the parable of the whirligig

Once a man put up a whirligig in his back garden. He watched to see which part of the garden got the most sun exposure, and duly inserted the whirligig spike into the garden as directed. All went well for a few months. Then he noticed the whirligig was leaning rather too much to one side. On further investigation, this was due to the hole the spike had made becoming larger. So he did a temporary repair by putting a small bit of wood in the hole. This worked until a few rainfalls later, when the hole enlarged again. After several such temporary fixes, he decided something more definite was needed, as despite all the bits of wood, the whirligig was still leaning rather badly. So off he went to the local superstore to get some magic concretey-stuff to cement the spike into place. "That'll fix it" he thought. Unfortunately, the next time he hung the washing out, it was rather windy. And it got even windier. The next time he looked out of the window, not only was it raining, but the whole whirligig had parted company with the earth, a perfect block of concrete still around the spike...

I'm sure there's a parable in here somewhere ;-)
MrPM has now reconcreted our whirligig. Hopefully it won't come out of the ground again.

PS a whirligig is an outdoor rotary clothes line

back again

Things got quite busy for a while, what with having visitors and two Guide camps on successive weekends (don't think I will make that mistake again!), so no blogging.
Now it's back to more usual life, so I am busy doing some more apologetics - next essay is about proof for the resurrection. I though it wouldn't be too difficult, after all, it's why I became a Christian in the first place: I couldn't come up with a more convincing alternative explanation of what had happened to Jesus' body; therefore I had to believe the resurrection had happened; therefore I had to take Jesus seriously; therefore I had to believe in God....
At present I am plowing through The Resurrection of the Son of God by NT Wright. I suspect the information I really need is near the end of the book, but it's only going to make sense if I read the rest first. I've made it to page 360, which is about halfway :-( I'm finding it very interesting, but it does take a bit of wading through. It's much less entertaining for mrPM though - with some of the other books I've read, there have been regular explosions of 'Rubbish!' (no, that's not the actual word I used - any readers who know me in the flesh will know exactly which word it replaces) from the settee. It's going to be quite difficult to write an essay taking some of these views seriously...

pastorate

For those of you who know something of the saga, mrPM has had his meeting with the "high heid-yins" and they've given him the go-ahead to think about going back into pastorate. This did come with the proviso that he shouldn't be in too much of a hurry to get back...
Fair enough, we thought. We weren't in a huge hurry - we have no idea what God wants us to do, and we're also much more wary than we were before, but it was good to have mrPM's calling reconfirmed.

apologetics

I've been busy reading in preparation for my next essay, which is on apologetics. The actual title is very long and rather woolly, but basically it comes down to what is apologetics? and how would you prioritize different things within it?

I've really enjoyed reading "Humble Apologetics" by Stackhouse, so much friendler in tone than many apologetics books. He has a rather tongue-in-cheek definition of apologetics as 'making the other person sorry they asked why you were a Christian'. ;-)
I hope I don't do that, but I suspect I do fit another definition Stackhouse had: 'explaining why you're sorry you're a Christian'....

So any other ideas for what apologetics means or involves?

update

We had a good time on holiday, including amazing weather for our trip to St Kilda. I'll post some photos once I've remembered how to do it...
Dad's op went well and his follow-up scan was OK
I finally got my work appraisal sorted and it's all over and done with (caused HUGE amounts of stress)
So things are going much better.

I suppose I should start thinking about my apologetics essays...

back briefly

My dad's op went well, he got back out the next day and is now recuperating at home. It was good to see him and my mum, even though I spent quite a bit of time in bed with a cold :-(
So this is a temporary pitstop back home before heading off to the Western Isles for a holiday. If the weather permits, we're hoping to get to St Kilda. I'm off to buy Sea-bands and anti-sickness tablets, as it's around 4 hours out and 4 hours back on the boat.
Callanish is also on the list of places to go - hopefully we can get there when there aren't crowds of tourists. I'm not sure how it will compare to the magnificent standing stones we enjoyed on Orkney last year, but I'm looking forward to it.

reality check

My dad's going for an operation on Thursday. I'm working tomorrow, so can't get to see him beforehand. MrPM and I plan to go down to my parents' on Thursday and God willing will see dad after the op.
prayers etc appreciated