Padkos

A new set of links, covering a variety of subjects :

 Live to Die - John Piper

The Kindness That Will Kill Your Church – Trevin Wax

Dostoyevsky the Prophet: The Trial of Dmitri Karamazov and the Redefinition of Family

Do You Pervert The Grace of God?

Faith and Mental Illness – Michael Horton

A Case For God  RC Sproul

A Portrait of God  - Ligon Duncan

Sharing His Story Not Yours = Trevin Wax    

Should We Use Personal Testimony in Evangelism?

How Churches Became Cruise Ships

Was Luther a Calvinist?

5 Insights Into Idolatry

7 Different Ways to Read a Book

Faith and Works – John Piper

Padkos

Breath taking links here. How great and how good is our God! May He ever be praised!

On Missionary outreaches – short term. Do and don’t do. Advice from one who knows both sides of the coin The Good Missionary

Freed From The Law – RC Sproul (Rom 7:1-6)

The War on the Word – this one should scare us all awake…

and the incredible ‘Why The God-Man” by Sinclair Ferguson

ON THE CRITICAL NEED FOR CONSTRUCTIVE THINKERS

Success is Dangerous – This reminds me of the little skit  “Man Can Do It All By Himself” There is a very real danger in making things happen by ourselves, our effort, our abilities.

A reading list with a couple of titles that interest me :  What We’re Reading This Summer

And another : Fiction Titles

Padkos–Food For The Road

I’m starting a new feature on the blog : every day I drop by several different places on the web, reading really good articles and I have so many bookmarks by now, that it is getting hard to find a specific link. So I decided to follow the example of some other bloggers (for me most notably Tim Challis with his  ‘A La Carte’) and collect those links on my own blog for –hopefully- easier reference in the future.

 

So here goes the first ‘Padkos’ (Padkos is Afrikaans and literally means ‘food for the road’ – a meal packed to be eaten while travelling.) In keeping with the feel of this blog- that of being on a journey as Christian is in ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ once he gets beyond the wicket gate- I thought it an appropriate title for ‘food’ I snack on along the way. Not to replace the ‘daily bread’ of the Scriptures, but in addition to it.

Grace Is Not A Thing

By Grace Alone: An Interview with Sinclair Ferguson

4 Principles of Prayer From Saint Augustine

Six Lies Grads Will Be Told

 

Links posted here are for my personal reference and include articles/discussions/information that I personally found useful or that I wanted to consider again/spent time on thinking though.

South Africa Memories

I'm sure most of you don't know this, but I am a scrapbooker. Better defined as a digital scrapbooker. By that I mean that I do all my scrapbooking on the computer (using Photoshop) and then I have the pages printed up in book form. Through Shutterfly and Costco.
Although digi scrapping is much quicker and cheaper than classic scrapbooking, it naturally still adds up. I've been extremely blessed, over the years, to work with designers and one store as a member of a 'Creative Team' (CT) . Basically we are provided with kits, we make LO's and post these in online galleries. These then act as examples of what can be done with the kits. In the process we net in potential customers and we get digi materials to use....and end up with books worth of pages, ready to print. It is a good deal all the way round I think. I've been doing this for a good many years.
Since we've been at Gleanings, I've not had as much time to scrapbook, but seeing as I have no lay out and no clean up time, it is easy enough to make start during lunch time and finish it off in the evening. Besides I have a treasure trove of older pictures of our families to scrapbook, not even mentioning our own pictures! the old black and white pictures are my favourites to scrapbook.
And now I have our visit to South africa and England to work on too. I promised my parents a book of the visit and my Mom's birthday.
I also gave my two sisters each their books, with pictures of when they were just little girls. They loved them. But now I need to get my brother's one done too...he looked decidedly unhappy not to be included, but there was no way I had enough time to finish his book before we left. Fortunately I made a good start a while ago, and he understood completely why he was 'left out' for now.

If you are interested to see some of these pages, you can find many of them on my scrapbooking blog 'Meisie's Doodles' as well as in online galleries such as this one at Scrapbook-Elements.

I recently did these two pages with pictures from our trip. Birthday Braai in Pretoria with family. The guys were all working together barbecuing the meat (we had lots of cold meat for the next day, YUM!) and it was fun listening to the joking, talking and laughter. What memories!

 

...and Visiting uShaka in Durban. Alexandra took us shopping in down town Durban. I don't know that I've ever been in that area, but we sure enjoyed our time at this place. Aren't those chameleon stair railings just the neatest things? Such a cool idea.

 

 

Oh and yes, I do 'Scrap For Hire' and 'Scrap For Others' too. Meaning I do scrapbook layouts for printing as pages or as books, for other people too. Drop me a comment/note if you need some scrapbooking done!

Off to make a start on another LO before it's dinner time. I'm reading a biography on Dorothy L Sayers at the moment. The sort of book that is hard to put down once you pick it up. Therefore I try to get other stuff done, before I start reading...

 

Just sayin' ;-)

 

Gates….

If you are at all familiar with ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ you might have guessed at the origin of the name of this blog. Now although I have nothing ‘against’ gates, they just have never really featured in my life. As a child, the only gates I seemed to encounter where the gates on farm roads. Those were both high in entertainment and frustration level. I think age probably determined how you felt about them! That little scene in ‘The gods must be crazy’ movie comes to mind. You know the one where he is trying to get through the gate with a jeep that has no brakes and cannot be turned off, as it will never start again? I think Marius Weyers did such a good job in that scene. Of course it is based on a similar scene that Jamie Uys did a few decades earlier in one of his old black and white Afrikaans films. I don’t remember the name of the movie, but I do remember the scene, and I wish I could get a hold of those old movies…. BUT! I’m digressing. Well somewhat.

 

I was going to tell you about some gates we found in this area. Carol told me about this beautiful gate here close by. I expected it to be pretty, but I was not prepared for what I found. This is not pretty, this is a work of art.

 

 

Here is the one side. Notice the colours of the rocks behind the ironwork?

 

 

…and a close-up of one of the roses. All I can say is ‘wow’…and how long did it take to make it?

 

 

And then there is this other one, which is a bit further away. We took pictures of it when we came back from the mountains. (we went up there for the day, on Andrzej’s birthday)

This is not nearly as pretty as the roses, but it is an amazing piece of work nevertheless.

 

 

…and the main gate a little closer

 

 

Take a look at the leaves…

 

 

I’d like to know if there are more gates like this around here. It certainly seems possible! If ever I find one, I’ll be sure to show you!

Into The Mountains

At first I needed to catch my breath. Then I had a cold. And then finally I was ready to join Andrzej for a trip into the mountains.

It is really nice to have these so close to us. For their beauty, but also for their fresh air . Getting out of the valley is very refreshing. Best thing is that it is not even far to go. Take 40 minutes or so and you are there. In the Sequoia National Park. The park is of course huge so that the bit we travel in is just a tiny part of it. Enormous pieces of forest lie untouched to and only a few regions can be accessed via hiking trails.

 

 

…and a bit higher up. The ‘fogginess’ in the background is in fact smog. It lies in the valley like a blanket.

 

 

Looking out over the world’s largest grove of sequoia trees, some 2100 larger than 10’ in diameter.

 

 

Now I believe this is a Sugar Pine? Look at the size of that cone! I shall come back and correct this once I’m able to verify my information!

 

 

We went up about 6000’ and judging by the markers next to the road they get pretty heavy snow up there. The last of the snowfalls was now only patches of white in shady spots.

 

 

We did drop by at the world’s largest tree, the General Sherman. Size is calculated based on the volume of the tree, not the height/circumference etc)

 

 

 

It was COLD up there…the temperature hovering just above zero.

There will be many more mountain trips, so I’ll be back with more pictures for sure, in the future!

Before You Can Go….

...you need to be ready to do so. I was quite confident, at one time, that I had it all under control. Dear Lorainne was gracious enough not to laugh at me in my face, but instead simply stated that she would be back to finish the packing job she started. Between her and Beverly, we were able to finish and leave when we had planned to. Without them I might still be packing instead of sitting here at Gleanings typing this!

Ladies you are the very BEST!

Lorainne bravely soldiers on

while Beverly whips up a delicious and beautiful Chai tea latte, served with cinnamon rolls and cookies, for us each.

And finally the quail dropped by to say good-bye too.

By midnight on Sunday the 6th we were packed and ready to head out on Monday morning.