Charlie Sheen is America’s highest paid television star, being paid $2 million for each episode of Two and a Half Men.
Despite this, somehow he found himself so desperate, angry and dysfunctional that he held a knife to his wife’s throat on Christmas Day and threatened to kill her.
If that doesn’t convince us that fame and fortune are not the real source of happiness, nothing will. Not even a Man rising from the dead… PH
Jesus made yet another appearance on ABC TV’s Q and A program tonight and gained the support of legendary AFL coach, Kevin Sheedy.
The divine moment came when panelist, NSW Liberal Pru Goward, was lamenting the intense public scrutiny politicians experienced and said in such conditions, even Jesus wouldn’t look good all the time.
Federal Liberal Scott Morrison, at the other end of the panel, said he didn’t agree with that but Goward only reitirated her point.
Sheedy then spoke up, suggesting Jesus would look good, regardless of the scrutiny and finished by saying, ‘I’d vote for Jesus’.
Me too Kevin… Hey maybe that’s why the AFL is doing so well in the battle of the football codes… PH
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation
For thine is the kingdom, the power and glory
Forever and ever, Amen.
So reads the Lord’s Prayer or the ‘Our Father’ as I learned it as a child. It was not so much a single prayer that Jesus taught his disciples but a way of praying (see Matthew 6:9-13). Nevertheless it is a much-loved Christian prayer that has been prayed hundreds of billions of times.
I was using it as a way to guide my praying in the middle of the night recently, pausing on each phrase and thinking and praying around its intent, when something simple and profound stopped me.
I realised, as I must have already known but forgotten, that there are no I’s or me’s in the prayer. The only pronouns refer to God (thy/your) and us or our.
Which reminds us that the heart of prayer is to focus on God and to see ourselves as part of a community. Prayer, and the Christian walk, are not solitary occupations.
When Jesus taught prayer he lived and moved with 12 disciples and numerous other close followers, both men and women. He visited homes and families and turned strangers into friends. He called out to God as father and sought not his own will, ‘but your will be done’.
For this reason, it was natural he would prayer ‘our Father’ rather than ‘my Father’ and ‘give us’ daily bread and forgiveness and guidance, not ‘give me’.
The one time he did cry out ‘my God, my God’ was when doing something unique – carrying the world’s sin and shame solely in his own being on the Cross. How lonely he must have been to do so. Perhaps we too are more inclined, but from a less holy position, to focus our prayers on ourselves when we feel lonely, isolated and despairing.
Maybe the antidote is not more self-focused prayer, but to break out again into community and find the reality of praying ‘our Father’. PH
While the sun shines today, the past two weeks in Sydney have seen almost constant rain, clouds and cold with the occasional blustery wind to ensure we all got wet more than once.
The plants around our courtyards, while at first welcoming the moisture, after a week or so seem to be putting their hands up and saying, ‘we’ve had enough’.
Not so one humble plant, stoically located in a pot near our front door. Just as the weather reports began to be filled with news of east coast lows and torrential rains, our welcome plant was, for the first time, putting forth flower buds.
And as the grey skies took over and the constant rain fell, it broke out in a lavish display of petulant pink, protesting against the bleakness, bowing down under its load of large flowers. Guests even stopped to take photos, umbrellas close at hand.
Now the plant’s inaugural show of joy and colour has won out, the rain has given up but the pink flowers live on, welcoming the sun back with barely a ‘I told you so’.
The words ‘bloom where you are planted’ crossed my mind more than once as I regularly dashed past the floral version of a pink flamingo. How inspiring that you would defy the grey and bloom anyway, I thought.
The Creator’s hand was evident, not just in the flowers, but in the timing and the message. Am I willing to be what God has made me to be despite the grey clouds and gloomy outlook? Am I so convinced of his goodness that I will by all means display it regardless of the outlook?
Do I realise the awful power of a loving rightness carried forward by God’s Spirit and alive within me, unquenched by circumstance? Will I allow the flourishing grace of God to choose the time and place for colour and new life? PH
Minister for Juvenile Justice Graham West was shocked when Father Chris Riley from Youth of the Streets rang him this week.
Together they had worked successfully towards an innovative plan to build four bail houses to keep young offenders out of detention while they await trial.
Mr West had fought hard to get agreement from his government colleagues for the houses, as part of his over-arching desire to assist the disadvantaged. But something was wrong, very wrong.
The Department of Commerce had dumped the project without informing the minister and it was only when Father Riley rang that he heard the news.
‘He had believed he had won the fight in terms of funding and he was shocked when I called him and said he knew nothing about it,’ Father Riley told the Sydney Morning Herald.
So distressed was Mr West that he rang Premier Christina Keneally and resigned, later saying he had been thinking about the decision for some time.
Father Ril
ey said he would reconsider on the weekend his position on the Premier’s Homelessness Advisory Council because of Labor’s treatment of Mr West.
‘I’ve been fighting juvenile justice ministers and the law and order agenda for 20 years and finally in Graham we had a minister with real vision,” he said.
”I wonder where this government is going when it stamps on people such as Graham, who is a good man who got it right.”
Mr West, a devout Catholic, entered politics out of a desire to pursue social justice – let’s hope he gets another opportunity to pursue this agenda.
Eternity Christian Church Campbelltown is working tirelessly in NSW juvenile justice centres and no doubt will be sad to Mr West go. He visited and commended they’re homework centre ar Reiby juvenile justice centre. PH
What would Jesus do? doesn’t always appear to be the question at the top of the list for politicians but businessman Lindsay Fox says it should be when it comes to leadership.
He’s advised Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to take a leaf out of Jesus Christ’s unwritten book of leadership and delegate some authority to his disciples.
Speaking on ABC Television today, the trucking boss, one of Australia’s most respected and richest business leaders, said Mr Rudd needed a lesson in delegating.
‘You have to delegate some authority [to ministers],’ Mr Fox said.
‘In the case of Jesus Christ, he had 12 disciples and those disciples carried his message long after he was gone.’
Not enough was being heard from Mr Rudd’s ‘disciples’, as his standing with voters tumbles in opinion polls.
‘You can’t run a government unless you’re a total democratic dictator and there’s only been a few of them in the world in the last 50 years,’ Mr Fox said.
While Mr Fox is correct in saying Jesus did not write down any of his leadership principles – making his success all the more impressive – his followers did record his words and actions.
They can be found in four eyewitness accounts, named after their authors, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. If you are an inspiring leader, read them for yourself by clicking on the links or leave a comment asking for written copies, and I’ll get them to you. PH
Some years ago I heard it said that there was more information in a Saturday newspaper than a person from the 17th century would experience in a life time.
Now this from Seth Godin:
Every 18 months for the last decade, the world has doubled the data it pushes to you.
Twice as much email, twice as many friend requests, twice as many sites to check, twice as many devices.
When does your mind lose the ability to keep up? Then what happens? Is it already happening?’
Seth is a champion of the inter-connectivity of the internet and technology – if he’s worried, we should take note. PH
As the rain keeps falling I’m trying to work out how I’m going to keep my training schedule up tonight… with an umbrella no doubt!
Anyway, the good news is that I’m registered for the City to Surf and have set-up not one, but two fundraising pages!
Firstly I’ve signed up with the Bible Society to help put much-needed Bibles into Scripture classes in public schools across the state. If you’d like to support this cause, visit the Towards The Goal fund-raising page .
Then City to Surf automatically give you the chance to support a charity so I chose World Vision, a great Christian aid organisation, and you can support this cause by visiting my Everyday Hero fund-raising page.
And if you’d like to get involved, why not sign up for the City to Surf and raise funds yourself. You could join our team – the Curly Toes and be added to our team fund-raising page, the Curly Toes Runners. We are starting as far back as you can – Orange I believe.
Many thanks in advance if you can help with sponsorship! PH
I have made a slight adjustment to Utterance in honour of my current preoccupation with fitness and the City to Surf.
A free copy of Transform Your Faith for the first person to comment on it. PH
Ten weeks out from the City to Surf fun run I have started my disciplined training schedule to ensure I finish the event alive…
Today, accompanied by son Jeremy, who also plans to take on the City to Surf, we walked the inner west’s very popular Bay Walk , or according to some signage, the Bay Run (but not in our case…).
This was our second training effort and was preceded on Monday by a complex scurrying around the back streets of Glebe, Camperdown, Annandale and Leichhardt to come up with a 6km track.
To prove that we are actually doing the training and not watching Lord of the Rings (in which the cast do all the walking and running) I deployed the Sports Tracker application on my E71. Imagine my delight when I discovered the GPS traces a lovely little map which can be saved as a picture file.
This may well be the most accurate map of the Bay Walk yet recorded and I would like you to note the straight line at the top right of the diagram which depicts us walking, with purpose, across the Iron Cove Bridge.
I caught a glimpse of a new television commercial, I think for the Commonwealth Bank, featuring a man walking along a dusty road, whispering regrets to himself.
‘If only I would do something instead of just thinking about what I might do’ he says, or something like that.
Sounds like a carefully market-researched sentiment inserted into an emotive scene to echo what most people have thought at one point or another. Or continually.
Then the screen splits and a second, identical man is seen walking purposefully the opposite direction down a paved, tree and building lined road. The first man stops and stares after him.
The words ‘You are what you do’ fade on to the screen, along with the bank logo.
The implicit suggestion is that by associating with this bank, we will move from the ranks of the regretful thinkers to the have-it-all doers.
I don’t think so… If what we do is the sum of who we are, then we immediately dismiss those who can’t measure up – and ultimately that is all of us.
utterance 