yet.
I’ll pick Queensland in the State of Origin. It all depends on the forward packs. Queensland’s doesn’t look as strong in attack, but they are solid defenders, so that may blunt NSW’s advantage. Or not.
NRL (last round 3/8; season tally 54/88)
Manly
Souths
Canberra
North Queensland
AFL (last round 8/9; season tally 53/90)
Richmond
Collingwood
Greater Western Sydney
Geelong
Brisbane
Adelaide
Port Adelaide
Essendon
West Coast
Jesus is not a life coach. He’s not providing an example to follow, or teaching techniques to get us through the day or tough situations.
What he invites us to do is die with him.
From Chad Bird:
Likewise, to take up our cross daily doesn’t mean to shoulder our personal cares and concerns. Jesus isn’t telling us merely to pick up our sicknesses, temptations, and other “crosses” of life and trudge along behind him. Immediately before he says this, our Lord predicts his upcoming passion. “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Luke 9:22). Right on the heels of this, he says to take up our crosses daily and follow him (v.23). In other words, Christ bids us follow him to death and the grave. That’s what crosses are for, after all: to kill people. A hangman’s noose isn’t there just to chafe people’s necks in uncomfortable ways; an electric chair doesn’t simply jolt our bodies with stress. They kill. So too the cross, in Roman society, was an instrument with a singular purpose: executing people. To take up our crosses daily is to suffer many things with Jesus, be rejected with him, be killed with him, and on the third day be raised with him to newness of life.
To be a disciple of Jesus, to follow him instead of our hearts, necessitates our complete incorporation into him.Chad Bird, Upside-Down Spirituality: The Nine Essential Failures Of A Faithful Life, Baker, 2019, pgs 76-77.
The first two of my Theologian Statues that were a Kickstarter by Missional Wear arrived today.
Luther and Calvin will be joined by Augustine, Ryle, and John Knox who are all currently in transit.
