Saturday, September 11, 2010

Away...

Just thought I should point out that I'm away for the next 10 months or so... So don't expect too many updates or DLDown activity (hope to keep up a little songwriting, but don't really have much in the way of access to recording equipment...).

A few thoughts and pics from our travels will be at Bring on the Snow Leopards! - you'll need to email me to be invited if you want to see it.
J

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Petty engineering design rant 5 - the spoons of doom

P.E.D.R. returns with a light-hearted entry, which some of you may be familiar with: my parents' cutlery, and in particular, the spoons. I don't have a picture of the real thing, so imagine something like these ones:















but with slightly chunkier handles. Handles, in fact, whose chunkiness outweighs the business end of the spoon. And thus the spoons, following the simple physical laws of leverage, tend to overbalance if you don't put them far enough onto your bowl.

The best and most amusing effects occur when one's dish contains an edible delight with a bit of viscosity to it, such as a thick soup, or a pudding, or porridge or similar. (Well, perhaps not porridge in my case, but the delightfulness of edible dishes is strictly subjective... Let's stick with puddings for the sake of this particular argument.)

Thus, at some inevitable yet indeterminate point through the course of the meal, the forces of gravity acting on the handle finally create a turning moment sufficient to overcome those being applied by the viscosity of the pudding, and the dessert-laden miniature impromptu Roman siege engine of doom catapults into action and claims another victim. A positive triumph of utensil engineering. Yes indeed :o)

Monday, June 28, 2010

Solas Festival

Popped along for the Saturday of Greenbelt's younger Scottish sibling, Solas. Here's a few highlights of the great acts I had the joy of seeing (follow links to see their websites and/or give them a listen):

Sol/Rory Butler: Some excellent playing here, both in lovely solo acoustic form (I'm jealous of this guy's guitar skills!), and in tight, electric, complex full band form.

Calamateur: Met before at The Art of Joy, and great as always - nice to hear a few songs from his great new album, Each Dirty Letter, which is now in regular rotation in my iTunes. Forthcoming single Banoffee is particularly catchy, with it's bubble of joy in danger of breaking out from Calamateur's usual slightly-downbeat persona.

Yvonne Lyon: 3rd time seeing Yvonne (after first meeting at a gig in Aberdeen), ably accompanied by husband DL. Yvonne "attempted to sneak onto the stage to start without anyone noticing" to open with Fearless, which fitted the relaxed atmosphere in the Northstar tent. The audience lay around, joined in singing, and even danced in their sun-loungers for a prize of Percy Pigs. Juliet Turner added some nice harmonies to a few songs. Lovely.

The Lowly Knights: Boisterous, infectious, multi-voiced, instrument-swapping, bouncy folk-rock. A friend recommended them to me (apparently, one of the front-men, Neil Mullan, was part of the Aberdeen crowd when I was there: recognised, but never properly met in my case), and I wasn't disappointed. Their two EPs are well worth the download, and can be heard here, but it's the enthusiasm and energetic harmonies of their live performance that grabbed my ears.

Juliet Turner: Lovely songs, with her accompanying guitarist pulling out some delicious acoustic-guitar-dripping-with-ridiculous-reverb solos. I was slightly surprised at the cynicism of some of the songs, but I think that's part of their effect.

We See Lights: Enjoyable indie with nice vocal harmonies. They make a nice feature of their accents, à la Proclaimers (they even have a song entitled Singing in Your Own Voice, which may or may not be anything to do with this). Check out their new album Ghosts & Monsters.

Jo Mango: You've probably heard of her already, as I had, but this was the first time I'd actually heard her music. Totally weird, but utterly spellbinding. Bizarre songs, including one about moths and libraries, and another about a trapped starling, but a beautiful performance that held the audience captivated. Nice range of odd and unusual instruments, including harmonium, glockenspiel played with a bow, finger piano, autoharp (courtesy of Suzuki corp!).

Martin Aelred: A stunning 2-song operatic interlude before the headliners - awesome voice, the crowd loved it!

McIntosh Ross: Foot-tapping mix of celtic-ness and country. I had meant to leave after a couple of songs to get home not too late, but found myself still there at the end of the set. Nice pedal-steelage, and a nice a-capella spiritual as the first encore. Not my usual cup of tea perhaps (okay, rubbish metaphor, given that I don't actually like tea, but anyway...), but a most enjoyable end to the evening.


Overall: so glad I went. Lovely location, beautiful weather, great music, nice time mixing and playing at the open mic tent. It felt slightly undersold (I suspect it probably was), but hopefully it's reputation will spread in time for next year. In some case it was actually quite nice for it to be a bit quieter, enabling the crowd to lie on the ground to listen rather than being crammed up against somebody's armpit.

Honorable mention: the food! Was expecting festival prices and quality, so imagine the delights of finding a stall with options of venison or pheasant burgers for the mighty sum of £2.50.

Bring on next year's!

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

It's quiet... too quiet...

So yeah, it's been a wee while since I've updated on here. Thinking about trying to book a gig or two soon, but in the meantime, perhaps you'd like to point your browsers at the reason for the recent silence: pixelbrain. pixelbrain is a collection of programming artwork I've been working on, using a programming package called Processing. Prints should be coming soon...













Tuesday, April 20, 2010

New free download

The recording from the Inter:act India trip fundraiser at The Lot on March 20th is now available for free download, including the full sets from DLDown, The Northern Collective and Chasing Owls.

It even includes our original cover of Switchfoot's 'Redemption' in barbershop quartet style...

Point your browser here to listen/download for free/relive/catch up on what you missed!

Monday, April 19, 2010

A review!

A very nice review of Also, He Made the Stars... from Cross Rhythms - point your browser here.

Their 2007 review of Puzzle can be seen here.

:o)

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Odd things we sing 6 - lost in translation - let’s hear your contributions!

Does anyone else think of yellow-safety-jacketed guys with theodolites and trundle wheels when we sing When I survey the wondrous cross?

And as mentioned in a previous post, another personal favourite is the “consume me from the inside out” line from Hillsong’s From the Inside Out - so are we talking aliens or tapeworms? Or perhaps a drink of concentrated sulphuric acid?

So what are the lyrics we sing that make you giggle/smile/snigger or grimace in bemusement? Share your favourites with the rest of us by commenting here...

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Petty engineering design rant 4 - printer cartridges

Right printer, my letter is entirely in black, no colour whatsoever. Why oh why, then, do you refuse to do anything at all unless you have ink in both your black and colour cartridges? Likewise, why do you need me to buy a black cartridge to print a document entirely composed of blue text? Or indeed red text? Is there any actual truthful reason you need both, or is this really the cheap money-making scam it appears to be?












This is a petty annoyance with a more serious point behind it. I’ve had the joy (ahem) of working for a few places with fairly beefy printers connected to networks serving say a couple of dozen people, and so were under fairly constant use. I shall keep the manufacturer’s name under my hat for now - suffice to say they’re a big brand, reputable company which you will all have heard of - but I suspect the following practice is probably fairly widespread.

After a few weeks use, the little status display screen on the top would switch to something along the lines of “fuser unit 2317 pages remaining - order replacement part”. 2317 pages remaining until what? Is it going to self-destruct? Explode in a cloud of magenta toner dust? It’s obviously an artificial countdown, as to predict the failure of a component that precisely would require some seriously complicated monitoring equipment which would obviously be far too expensive to include in your average office printer.

What actually happens when the countdown reaches zero is... nothing. The printer just sits there blinking “replace fuser unit”, and refuses to do anything else until you comply. After the prerequisite bureaucracy and stressed budget balancing, some 3rd party printer servicing bloke appears to replace the part, has a look at the old one, and reckons it’s still got at least a couple of hundred thousand more pages worth of use left in it. You can’t reset the counter manually, and the printer recognises if you try and put the old one back in.

So does that imply that the printer company have actually gone to the trouble of putting counters in individual components, just so that they can extort another £250 (or whatever price it is) out of you for a replacement for a part that didn’t actually need replacing? Not only have they thought “we can make some money out of spare parts”, but they’ve sunk to the base level of designing in bogus lifetime counters so that the end user will think “I’ve spent 3 grand on a nice colour laser printer - I can’t afford to not buy these spare bits to get it up and running again”, and effectively holding departments hostage until the ransom gets paid. Outrageous behaviour! I can’t understand how reputable companies are allowed to get away with such a blatant scam! And what an utter pointless waste of resources. Yes, regular maintenance is good, but don’t use that as cover for your greed.

As a final peeve, I’d like to wonder out loud about all that used office equipment that gets shipped off under “re-use” schemes to developing countries after businesses upgrade their kit. Are these final end users, relying on donations of useful second-hand-but-serviceable equipment going to be able to afford a new unnecessary replacement for a part that doesn’t need replacing? Are they going to be impressed when their shiny new printer manages a measly couple of thousand pages and then sits there blinking? No. Shame on you.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Petty engineering design rant 3 - toothpaste tube lids

Okay, a short one this time: those flip-top toothpaste tube tops which tempt the brusher into supposed easy access to the minty-fresh delights within, but which actually just result in a trailing tail of said paste being smeared elegantly over the tube, your hand, and everything else in the vicinity. Who thought that was a good idea? Same goes for flip-tops on squeezy bottles of honey or ketchup - although with those you at least have a reasonable chance of being able to wipe them clean - on the toothpaste tube, the paste gets stuck forever in the handy little grooves they put on the lid to help you grip the top while unscrewing it. Like you should.












Screw top, or flip-top if you absolutely must, but not both. Thank you.

Woah!

Just happened to have a look on our Internet Archive page (which hosts a few live DLDown shows you can download for free), and apparently one of the shows there has now had over 4800 downloads - crazy! Thanks people :o)

Live Downloads page is here.

Friday, February 12, 2010

Odd things we sing 5 - What the Lord Has Done In Me (Hosanna)

I thought there was something slightly odd about this one when we sung it a few weeks ago and, having sung it again last week, I think I’ve worked out what it is.

Let the weak say, "I am strong"
Let the poor say, "I am rich"
Let the blind say, "I can see"
It's what the Lord has done in me

Hosanna, hosanna
To the Lamb that was slain
Hosanna, hosanna
Jesus died and rose again


Yep, fine, brilliant. (“Hosanna” - a Hebrew expression meaning "Save!" which became an exclamation of praise back in ye olde bible times. The people shouted it as Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the donkey.)

Into the river I will wade
There my sins are washed away
From the heavens* mercy streams
Of the Saviour's love for me


After a little bit of searching through biblegateway, I’m guessing (feel free to enlighten me) that we’re talking about the River of Life mentioned in Rev 22, and/or the River from the Temple in Ezekiel 47, and/or the image of baptism. Again, no problem with that, as long as we all know what we’re talking about.

(*momentary side rant: please get your punctuation right! In this particular context neither heaven’s nor heavens’ makes any sense. Okay, I’m a pedant. Why do we tend to write song words with inadequate punctuation? It can make all the difference between perfect sense and abject confusion.)

I will rise from waters deep
Into the saving arms of God
I will sing salvation songs
Jesus Christ has set me free


Okay, fine with that image too (although, if we’re being pedantic, as is my wont, perhaps we might prefer an image involving God reaching down into said waters deep with his saving arms and lifting me out, rather than me somehow learning to levitate. I digress.) - at least in isolation.

I think what I’m getting at is the mixing of the water images:
v2: river of life - providing purity, life, health, etc - definitely a good thing.
v3: waters deep - symbolic of something negative/dangerous/threatening that we need saving from - or at least that’s how I read it - am I just reading it wrong?

Mixed metaphors can be confusing, but this one’s interesting because it’s almost the opposite problem: applying one metaphor (water) to two opposing concepts in one song.

All this really to highlight the following: songwriting technique is so important, and never more so than when songwriting for other people to sing in corporate worship. I think everyone needs to understand the words which are coming out of their mouth before they can truly use them to worship God. That means not just packing in all the Bible images you can because they sound good. It means not drowning people in archaic imagery and christianese. (We’re so used to singing about lambs and shepherds that we forget that the average punters (including ourselves) aren’t that au fait with ancient Hebrew shepherding practices. And don’t get me started on refining processes - is there some kind of underground smelting culture in our church which I’m unaware of?!**) It means using your creative talents to construct clear and helpful images which inspire awe of God in people and worship to him. It takes hard work and practice to craft a decent set of words (I know, and I’ve only ever written songs for one person (me) to sing, which is infinitely easier than writing for a bunch of people!).

I’m not writing this series just to bash songs I don’t like. In fact, I love a lot of these, and I‘ll say again that I have the greatest respect for those gifted songwriters who can produce the wonderful songs that we sing. But because songs and songwriting are things that I care about, I tend to get bugged by things which could be done better. Keep striving for excellence people, and don’t give up!

J

**Okay, I nicked this particular observation from Nick Page’s excellent “And Now Let's Move into a Time of Nonsense”.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

The Shack vs Mark Driscoll

Over the last couple of days I’ve been following some interesting discussion stemming from a couple of facebook posts by Matthew Henderson (pastor at my old church in Aberdeen) which link to articles talking about the theology and ideas put across in William Paul Young’s The Shack.

It’s been very interesting, the responses ranging in subject from bits of heresy and poor theology to how parts of the book have helped and encouraged individual readers, to the difficult balance between exact theological accuracy and artistic creativity, to some commentators utter disbelief that anyone could take any word in The Shack seriously.

I enjoyed the book as a whole, and found it helpful in thinking through some interesting ideas about the nature of God, some of which I agreed with, others which I didn’t. Perhaps the biggest issues in my mind are that it doesn’t really portray the holiness (or “otherness”) of God that well, and the general impression that sin isn’t that much of a problem (see Tim Keller's post here for more on this).

In one of the comments posted, this little talk from Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church was highlighted. Now, I’ve heard a few of his sermons from time to time, and on the whole I like a lot of what he says. And on this one I generally agree with what he’s saying: that Christians not being sure of what they believe is a big problem. But I found myself disliking the way he went about it - he tends to present very bald statements in a “take it from me” kind of way while his audience (how many of whom have bothered to read the book?) chuckle appreciatively in the background. I don’t like the way in which he condenses long discussions and ideas down to pithy accusations. Here’s a few examples, along with my slightly peevish responses :o) :

“The book is about the trinity” - well yes, but primarily it’s about grief and loss.

“It’s graven imagery” - (minor tangent: nice to see you’re quoting from a nice modern translation of the Bible, completed in 1611) - I don’t know, but I don’t think the author is suggesting we go out and start worshipping big black women. So what about all other works of fiction that seek to suggest something about God? What about music and songs? Artworks? I heard a quote somewhere recently that said something like “It’s a shame that the evangelical church is so suspicious of interpretation and creativity, except in the sermon every week.”

“It’s goddess worship” - eh? I think you’d be hard-pressed to come to this conclusion from the book - it makes very clear that in this story (a work of fiction no less), God happens to choose to reveal himself to Mack in this way (if you don’t know the book, the God-the-Father character reveals himself to Mack, the main character as a large african mother-figure with the name Papa) because it’s the form to which Mack will best respond at that time - in another part of the book he appears as a father figure. Interestingly, the Bible refers to both masculine and feminine qualities of God (as you might expect, given that both human male and female are created in the image of God), but generally refers to him as, well, Him.

“It’s modalism” (that is, the belief that the trinity is one, but acting in 3 different capacities (modes, I guess) when the fancy takes him) - “Papa says: “I am truly human in Jesus”.” - Actually, my overall impression from the book was of three very distinct characters, yet somehow all one - which seems a reasonably fair reflection of how we generally (try to) understand the trinity. In any case, you could equally read the above quoted sentence in the form “I (the three-in-one Godhead: Father, Son and Holy Spirit) am truly human in Jesus”.

But the one that really annoyed me most of all was his opening statement:

“How many of you have read the book The Shack? ...(hands up)... if you haven’t, DON’T”


WHAT?! What kind of useless advice is this? How can we possibly hope to engage with any of these issues from a position of ignorance? We should be reading it AND ALSO weighing it up against scripture to find its holes and inaccuracies. Since the book is out there in society already, perhaps we should be making use of it to challenge and engage with people (both affirming the helpful ideas and countering the bits we’re concerned about) rather than indignantly picking holes in it.


So pastors, please keep teaching the sound theology, but how about teaching the rest of us how to weigh up things like this against the Bible and to counter them ourselves. As Mark implies, the major problem itself is perhaps not so much the book itself, but its widespread undiscerning acceptance as truth.

But I think it’s equally dangerous to create a bunch of followers who can now counter an argument in favour of The Shack with one-liners such as “It’s goddess worship” without having bothered to read the book and weigh it up against scripture themselves.

Spleen vented. Thank you. What's everyone else's take on The Shack?
J

p.s. please stop shouting at me - the amount of my agreement with your sermon is not related (in a good way, at least) to your decibel level.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Odd things we sing 4 - Amazing Grace (v6)

“The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who call’d me here below,
Will be forever mine”


- one of the original verses of Newton’s great hymn - not one of the ‘traditional’ four that we normally sing, but resurrected for inclusion in the new Chris Tomlin version.

Anyone care to comment on exactly what this means, and where I might find it in my Bible? Alternatively, do you think it’s just a metaphor describing the most solid and stable things we know as tenuous and shaky compared to the constancy and steadfastness of God’s love for us?

I’ll gladly join in singing it again once I understand what it means. Till then, it makes me uncomfortable...

J

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Genre-hopping and a 1* review

I am the proud owner of my very first 1-star review!

You can read it here at Louder Than The Music.

I’d been pre-warned that the reviewer hadn’t really warmed to it, so it was with some trepidation that I clicked the link.

But that quickly melted into amusement as I read through the article - you see, I’m still not quite convinced it’s a review of my work. It is, however, an interesting case study on the preconceptions which accompany different genres.

So, next I headed over to that oracle of all tenuous wisdom: wikipedia, and specifically the ‘New Age music’ article.

An interjection at this point: for some reason, when the reviewer put my CD into iTunes, it labelled up the CD’s genre as ‘New Age’. I don’t know why. On my iTunes it’s labelled ‘Singer/songwriter’, and on the iTunes Music Store it appears to have fallen into the ‘Religious’ category (which isn’t necessarily much of an improvement!)

So, yes, wikipedia. It has two definitions:

“New Age music with an ambient sound that has the explicit purpose of aiding meditation and relaxation, or aiding and enabling various alternative spiritual practices, such as alternative healing, Yoga practise, guided meditation, chakra auditing, and so on.”


Not very me. Although I can see that the first track (an instrumental intro to the album, all of 54 seconds long) might reinforce that view.

“Music which is found in the New Age section of the record store.”


Haha, that’s brilliant! So, basically it’s the “couldn’t figure out where else to put it” category. I can live with that, especially when the other artists and influences mentioned include the likes of Pink Floyd, Mike Oldfield, Brian Eno, Jean-Michel Jarre, and Philip Glass - elements of which you might well find subconsciously incorporated into my music.

I really don’t mind that the reviewer didn’t like it - after all, all art appreciation is subjective. (Around the time of making Puzzle I shared a flat with a heavy metal enthusiast - whilst we could both appreciate the work and skill put into the music the other listened to, we would have never actively chosen to listen to it. Perhaps I need to be more broad-minded.)

But I do mind that the reviewer got so blinded by the New Age thing that they evidently didn’t bother listening to the music. Where are the references to particular lyrics, images or musical bits they liked or disliked? Where’s the discussion of the themes that the artist might be trying to portray? How about even mentioning a particular track by name? Anything? I mean, I enjoy the genius of Scrubs as much as the next man, but what’s it got to do with me? Ah well, can't please everyone...

J

(In the interests of contrast, you might also wish to have a look at this slightly more positive example at New Life From Old, or listen for yourself at DLDown's bandcamp page.)

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Odd things we sing 3 - From the Inside Out

I was reminded of this one when we sang it the other day. I really quite like this song. We very nearly picked it for our wedding service, but eventually decided against it. I think it might be something to do with these lyrics from the 2nd verse (full lyrics here):

Your will above all else
My purpose remains
The art of losing myself
In bringing You praise


Now, I’m pretty certain I know what they mean: it’s about humbling ourselves, putting God in first place ahead of ourselves, forgetting about our own wants for a while as we give God glory.

Yet for me it still has something about it that makes me stop before singing this verse. Maybe it’s only me who sees it this way, but the first time I sang this song, I took these lines as implying that we should be aiming to lose ourselves in some kind of zen-like trance while worshipping God. Which doesn’t sit comfortably with me.

People experience meeting with God in all kinds of different ways, but I believe we are to do so fully engaging our minds just as much as we might engage our senses. God made us intelligent thinking beings, and cutting that part out of our worship experience just seems wrong to me. True worship comes as a response to understanding what God has done for us, and that involves using our brains.

So there you go, a serious point out of a misunderstanding of some slightly ambiguous lyrics :o)

Saturday, January 09, 2010

Petty engineering design rant 2 - central heating controllers

So, second post in my ‘being irritated by little things which really shouldn’t matter, but somehow just do’ series:

Now, obviously my heating system needs some method of user input, which should preferably be nice and simple to operate, logically laid out, quick to adjust and so on (and perhaps in these carbon-saving times, designed in a manner which might encourage me to use it slightly less).

I quite like the older-style mechanical ones - you know, the ones with the rotary dial bit with little teeth you flip up and down, or pins you put in holes, or something like that. One glance at it tells you exactly what it’s doing - when it’s going to come on, how long for, and when it’s going to switch off again. To alter the setting it’s dead simple as well - flip a few teeth, move a pin or two - takes about 10 seconds from start to finish.

Our boiler’s controller, however, is a clear casualty of “it ain’t broke, but we’ve got to get the word “digital” in here somewhere even if it kills us” syndrome:












I had a look just now to check what it was set to, and it took me 21 button presses! 21!!! And that’s assuming you get them in the right order to navigate yourself through its invisible menu system (it’s like one of those ancient text-based computer games: “There are exits to the South, South and South. You can see a drowning polar bear. You are holding a garlic press and half a packet of cheese-and-onion Hula Hoops. What would you like to do?” - except much less sensible and intuitive). To actually change the settings will take 30+ presses, again assuming you make no mistakes along the way.

Also, it would be amazingly useful if it had a ‘boost’ button like some do, which allow you to stick it on for another hour, safe in the knowledge that it will turn itself back off again by itself so you can just forget about it. Our one? Well, hitting ‘advance’ makes it go on until the next set ‘off’ time - which could be anytime within the next 23 hours and 59 minutes. To find out when, if you’ll remember, will require an error-free succession of not less than 21 button presses while crouched at an awkward angle at the bottom of a dark cupboard.

Useful. Not. Grrrr.

Vociferation concluded.
J

Friday, January 08, 2010

Odd things we sing 2 - Days of Elijah

Right, well, the purpose of this series is not just to slag off other people’s songs, but to try and explain (or guess) what the writer might have been getting at, and if I’m going to criticise, to do so in some semblance of a constructive manner.

Post no.2 is Days of Elijah by Robin Mark. This is one that went through a phase of being sung all the time, then through an equally protracted phase of being rejected and denounced by everyone (wrongly, in my opinion). Here’s the words:

These are the days of Elijah,
Declaring the word of the Lord.
And these are the days of Your servant Moses,

Righteousness being restored.

And though these are days of great trial,
Of famine and darkness and sword,

Still, we are the voice in the desert crying
'Prepare ye the way of the Lord!'



Behold He comes riding on the clouds,
Shining like the sun at the trumpet call;

Lift your voice, it's the year of jubilee,

And out of Zion's hill salvation comes.



These are the days of Ezekiel,

The dry bones becoming as flesh;
And these are the days of Your servant David,

Rebuilding a temple of praise.

These are the days of the harvest,
The fields are as white in Your world,

And we are the labourers in Your vineyard,
Declaring the word of the Lord!

There's no God like Jehovah.
There's no God like Jehovah!


In Nick Page’s wonderful book “And Now Let's Move into a Time of Nonsense” (you should all read it, especially if you’re at all involved in worship leading or songwriting - humorous, relevant and useful), he talks a bit about being careful of putting too many obscure biblical references into a song - and this song is the worst offender - The Source music book has something like 17 different scripture references at the top of Days of Elijah’s page.

And I quite agree - songwriters should be making sure that our songs are readily accessible and understandable by the majority of those who might sing it, and worship leaders need to be choosing songs in the same way (as well as being true, relevant, edifying, etc).

But this is one song that, I think, has been unnecessarily vilified, because the theme of the song is actually dead simple. Here it is:

In the past (“those days”), God did lots of amazing things (through unextraordinary people like you and me).
Now (“these days”), God is still doing lots of amazing things (through unextraordinary people like you and me).
“Those days” are “these days” - there is no discontinuity in the work God is doing.

Or, even more simply: God worked. God is still working. He used ordinary people like Elijah, Moses, Ezekiel, David then. He uses us now.

So worship leaders, use discernment when picking your songs, absolutely. But if you’re quibbling over a song like this because you think people might not understand, then take the time to learn what the writer meant, and take 20 seconds before you sing it to explain what it’s about. Everyone wins.

Monday, January 04, 2010

Sub-zero Architecture

We stayed at a big house near Aberfoyle for a week over Christmas. This is what happens when you set 3 engineers loose in the snow. I defy you to deny its awesomeness.
J