A few "not so groundbreaking" thoughts on G+

Please bear in mind that I'm not a pro, but just an ordinary user that loves to communicate.

I don't  find G+’s circles and segmenting my personal contacts appealing at all.  The design is fun and it could work excellently for some.

On Twitter I follow many and I have 70 followers. Of followers and the followed I only know 3 contacts personally.   It’s a bit of a hit and a miss, but I do learn from those I follow and hope my followers benefit from time to time by my tweets.

On FaceBook I have 300 personally known contacts, with a sprinkling of  chosen organisations with the added advantage of lists and monitoring.

I don’t care for any of the games.  "Sure as cookies"  games and adverts are bound (by money) to find their way to G+

That leaves Hang-outs which offers multiple participation & could be something really good, but, for now. I’m happy with what Skype provides.

I don’t see the point of – is it called – Sparks when the whole wide web is at my finger-tips.

So for now……….my G+ circles will hang there suspended in cyber space.  I’ll add invites and as for the rest, keep my ears open and wait and see.

PS  There are photo's too and of course future ramping up of features.   Must say that image-display in Facebook is quite limited as in that all displays are one size - ie fine for a quick look, but with no option to double-click for a bigger look now and again.

Conclusion:  It's the big idea - ie how to do social for the world - that is probably the big headache.  And the competition with an established network - which, thankfully is not my burden.

Close to the Broken-hearted

Some years ago, our beautiful, beloved son, Michael, was diagnosed with inoperable Ewings Sarcoma of the spine. At the time he was a young man full of the joys and promise of life. After 15 months of chemo/radiology, he died (physically) in Jesus. It was our honour & deep pain, as his parents and sisters with husbands, to nurse our very loved son and brother to his last earthly day. The year was 2006, shortly after his 27th birthday. Our hearts broke all along the way.

We can testify from experience that God is right there when we need Him - even though He owes us no such grace. With tender-heartedness and real help He sustains us in our grief, day by day by day. Emmanual!

What about all those Why-questions?

Rather than answering Job's queries, God gives him 64 additional scenarios to unravel. Where is the help in that, you may protest. Just this: God gives Job a much bigger picture of reality and Job is in that place of standing, hand over mouth, in awe of God. That's where we want to be.

In His wisdom and patience and love, our Father gives His children ample space to ask our questions in a non-rebellious attitude. And it's not as if He leaves us in our terror, flailing and failing to get out of that deadly slimey pit of unanswered questions, purposelessness and despair. Not one little bit.

Please, open a Bible again and again and humbly rely on the Holy Spirit to show you many,really many, logical reasons and solid promises from His Word for suffering. As you take this information of God's ultimate plans on board, so you will progressively take heart and endure with confidence in His will. God can be fully trusted! And though you will still mourn and miss your loved one, you will also be transformed by meaningful suffering and His enabling and His priceless presence.

With our eyes of faith on Him and His glorious ultimate purposes, we can move from sheer despair, to awe and, with our eye on His purposes, even rejoice - even if through tears.

Of course we will still not have all the information, for example, we are not let in on the time-scales. But we know our God is as good as His Word, full of truth, grace and compassion and as for His ultimate plans, they are infinitely more brilliant and glorious than our limited imaginations could ever plot of fathom.

Just see how powerfully our God's love and comfort is at work: Gordon and I can honestly sing this song from the heart, even if through tears:


"Faithful One so unchanging
Ageless One You’re my rock of peace
Lord of all I depend on You
I call out to You, again and again
You are my rock in times of trouble
You lift me up when I fall down
All through the storm Your love is the anchor
My hope is in You alone"

How we hope that through some of the ordinary posts on this blog, you too, in your unique suffering, will connect by faith with the Lord Jesus Who heals/is healing the broken-hearted.


Here is the reason why God is so wonderfully close to His children.

5 pics of our NZ children & grand-kiddo’s.

We constantly long for them and, yes, New Zealand is far too far from us.

This is what 12 years of marriage has done to Jason and Liesl!



Jesse is the younger brother – and our little grandson snuggles up in our hearts, again and again, with that winning smile  right into our eyes.  Jesse is going to be 4 soooon, then we’ll sing the chipmunk happy birthday to him.


And here’s our Joshua who ,all in one year .has moved from South Africa to New Zealand and started school.  And, most importantly and excitedly, he has put his faith in Jesus.  It all started with:  “I want to be with Jesus for ever and ever” – a good starting point, Josh.  Jesus wants the children to come to Him.


Both our Joshua and Jesse play rugby – as boys who live in New Zealand (and South Africa) – should!  Joshua scores with style but Jesse, initially couldn’t understand why a boy took the ball from him and would not give it back!

One down, one to go.

Graves, Mortality and all that.

Even though it’s just about 12 years since Gordon and I emigrated from South Africa to the UK, we still find


the old church grave-yards here a novelty.  Happy to report that our young grandchildren have had super-fun playing hide-and-seek among the mossy, rusty, leaning grave-stones.

Psalm 90:12 "Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom."

I guess numbering our days aright has something to do with getting real about our personal mortality.

Those sharp-edged yuppies of the eighties are now starting to plan for retirement, and in just another few decades, they will all be history.  No ways to dodge this one:  earthly life is like the mist.   People cannot pull of eternal life for people – but God can and has done so through Jesus Christ, for every believer.


Here is a link to an earlier post if you wish to explore "God lives on".


Double-click on images for an enhanced view of mortality.

Movie Review: “The Tree of Life”

Before you buy your movie tickets ask yourself if you are a person who “goes to the movies” or a person who loves the art of the film itself.   If you fall into the second category then Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is your kind of movie. And...better not to shell out money for your tickets only because The Tree of Life stars three of Hollywood’s biggest names: Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, and Jessica Chastain.

Malick has only made 4 films in the past 40 years.  Each piece has in turn been critically acclaimed. The Tree of Life received the Palme d’Or at Cannes, the festival’s most prestigious award.

The Tree of Life Movie Synopsis: The Tree of Life is the impressionistic story of a Midwestern family in the 1950s. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father (Brad Pitt). Jack (played as an adult by Sean Penn) finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith. Through Terrence Malick’s signature imagery, we see how both brute nature and spiritual grace shape not only our lives as individuals and families, but all life.


It was a bit of a  mixed bag for us, but overall Gordon and I are glad we caught the bus to Finchley Road on Saturday morning to do something special together.  Good thing it was not a late-night movie, as it ran for 138 minutes.  Also good thing that we had a vague idea of what to expect.  ( Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Science Fiction).  We did see a few people leaving the theatre after the first 20 minutes!

"The Tree of Life"  is virtually obscenity-free kaleidoscope of raw emotions, lyrical passages and cosmic grandeur, but it’s also an unconventional movie without a typical plot, exquisite, sublime, profound, majestic, emotionally powerful work of art.  And.... no crude sexual content and some light (almost scary) violence.

The film begins by introducing us to the O’Briens (Brad Pitt, and big-screen newbie Jessica Chastain), a married couple who’s just received news of their teenage son’s death.  As expected, the grief is palpable, and the lack of dialogue only seems to underscore the anguish.  Knowing that particular life-experience for ourselves, with the loss of our young son, we were totally gripped by the realistic portrayal of that grief which cannot be spoken.  

The perspective then abruptly shifted to the dramatic birth of the universe, with strong references to the theory of  evolution.  Magnificent visions of creation filled us with worship of our Creator.  Got to be say it as it is:  the references to the theory of evolution, portraying life spreading from the ocean to the land, then jumping to the so-called dinosaur age, left us unconvinced.

A reading of  Job 38:4,7 (“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation . . . while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”) and molecular reproduction, asteroids, a cosmic light show Stunning visuals!  Which ought to take us to the place where Job was before God:  hand over mouth, in awe!

The portrayals of the O’Brien family provide the most moving representation of childhood.  It’s a slow impressionistic story, introspective and artsy. A young Jack is shown growing up. Images of him learning to walk and greeting the arrival of his first brother,   Unconventional  story telling and emotionally powerful unfolding of the complex story of a father, mother, children, love, death, hate, forgiveness, reconciliation.


We both liked and were reminded of our own childhoods by the vignettes of Jack's Texas childhood—playing with sparklers, running through sprinklers, drinking from a hose, swimming in the local pool, planting a tree with Dad— etc.

The only real negative for us was the closing scene which represents the after-life and reconciliation.  It left us both luke-warm to cold and minus the feel-good factor, because we found it just too ethereal, far-fetched with no resemblance to the Bible’s heaven.  Much too a poetic and floaty representation of what we believe is a real place.

The acting is excellent, especially by Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain and Hunter McCracken as the father, mother and Young Jack. 

  
Brad Pitt as Mr. O'Brien

Jessica Chastain as Mrs. O'Brien

Rating: PG-13 (for some thematic material)
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Science Fiction
Run Time: 138 min.
Director: Terrence Malick
Actors: Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken, Laramie Eppler, Tye Sheridan, Fiona Shaw, Cole Cockburn, Will Wallace
 
Overall, we have no regrets whatsoever for seeing "The Tree of Life".