This Blog Has Moved!

Please visit my Dutch blog on WordPress and update your blog roll and links. Thanks!

We just couldn't agree

Be Inspired!

Quench not the Spirit - Wherever it is, it burns; it flames in holy love, in joy, prayer, thanksgiving. O quench it not, damp it not in yourself or others, either by neglecting to do good, or by doing evil! (Wesley's Notes on 1 Thessalonians 5:19)

I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine

Playing for Change

What a great project! Check THIS out.

Perfect Match

PERFECT MATCH

I noticed both of you - of course
didn’t ask for your permission
just enjoyed this moment

as an observer, a fellow traveler
a spectator with an eye for
vintage beauty

camera in my lap
secretly taking this picture
I have to capture this

grown together, a perfect match
just as naturally
as your folded hands

wordless poetry
perfect rhyme

love & faithfulness

Conversion to atheism and return to faith

"The existence of language is one of the many phenomena – of which love and music are the two strongest – which suggest that human beings are very much more than collections of meat. They convince me that we are spiritual beings, and that the religion of the incarnation, asserting that God made humanity in His image, and continually restores humanity in His image, is simply true. As a working blueprint for life, as a template against which to measure experience, it fits."

Read this remarkable story here

Water's Mirror

Click on the picture to enlarge

"Come, let us return to the LORD.
He has torn us to pieces
but he will heal us;
he has injured us
but he will bind up our wounds.

After two days he will revive us;
on the third day he will restore us,
that we may live in his presence.

Let us acknowledge the LORD;
let us press on to acknowledge him.
As surely as the sun rises,
he will appear;
he will come to us like the winter rains,
like the spring rains that water the earth."

Hosea 6:1-3

At the Bottom of the Sea

Then Jonah prayed to his God from the belly of the fish. He prayed:
"In trouble, deep trouble, I prayed to God.
He answered me.
From the belly of the grave I cried, 'Help!'
You heard my cry.
You threw me into ocean's depths,
into a watery grave,
With ocean waves, ocean breakers
crashing over me.
I said, 'I've been thrown away,
thrown out, out of your sight.
I'll never again lay eyes
on your Holy Temple.'
Ocean gripped me by the throat.
The ancient Abyss grabbed me and held tight.
My head was all tangled in seaweed
at the bottom of the sea where the mountains take root.
I was as far down as a body can go,
and the gates were slamming shut behind me forever—
Yet you pulled me up from that grave alive,
O God, my God!
When my life was slipping away,
I remembered God,
And my prayer got through to you,
made it all the way to your Holy Temple.
Those who worship hollow gods, god-frauds,
walk away from their only true love.
But I'm worshiping you, God,
calling out in thanksgiving!
And I'll do what I promised I'd do!
Salvation belongs to God!"

Then God spoke to the fish, and it vomited up Jonah on the seashore.

"Under water Psalm" Jonah 2 taken from Eugene Peterson's The Message
Source picture

This is how God showed his love for us

My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn't know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can't know him if you don't love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they've done to our relationship with God.
My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!

This is how we know we're living steadily and deeply in him, and he in us: He's given us life from his life, from his very own Spirit. Also, we've seen for ourselves and continue to state openly that the Father sent his Son as Savior of the world. Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God's Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. We know it so well, we've embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God.

1 John 4:7-16 - The Message

It’s Friday. But Sunday’s a Coming!

Sermon by S.M. Lockridge

Thought-provoking Quote from John Stuart Mill

All Christians believe that the blessed are the poor and humble, and those who are ill-used by the world; that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven; that they should judge not, lest they be judged; that they should swear not at all; that they should love their neighbor as themselves; that if one take their cloak, they should give him their coat also; that they should take no thought for the morrow; that if they would be perfect they should sell all that they have and give it to the poor. They are not insincere when they say that they believe these things. They do believe them, as people believe what they have always heard lauded and never discussed. But in the sense of that living belief which regulates conduct, they believe these doctrines just up to the point which it is usual to act upon them.... John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

Easter Challenge for Christian Bloggers

Challenge: write a creative blog post for Easter Sunday inspired by this picture and this text If you want to share your Easter feelings in blogosphere - please invite other bloggers to join in too! Do leave a comment or reply, so that we can refer and link to each other's blogs.
Upload the picture, post a reflection, poem, painting or whatever. Reply by tweet or leave a blog comment. If you think that this is a good idea, please share this initiative and invite other Christian bloggers to participate too!

Bursting Into Life

Click on the pics to enlarge. And if you like my pics, check these too.

Man-making Contest / Creatio Ex Nihilo

One day a group of scientists got together and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God. They picked one scientist to go and tell Him that they were done with Him. The scientist walked up to God and said, "God, we've decided that we no longer need you. We're to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don't you just go on and get lost."
God listened patiently to the man and after the scientist was done talking, God said, "Very well! How about this? Let's have a man-making contest."
The man replied, "Okay, great!"
But God added, "Now we're going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam."
The scientist said, "Sure, no problem." He bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt.
God just looked at him and said, "No, no, no. Go get your own dirt!"

Joke stolen 'out of nothing' somewhere in the public domain. Graffiti picture made by me in London; original graffiti created 'out of nothing' by this artist, I guess... (Still wondering whether he really exists or not). Check out this text too!

Rooftop gigs by U2 and the Beatles

Only the first time it's really a stunt - so all credits for this great idea go to Paul, John, Ringo and George. But U2 are today's Beatles, if you'd ask me. Never too proud to be inspired by musical heroes from the past & standing on the shoulders of giants. Amsterdam Arena tickets were sold out within 10 minutes, by the way. Next stadium concert announced directly after that. This was to be expected. Bono promised also some cheap tickets because 'this is a recession'. Yeah. It's in the middel of Summer - we will probably listen to U2 in our car or somewhere else on a camping site / in a hotel. We'll see.
Let me know what you think about No Line On The Horizon. My opinion? Magnificent! ;-)

By the way - U2 played live on rooftop BBC building near All Souls Church! (John Stott, Rico Tice, Christianity Explored... So cool!!) Next time a REAL stunt - what about LIVE @ the Vatican? Ha, ha.

Narrow escapes?

Yesterday Dutch police arrested seven would-be terrorists that allegedly were planning to 'kill as many people as they could' in the city of Amsterdam. Today a Dutch boy was arrested after announcing that he was going to kill kids in a school in the city of Breda. Both threats have been detected by the police - tipped off by an anonymous phone call from Brussels (referring to the planned attack in Amsterdam) and by Dutch TV-journalists who read an anonymous school shooting announcement posted by a Dutch boy in an American chat box. (See screenshot above) The police was able to track down this boy and by doing so they've probably prevented a situation like we've seen too many times now on both sides of the Atlantic.

Pfew... Are we just lucky? It's a terrible thought, but sooner or later these kind of horrible things will happen here too, I'm afraid. But what can you do about it? We can only hope and pray that we will be protected against such senseless attacks. I'm happy and thankful that the police seems to do a good job in preventing these tragedies from happening so far.

My thoughts and prayers are with the people in Germany who are mourning now due to the act of one violent and merciless idiot.

Dutch news sources here and here.

Praying for Germany

Turning Pain into Praise

Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah. (Click on the pic below to enlarge)

Dawkins takes wrong bus...

...and gets totally lost with no sense of direction. Lets hope he still has a sense of humour.

Make Up Your Mind

Source

British buses spread strange message

You will probably know that this is the real message on some busses. I am a happy believer, so I don't have to be worried about God or (after)life at all. But if I was an atheist, I wouldn't be so happy with the 'probably' word. And Jesus already told us to stop worrying, so that truly is a Christian message - believe it or not. Especially good to be reminded of these encouraging words in these difficult times.

I like Eugene Peterson's The Message translation of Jesus' words:

"What I'm trying to do here is get you to relax, not be so preoccupied with getting so you can respond to God's giving. People who don't know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep yourself in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. You'll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Don't be afraid of missing out. You're my dearest friends! The Father wants to give you the very kingdom itself."
"Be generous. Give to the poor. Get yourselves a bank that can't go bankrupt, a bank in heaven far from bankrobbers, safe from embezzlers, a bank you can bank on. It's obvious, isn't it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being." Source

Disputed desolate dots

Just try to find these desolate dots on Google Maps. It looks like this is one little island in a big blue sea, but you need to zoom in and pay close attention. Why bother? Because both South Korea and Japan claim that these tiny pieces of rock belong to them and to no one else. I don't want to be the judge of this, so I don't know whether we should talk about 'Dokdo' (South Korea) or 'Takeshima' (Japan). Yeah, let's start World War 3 because of these disputed desolate dots.*

Read more here (and have a look at all the other amazing pictures on this great site) If you really care about this 'big issue', you can also visit this blog.

* Just to make sure: I don't really think this is a bright idea.

Madame Tussauds Amsterdam

Today we had a nice day as a family. We went to Amsterdam to visit Madame Tussauds. We sure weren't the only ones visiting this place - I recognized many famous people - even some ones that I didn't expect to be alive anymore. They did look a bit stiff, by the way. But I am happy to say that all these famous people are excellent posers for portrait pictures. Just have a look and let me know what you think of these pics. (Click pics to enlarge). More to follow...

Turkish Airliner crashed near my hometown

Today a Turkish Boeing 737 crashed near Schiphol Amsterdam Airport - close to some busy motorways, but luckily enough in a large field just before Schiphol's 5th runway. I first heard about this tragic accident - that took place at 10:31 AM local time - after returning in my Amsterdam office later this afternoon, after a meeting in Apeldoorn this morning.
The location of the crash is near the place where I live and very near a road that I use every day to go to the office and back home again. This afternoon at 17:30 PM I saw the wreck of the plane in the field, while many men were placing large screens along the motorway to shield the crash area of.
It is a true miracle that 'only' nine people died immediately during the crash (including the 3 members of the cockpit crew). More people are severely injured, but this could have been far worse if the plane had caught fire. It was very near the landing track and normally planes are still quite high above the motorway while they are slowly approaching the runway. If this accident was caused by motor failure, it is a miracle that so many people survived this crash. BBC News

My thoughts and prayers are with the relatives and friends of the victims.

In the unlikely event of an accident...

First we heard about a collision of two satellites in space. With 6,000 satellites encircling the globe (3,000 inactive) this was an accident waiting to happen. A very unlikely event, they say, but still - it happened.
And yesterday they told us about the collison of two atomic submarines in the Atlantic Ocean that happened in the night from February 2 to 3. Both subs can carry 16 ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads - so we can all feel really save on this planet. Of course an accident like this is very unlikely and there's no reason to be worried - it will probably never happen again. Yeah, right. So we hope and pray.

Read these stories here and here.

Dutch MP Geert Wilders not welcome in UK

Controversial Dutch MP Geert Wilders (I am not a fan - to put it mildly) is not welcome in the UK. I can see why. He wants to keep 'unwanted foreigners' out of our little country, so now he knows from personal experience what it's like to be refused entry to a free and democratic country and to be sent home as a persona non-grata. Thank you, Great Brittain!

I did like the funny combination of a news article on the BBC web site and a sponsored announcement from our very own 'national' airline KLM ('a journey full of inspiration' the add says - ha, ha). Now you can see that Dutch people have a good sense of humour too!

And now a message to my dear English friends: You can keep Geert Wilders in custody for as long as you like - but be kind to him. He may speak with a funny foreign accent - and yes he looks a bit strange too - but please keep in mind that he also is a human being. We have plenty of so called ‘unwanted foreigners’ already, so this one is for you! We will allow one more real political refugee / asylum seeker in, because the absense of Geert Wilders provides sufficient free breathing space for all people in our little country.

Climate changes in blogosphere

If I listen to the news from around the globe, I guess that one part of my blog friends must be sweating like crazy because of the extreme heat (Australia), while the other half will be shaking and shivering due to the extreme cold (North America). I just want to know from you, my dear blog friends, what you experience personally from climate changes in the area where you live right now. Please do leave a comment here and tell me

• where you live and what kind of weather you are experiencing right now
• whether or not these are normal circumstances for this time of the year
• if you are personally worried about climate changes and what should be done about it in your country and all over the world
  

Let me start by saying that the weather situation in the Netherlands is quite normal for this time of the year. We were all happy that we had some frozen ditches and canals last month, because Dutch people love ice skating - as these pictures show you.

Maybe you can also write about the weather conditions in your area on your own blog and leave a link / trackback here in my comments.

Reply to All? Don't Even Think About It!

Many "reply all" fiascos result in mere embarrassment, but American diplomats have been told they may be punished for sending mass responses after an e-mail storm nearly knocked out one of the State Department's main electronic communications systems.

A cable sent last week to all employees at the department's Washington headquarters and overseas missions warns of unspecified "disciplinary actions" for using the "reply to all" function on e-mail with large distribution lists.

E-mail is a great communication tool, but please don't turn it against yourself or against all 'undisclosed' recipients. Sometimes things are running out of control and strong disciplinary measures are necessary! Read the rest of the story here.

Welcome note from Bush to Obama

British satirist Rory Bremner describes welcome note from Bush to Obama: “Welcome, Mister Osama, you might find some helpful things here. I’m afraid the Middle East is a bit of a mess, the economy is screwed and I’m afraid that Afghanistan is not looking too good. But on the plus side, Laura’s put some flowers on the kitchen table.” Watch this video.

Inspiring words from the 44th US President

The former Governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, once said: "You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose".

Best lines from president Barack Obama's inaugural address - if you'd ask me...

“...and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”

“To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

And my favourite quote - “To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.”

Congratulations, citizens of the USA and the rest of the free world! It looks like we have a bright new American leader who is able to inspire his people in these difficult times. May God bless, guide and protect him, his wife and their daughters.

Survival of the Predestined

Just thought of a new combined slogan for the Darwin / Calvin Year: Survival of the Predestined.

Making History By Repeating It

This is what I wrote on my old blog on August 4, 2006 - regarding Israel's War on Hezbollah in Lebanon:

I wanted to write something about the current violence in the Middle East, but where to begin? I do understand that Israel needs to protect its borders, but personally I think that their military actions in Lebanon are a) disproportional and b) counterproductive (i.e. making more innocent victims, killing more soldiers on all sides of this conflict and causing more hatred everywhere in the region). However, it is very easy for me to judge such a complex conflict – sitting in my lazy chair in Holland. The situation is just too complicated for easy answers and even the brightest diplomats seem to have no solutions. I just feel so sorry for all the men, women and children in Israel and Lebanon and I can only pray for peace.

Talking about violence, war and peace issues… I just visited Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog and was intrigued by this thought-provoking question he is posing:

Had the Apostle Paul lived to see the war of Rome with Israel in 66-73 AD, what would he have done? Here are some considerations:

I ask this consideration: Paul was not a soldier, but let’s put him either in that position or in the position, which is far more likely, to have been advising new Roman citizen Christians or Christians living in the Land of Israel.
1. Would he have fought on Rome’s side against Israel? (Citizenship duty.)
2. Would he have fought on Israel’s side against Rome? (Faith over citizenship.)
3. Would he have chosen not to fight because he was torn between two nations? (Pragmatics.)
4. Would he have chosen not to fight because he thought Christians should be concerned with the kingdom of God and the preaching and living out of the gospel? (Some kind of Christian pacifism.)

Personally my answer would be: 4. Paul was a Jew born in a Hellenistic environment (Turkey), but he also happened to be a Roman citizen. Yes, in many ways he was truly a man ‘of this world’ and I think these qualifications helped him to bring the Gospel throughout the Mediterranean area. But Paul only claimed these religious, cultural and national ‘identities’ if this turned out to be useful for the progress of the Gospel. Paul was first and foremost fighting a spiritual battle and I personally believe that he would always try to avoid physical violence. That certainly doesn’t mean that Paul was a coward, because physically he suffered enormously due to his courageous proclamation of the Good News (just read these words from 2 Corinthians 11:23-30).

There are already many interesting comments on Scot’s posting and I didn’t feel that I needed to add one more of my own. I fully agree with a comment posted by Kenny Chee - “I think Paul was a man consumed with a passion to preach the Gospel in regions where Christ is yet unknown. He would choose option 4, and be focused and faithful to the heavenly call and upward allegiance. As to what he would advise Christians on both sides of the conflict, he would probably ask them to follow their conscience and seek what would lead to peace of all men, something the leaders of both sides of the present conflict in Lebanon would do well to heed.”

Spot the Odd One Out

Click pic to enlarge!

Listen to Tim Keller's lecture!

Fantastic lecture and Q&A from Dr. Tim Keller @ UC Berkely. Downloadable MP3 (video didn't work for me)  highly recommended! Just click this link.

Ice Cold Sense of Humour

PS Two of my pictures were published in a local news paper today... 

See my Dutch blog.