Knowing God through Praise

Ever wanted to know what God is like? Look no further than Psalm 103. This is a praise psalm to God, but it is totally full of descriptions of God's character. It talks about his grace, his provision, healing, power and so much more.

Sometimes, it can be easy for our picture of God to become distorted, but meditating on passages like this one can help correct that.

Poverty - Blog Action Day

The guys at High Calling Blogs have drawn my attention to Blog Action Day which is bringing people all over the world this year to write about poverty. While in Australia, I am already a day late, by American timing I think I can just squeeze myself in.

Poverty is certainly something I think about at times. It's hard not to when you belong to a church like Door of Hope. In our current vision, our church is placing a large emphasis on dealing with poverty and bringing hope to people's lives, locally, nationally and internationally. The church aims t obe "Jesus Centered and Others Focussed"

I would like to talk about something my wife and I are participating in at the moment. Our church is taking part in a program called Kingdom Assignment 2. It didn't start with us, the concept originated in America and has been sweeping across the globe. We were challenged to sell something to raise money for a project that is dear to our hearts, the Good Shepherd Agricultural Mission (GSAM). This is an orphanage in India run by a family who left the comfort of Australia to live out their faith in a very real and practical way. The GSAM are planning to build a school which will have a long-term impact on many lives, helping give children a future free of poverty. The funds from Kingdom Assignment 2 are going to pay for stage one of this school.

It's one project among thousands that must be going on in the world at the moment, and my contribution will be small in the grand scheme of things - but that's how it works. Lots of people doing small things together. God doesn't ask us to change the world single-handedly, he just wants us to be obedient and offer ourselves.

Meet the New Kirk and Spock

American magazine EW (Entertainment Weekly) has just released the cover for their new issue featuring a full page photo of Kirk and Spock from the new Star Trek (2009) movie. This is the first time we have seen such details images of the characters in full wardrobe and makeup.

My first impression is very positive. We all knew that Zachary Quinto would look the part, given his similarity in appearance to Leonard Nimoy, but this is the first time I have really been able to see Chris Pine as Kirk. Upon initial glance I thought "Whoa, he looks like Shatner". Upon looking closer I began to see the differences, and noticed more Pine in it, but he really does give a believable impression of being a young James T. Kirk. The uniforms are very classic in appearance, yet more believably futuristic. If they can find the balance between the two so successfully with uniforms I can't wait to see how they handle it with the Enterprise sets and exterior shots.

Things are starting to heat up and we should be seeing and hearing a lot more in time to come.

See the photo at Trekmovie.com

What's in it for Him

This last Sunday my church released personalised devotional 'Power Walk' journals. Essentially it is a notebook to write thoughts and observations during daily Bible reading. At the top of each page is a suggested prayer for use before reading. "May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to you. O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer." from Psalm 19:14.

I have always made it a habbit to pray before reading the Bible. It's something that has been important to me, but the prayer has always been along the lines of "Lord, speak to me through your word and help me to get something out of it that will help me grow to comfort me." There is certainly nothing wrong with those things, the Bible is here for us. It is a gift from God, but I made an interesting observation about the suggested prayer in my journal. It turns things completely around. It takes the focus off myself and onto God. It is not about what I will get out of the experience, but about what God will get out of it. I found that refreshing.

Show Day

Today was the Launceston Show. We decided to take the kids to it as it is a public holiday. They had a great time. One of the highlights (especially for kids) is always the animal nursery. It had been moved from its previous location but we found it eventually. Chloe loved it. She patted a goat and a lamb, and loved looking at the ducklings.

	Chloe had her very first show ride, on the little boats. She watched it for a little while before deciding she wanted a turn. She had a ball and didn't want to get off.
While searching for the nursery, we found a stand by the Red Back Boot Company. Chloe had lots of fun tipping the readbacks into the toilet and flushing them. It was a fun game and very cute to watch. Harrison spent a good deal of the time sleeping, but when we did wake up, he loved the animals and the food.

Of course you can't go to the show without dropping some balls down the clown's mouth. Chloe had a game (on Minnie Mouse) and won herself a little plastic doll. It was pretty cheap, and the head keeps falling off, but the joy on her face when she won it was worth the $4 to play.

A litle bag of Treasures

1 Thessalonians 5:12-22 is like a little bag packed full of treasures at the end of a letter. There are seventeen separate words of practical encouragement and teaching in just three paragraphs. Among these are the single-verse one lines "Be joyful always" (verse 16), "pray continually" (verse 17) and "Avoid every kind of evil" (verse 22). It's almost as if Paul didn't want to letter to drag on too much and so was careful to make every word count. He was also very adamant that everybody get a change to hear the content (verse 27).

This was possible the earliest letter written in the new testament. During his first missionary trip, Paul had to leave Thessalonica earlier than he wanted due to persecution. He wrote to the new church in that city soon after leaving so that he could continue to teach them what they needed to know to grow in their new faith. It's good for us that he did because there is so much simple yet vital teaching, even in the Final Instructions.

I intend to take a couple of these and study them as I think that will be quite valuable. I will be sharing what I learn here in the Collings Zone.

Sources:

The Lion Handbook to the Bible

NIV Study Bible Study Notes

Scripture taken from The HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION Copyright (C) 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers

Remove Selection from a ListView Control in eMbedded VB

With The compact .NET framework well established there are probably not many people who are still using eMbedded Visual Basic, but if there are any still working on legacy systems, I have a small tip that helped me today.

I wanted to completely clear the selection on a ListViewCtrl control but there seemed no simple way of doing it. I found that you need to loop through the items and unselect them. Interestingly, it seems that you can't iterate through the ListItems collection using a For Each loop, but a traditional For loop works fine.


Dim lvitem As ListItem
Dim i As Integer

For i = 1 To lstList.ListItems.Count
      Set lvitem = lstList.ListItems(i)
      lvitem.Selected = False
Next i


Theoretically, if you're not using multi-select you should just be able to go

lstList.SelectedItem.Selected = False

but I haven't tested it.