Praise to the Holiest...

I just caught the end of Songs of Praise tonight to hear them singing "Praise to the Holiest in the heights".
I've always enjoyed singing the song, it's got lovely poetry and a nice tune.
Anyway, as I read the words going past I realised how much truth and power they contain! We are losing these old songs to our detriment!
To see the words take a look at: http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/p/r/praiseto.htm

Everyday I am swayed...

Hi all. Long time since my last post.

Confession time: I'm a sinner. I wish I wasn't but I still am. Paul sums it up well in Romans (7:15-20):

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

Have had this song for a while, but decided to look up the words as I listened to it today (Shifting Sand by Caedmon's Call):

Sometimes I believe all the lies

So I can do the things I should despise

And every day I am swayed

By whatever is on my mind

I hear it all depends on my faith

So I'm feeling precarious

The only problem I have with these mysteries

Is they're so mysterious

And like a consumer I've been thinking

If I could just get a bit more

More than my 15 minutes of faith,

Then I'd be secure

(Chorus)

My faith is like shifting sand

Changed by every wave

My faith is like shifting sand

So I stand on grace

I've begged you for some proof

For my Thomas eyes to see

A slithering staff, a leprous hand

And lions resting lazily

A glimpse of your back-side glory

And this soaked altar going ablaze

But you know I've seen so much

I explained it away

(Chorus)

Waters rose as my doubts reigned

My sand-castle faith, it slipped away

Found myself standing on your grace

It'd been there all the time

(Chorus repeated)

My prayer? God, make me better!

Stay on the solid ground and you won't be swept around so much... time to get back some discipline and really delve into the Word.

March On!

As someone coming from the Salvation Army I have a fondness for the Salvation Army Song Book. In reality it's probably little different for the fondness many Christians over the years have had for their hymn books...

The thing is, though, there's so much good stuff in the Song Book that we'd be foolish to chuck out the baby with the bath water. Yes tradition needs to be chucked out, it's served it's purpose but good poetry is still good poetry and truth is still truth.

Today I want to share the words of a song that I have never sung in a Salvation Army meeting, written by one of the founding pioneers, George Scott Railton. It contains words of encouragement and victory! The only reason I know these words is because they were set to a new tune and performed by the South Youth Chorus.

Just read over them a couple of times and let them sink in...

Shout aloud salvation, and we'll have another song;

Sing it with a spirit that will start the world along;

Sing it as our comrades sang it many a thousand strong,

As the were marching to Glory.

March on, march on! we bring the jubilee;

Fight on, fight on! salvation makes us free;

We'll shout our Saviour's praises over every land and sea

As we go marching to Glory.

How the anxious shout it when they hear the joyful sound!

How the weakest conquer when the Saviour they have found!

How our grand battalions with triumphant power abound,

As we go marching to Glory.

So we'll make a thoroughfare for Jesus and his train;

All the world shall hear us as fresh converts still we gain;

Sin shall fly before us for resistance is in vain,

As we go marching for Glory.

March on, march on! we bring the jubilee;

Fight on, fight on! salvation makes us free;

We'll shout our Saviour's praises over every land and sea

As we go marching to Glory.

"There is Nothing"

In the run-up to Christmas my sister asked what I wanted this year. We're very fortunate in that we don't need for much, we've pretty much got everything we need/want. I tend to ask for quite practical things for Christmas, but there wasn't much to ask for.

After thinking it through I remembered that my sister has pretty good taste in music, and after quite a long time spent working in a Christian Bookshop has a pretty good knowledge of the Christian music scene. It'd been a while since I'd got any new Christian music, so I asked for a new CD - I left the decision of what type to her.

Anyway, come Christmas I had actually forgotten this request and was surprised to find a lovely CD called "Great God Who Saves" by a woman named "Laura Story".

The CD includes a song we both love called "Indescribable" which we had at our wedding (it turns out it's actually co-written by her). But another song on the CD has caught my attention: "There is nothing" herewith the words/lyrics:

Lord I come before You

To honor and adore You

For who You are and all that You have done

Lord I am not worthy

My heart is dark and dirty

Still somehow You bid for me to come

May our time be sweeter

May I be a keeper

Of the promises I make to You in song

Lord may I remember these moments of surrender

And live my life this way from this day on

So clothe me in humility

Remind me, that I come before a King

And there is nothing

There is nothing

More precious, more worthy

May I gaze deeper

May I stand longer

May I press onward to know You Lord

Google Wave

Sorry to those who follow my blog and are relatively normal... this is another geek post!

So I've discovered Google Wave and managed to get myself an invite (just like when Gmail started, this is still invite only). To sum it up really simply, this is a combination of E-mail, IM, Wiki and social networking. Basically you start a conversation (a wave) with other people and the content of that conversation changes - every member of the conversation can edit every part of that conversation!

It's pretty exciting, useful for communication and collaboration (provided, of course, that it takes off).

The thing is, I have 18 invites remaining and it's a bit boring (and pointless) if I have no one to talk to, so I'm looking to get some of my friends on board - especially people who are likely to use it to communicate a lot. If you want an invite, just let me know!

Body Confidence

OK, so it's probably not cool to admit that I watch "How To Look Good Naked" (or that I actually enjoy it), but we'll ignore that point for a couple of minutes.

I want to promote the Body Confidence petition that they're currently running. They want the government to agree to putting Body Confidence on the national curriculum for girls AND BOYS!

Boys are equally affected by low body confidence as girls. For boys, they're "supposed" to be slim and toned, even muscular. For girls, they're "supposed" to be slim and curvaceous. The media puts these false images of perfection in front of us and makes us believe that we're not good enough! It's not on! Let's teach our children that they ARE beautiful!

All that's fine, but here's my main reason for posting this. A woman's body confidence affects us men too! When you watch this program you hear about men who have not seen their wives naked for years, some have NEVER seen their wives naked!! If we could make it so our wives had more body confidence now thanks to something in school before we even met them, wouldn't we?

This nations children need your help! They are surrounded by voices telling them they are not good enough and what's more they pass that message onto their friends without realising. Man, woman or child, please add your name to the petition: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/bodyconfidence/

Aggregating Vodcasts on KDE4

OK, so this is a really geeky post, so if you're not in the slightest interested stop reading now...

So I'm quite into the concept of vodcasting (Video-Podcast). Getting new episodes of a "programme" as and when they are released and automatically downloading them. For a while a year or more back I was using a program called Miro which was fantastic, but sucked the life out of my computer...

More recently I was using a combination of hpodder and reencode to download and encode the vodcasts for my GP2X and then watching them on the train to work. When I stopped taking the train, I stopped keeping up-to-date with the "channels" I was following.

I finally have my dream set-up in my office: 1 computer, 1 laptop, 1 keyboard, 1 mouse and 2 screens - all thanks to a KVM... woop!

Anyway, my computer has Kubuntu 9.04 (64bit) and KDE4 on it. Love it! Had a few teething problems with the network managers, but eventually found WICD (pronounced "wicked") which works perfectly! Also had some dodgy graphics and some issues with the dual screen, but that is all sorted now.

Anyway, thought I'd get a vodcast aggregator now that I have my own computer again (Lucy also has a computer in the back room, so at the moment there are 3 computers on... ooops). The question is, what should I go for?

I thought about Miro, but when I went to install it, saw a whole load of gnome packages, which I wasn't really into. So I had a look around and found a KDE compatible equivalent... Kitty. To be honest, Kitty looks like it hasn't been developed for a couple of years. With just a few tweaks it could be really nice, but it was just too naff for me. It doesn't automatically download new episiodes and it doesn't tell you what you've watched.

I did think about just using my hpodder/reencode combination, but this would have the same drawback (although I could cron it to run regularly, there would be no way of seeing what I had watched).

So it's Miro after all. I like the way it has a great guide full of other shows. I like the fact that it automatically downloads new episodes. I love the fact that once you've watched it it gives you 7 days and then deletes the old videos unless you select to keep them. It's brilliantly thought out and I love it! Such a shame it's Gnome, but nevermind.

So, in summary, Miro is much better than Kitty.