• All my Christian, church and faith-related entries will go here;
• posts related to software design and development, hardware and other technology will go here, and
• other stuff into a catchall here.

New blog entries will still be announced via twitter & facebook.

Several reasons, but the precipitator was that this blog has been around for about 3 years and I’ve messed with it so much it was starting to do some very weird things – pieces of admin pages going walkabout; cache acting strangely; stuff like that. So I started fresh, exported everything to the appropriate new blog, and away we go…

Happy reading!

We used to stay at a place called Olchen Court in Longtown, an old 13th Century watchtower-cum-farmhouse-cum-home and B&B. Way out in the boonies, with ancient timbers and incredible views down the valley.

Get there via a sunken, two-way one-lane road with a canopy of tree branches turning it into a tunnel in places. Jean’s a gourmet cook, and plenty of people arrange to have dinner there the previous night – I believe locals book for dinner there too.

We wanted to catch the ambiance of a local pub, so we always used to eat at the Bull’s Head in Craswell on the way over. Marvelous cooking there too.

And what a wonderful church! Small-ish building – not at all churchy; open and airy; very friendly people; pretty good praise band; good message. Their pastor, Mike Kendall, spoke on the passage where Christ went up to Tyre (I’d not thought about that sidetrip until he read it), and then healed the Syro-Phoenician woman’s little girl of possession. I was starting to get a bit bothered at one point – I wanted him to recognize that this woman had to be smart as a whip to come back with that response that fast (”even the dogs get the scraps”); a minute later he was there saying it. I think that must be some indication of a good preacher – or perhaps a Spirit-led teacher – that the sermon to that point has been so lucid that the listeners are tracking slightly ahead of you. That allows the listener the satisfaction of feeling that the preacher agrees with them! when actually he has brought them along step by step.

One of Mike’s points was that a Gentile was the first to grasp what Christ was saying in His parable without having to have it explained by Him. She almost laid claim to a relationship with this Jewish God, despite being a Gentile at a time when Christ’s message was for the Jews (first). It made me think of Abraham’s slave (I always assume it was Eleazar, although the text just says ’slave’) who went up to Hebron [woops! just re-read - I meant Haran, obviously!] and was the first Gentile to pray to God – he starts off, “Oh God of my master Abraham…” and proceeds to ask for directions about Isaac’s bride. Thing is, the only other person who had prayed to Abraham’s God since the covenant was initiated was … Abraham himself.

A very nice young woman sitting next to me gathered me up as we stood up afterwards and talked at the speed of summer lightening. One downside to this building at coffee hour – it’s very hard to hear; noise bounces off those walls. So I had to keep asking her to repeat. She then dragged my life story out of me; we talked about various church issues; she gave me more names of books to read, which I’ve added to my Amazon list (Total Church and Living Church), both of which the pastor had recommended to her. Then for deeper insight she forwarded me on to the elders, who were also very helpful.

So I came away edified, helped and connected – again, a testament to a church that’s doing its job.

Appointment with Death
Cards on the Table
Cat Among the Pigeons
Crooked House
Dead Man’s Folly
Death Comes as the End
Endless Night
Murder on the Orient Express
N or M?
Nemesis
Sparkling Cyanide
The Body in the Library
The Moving Finger
The Murder at the Vicarage
The Secret Adversary
They Do It with Mirrors
Why Didn’t They Ask Evans?

In addition, 2 books were shown:

Death in the Clouds
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

And I suppose an argument could be made for

The Man in the Brown Suit

(inasmuch as the Doctor was wearing one.) Perhaps half-points could also be given for the following titles, parts of which appeared:

Giant’s Bread
Spider’s Web
Wasp’s Nest

I kept looking for some others – these seemed easy targets, given the plot – but I didn’t notice them:

Black Coffee
Curtain
Evil Under the Sun
Personal Call
The Clocks
The Unexpected Guest
Verdict
While the Light Lasts
Witness for the Prosecution

Funny, I haven’t come across anything on the ‘net by anyone else noticing this … but then, I haven’t really looked. I’d have thought the Agatha Christie episode page on the Dr Who wiki would have mentioned it, but it doesn’t: http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Agatha_Christie