shmatt.com

Don’t you just love ‘em

Ps. I know it is technically spring

It’s green, it’s mean, and its, well green…

http://www.thecoolhunter.co.uk/transportation/ECO—EXOTIC/

Perfectly legal, and the Mercedes E-300 I was in handled it perfectly.  Still, it was FAST. Could have gone faster, but Doreen the driver didn’t have it in her.

Sorry about the crappy video.  To give you an idea, the cars we passed were probably doing at least 150kph themselves. 

By the way, if you ever visit Germany, you must go to Potsdam.  Amazing old-world city with impressive buildings.

We had to give up our last dog some 5 years ago due to it having a jeckyll and hyde personality where it would be the most placid and docile dog while we were around, but we received continual reports that she would bark at and attack neighbours when we weren’t at home.  Hard to believe at first, but it continued until the point we were told that she needed to be muzzled and kept behind high fences with dangerous dog signs.

After holding off for some years, we feel that we are settled down sufficiently now to get ourselves another dog.  This time, we have chosen to buy an Australian Labradoodle.  They are hypo-allergenic (important for me) and well-tempered dogs.  So on that note, I’d like to introduce Mocha*

Mocha is a little boy, born on the 17th Feb.  We pick him up this week some time.  he is a small dog - will grow to 40-41 cm.  We wanted a bigger dog, but our landlord conceded only once we agreed to a small dog.

We are all very excited.

We were originally going for a different breed, but decided it was too ugly in the end. (WARNING: don’t click that link over lunch)

* Mocha is pronounced moh-kah (mk), for all you uncultured Australian’s who think otherwise.  And on that note, mocha is originally a type of pure, rich arabian coffee, not the sickly coffee/chocolate blend correctly called Café mocha or moccacino.

Hey.

Now that my serious posting is done at my new blog (Nomadic Faith), I can now feel free to post frivolous stuff here.

Like this:

Sorry Nick.  That was a harsh Nick name.

We had Nick Fielder (from the Nick and Josh podcast) and his lovely wife Leslie over for a meal at our home last night.  They are currently touring Australia, and we offered our home for a night or two.  Circumstances are that my wonderful mother-in-law (Alice, are you reading this?) is also staying, so she took trumps.  So it was dinner instead.

Nick and Josh are really two ordinary guys who have had the chutzpah to invite all sorts of ‘famous’ people (in some circles at least) onto their podcast for an amateurish but fun interview.  Some names include (ripped direcley from their site): Doug Pagitt, Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, Shane Claiborne, Phyllis Tickle, Andrew Jones, Scot McKnight, Diana Butler-Bass, Damien Jurado, Derek Webb, Karen Sloan, Spencer Burke, Bob Price, Frank Viola, Zach Lind, Jim Henderson, Pete Rollins, Bishop John Shelby Spong, and AJ Jacobs.  Our favourite here is Shane Claiborne, but I told Nick that I’d probably listen even without the ‘big’ names, because these guys are a hoot.  They currently have some 280,000 subscribers.

Nick and Leslie were very gracious as we in all-too-typical Aussie fashion bagged out their president and Americans in general.  I don’t think they minded too much.  I hope.

Anyway.  They were great company.  Felt like catching up with old friends, though we’d never met them before.  Check out the podcast.

I hate the idea of self promotion.  And I’ve always been unsure about whether I should make this blog personal or "theological" (for want of a better word).

Added to that, I’m preparing to podcast regularly, and I wanted to make that more than just about me.

So, I’ve started another site that will focus on encouraging others in faith through blogging and podcasting.  If you are here for that sort of blog rather than the random happenings of a bloke in Melbourne, then please move along to:

Nomadic Faith

(http://nomadicfaith.com)

I will continue to post posts about our family and personal journey here (at shmatt.com) for friends, family and those with a voyeuristic bent.

There is also our church site at http://thechurch.org.au

Thanks for dropping by!

I’d like to denounce the following clip taken from the short movie Most as an example of corny Christian media (after all, I first discovered it on GodTube), but I can’t.  The ‘parable’ of the bridge-master and his son is one of those over-used illustrations popping up in pulpits all over the world, but after hearing it a thousand times and telling myself that it is cheesy, I could not hold back the tears watching this clip (go on, call me lame):

I think I’ll be writing on the following subject more in the near future, but for now, I’ll just say is that what I appreciate most out of this illustration is that it focuses on the motivating passion of God (the father in the story) to save us from destruction and not to condemn us to destruction, as some would preach.

 

Technorati Tags: The Bridge, Most, Movies, Salvation

I’ve spent a short time in Africa, and one of the hardest parts for me was deciding what and who to give money to.  It’s quite a helpless feeling, because you know that what you give will be quickly consumed and the need really wouldn’t (in most cases) be fulfilled.  Add to that the constant question on your mind - am I being conned? 

I still struggle with what I could not achieve, failed promises (I tried not to make any) and the nagging feeling of arrogance that we can spend so much on a missions trip to take our presence to people who live on a few dollars a week.  A good friend assured me that we were told to ‘Go’ and that the Gospel is about personal contact, but I have not yet resolved this issue for myself.

In the mean time, a solution that I did consider in Africa was to support those people who are making an effort to support themselves. This breaks the dependency on western finance that plagues some communities in the third world, and instead provides a self-sustaining future.  I was pleased this week to come across the web site Kiva, where you are able to make contributions to loans that are given to small businesses in needy communities across the world.  The loan applicants deal with contacts within their communities, and your loan is repaid over a period of time (so in most cases you get your money back, while helping those in need).

Each contribution is US$25