Eyes wide open

Preface: Th anks to Dan Strange for delivering a great seminar on Salvation in the Theology Network track of Word Alive 2019! I learnt a lot, and that's reflected in my thoughts on Psalm 18 here. As you read, I pray Psalm 19:14 "May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer." Also note that you'd probably have to read Psalm 18 before reading this piece... [Photograph: Pixabay] It’s rare to kind of confuse characters in a story and actually be quite right about being confused. That’s much the case in parts of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament. Our confusion of the characters is a sign of the incomprehensible wisdom in God’s saving work: passages that were foreshadowing the work of Jesus redeeming us, can often be applied similarly to us who have died to ourselves and are now bound to him, receiving the promises of God through him ( 2 Corinthians 1:20 ).  The common passage u...

[Spoilers ahead] [Photograph: Ian Routledge] For the first half of I Am Mother I was convinced it was just another generic, un-insightful, waste-of-time dystopian thriller that I was just watching for the lol’s after a tiring day out. But it turned out to be one of the more insightful of dystopian movies I've watched (though insightful for all the things that I think it got wrong). The premise was a robot, Mother— who turned out to be a whole conscious being enlivening all the robots in the film—that sought to solve the problem of humanity by killing all human beings and engineering the perfect human being; this perfect human would then become the mother of all humanity, inaugurating a fresh start for human beings. Ultimately Daughter passed this intricate test that Mother set up, excelling even in the difficult final hurdle. The film ended there. It was a fine ending for a short film, because it purported to address such a difficult premise: solving humani...

[Disclaimer: I always hotly oppose people who say Ipoh is a ulu small town. “It’s just spread out,” I always say. That is still true and I stand by it 😤 . But obviously Ipoh is smaller than KL/PJ. And it does have the slow, small-town feel. So I’m calling it a small town here.] Ipoh is such a happening place. Making the local rumour headlines: new kopitiams open, old kopitiams close, older kopitiams stay around unbeaten; mamaks increase price and start making new roti’s; Chatime opens in the newest shopping complex; there’s a new big (actually small) hotel. I'd say we're happening, but in a very small-town way. I grew up in Ipoh and I absolutely adore it. I’ve also been thinking, though, about how doing church in a small town might be different, compared to a big city. Do we bring our sleepy, slow, anything-goes, don’t-need-so-hype-la small town mind and heart to church? Is that how church should be? Not an Areopagus Having experienced bigger cities than Ipoh now...