Archive for June, 2008
Excited!
by jon on Jun.30, 2008, under Rant
In the formative time of S-WMD we found we needed a working tag-line; sonething that differed from Soteria Mag and that protrayed something of the virbrant energy that was going around at the time about the new project. The line we came up with was “Are you excited?”
Keeping enthusiasm for any given project going is hard, perticularly when things don’t work out quite the way you thought they were going to, this was certainly the case with WMD!
Yet our God is faithful, and he promised to not only supply our needs if we continue to follow His awsome guidence, but He also sends His blessings every now and again. Now that is exciting.
So what is a “blessing” from God really? Believe me it is not always the thing you may have always wanted, but it will be something that will bring enormous benifit to and perhaps the others around you. Sometimes it maybe a tool to be used in the work God has called you to, sometimes a new skill or insight.
There are rare occations when God chooses to bless you with a gift that IS something to be enjoyed, not nessicaraly to do with the work, or even because you deserved or earned it. He gives you this gift simply because He loves you, and as we all know when we’ve recived gifts from family and friends; a gift is not only to be enjoyed for what it is but for the symbolic gesture of the person doing the giving. Sometimes our friends and families have given really good presents, so if God, in His unlimited and awesome power and creativity, chooses to bless us with a present…how brillient is it going to be?!
The words “Thank You God” seem so inadiquate.
None the less. For the blessing that He has recently bestowed on me, which has been most welcome at this time and I’m really excited about, I say; thank you my Lord and my God.
Neverending Birthday Greetings
by jon on Jun.16, 2008, under Rant
It’s been an intense time of it lately. Both Rob and I have had or birthdays in the last week and so the usual levels of partying were had last Saturday.
My celebrations started (still out driving home in the car) on the stroke of midnight last Thursday morning, where I received my first birthday greeting. Later (many hours later) I got to work and those in the know started throwing similar greetings in my direction, along with cards, cake and even a bottle of chardonnay! The first birthday text message came on the phone about 10 o’clock, conveniently I was out of the office drinking tea at the time.
That evening the family all arrived and we went out to dinner, which was followed by
coffee and lots of present opening.
The next day several more people at work had cottoned on to it and started giving belated greetings. I thought I’d check my email and found a lot of facebook messages from even more birthday well-wishers. However seeing as facebook is banned at work, they all had to wait until I got home to get a reply.
The text messages are coming in thick and fast now.
Saturday saw the joint Rob/Jon party. Many of our families and friends in attendance here, lots more presents and cards, yes and cake, on the go. My thanks to Loui and everyone who helped for giving us a great party. At this we discovered that Rob has more puff than me; you see the cake was brought in and the idea was when everyone stopped singing Rob would blow on one side of the cake, I’d blow the other and put all the candles out at the same moment. From what I could tell all the smoke went over me!
Sunday, and rather unsurprisingly several of the congregation at Church were saying “happy birthday, huh, for last Thursday”. Hee hee. That afternoon I received another text message, from Sarah this time, with the same greeting on it. I thought “yay still getting birthday messages four days after my birthday”, yet it turns out that even that
wouldn’t be the last of the greetings; because today, a record five days after my
birthday, I’ve received another belated birthday message! (curiously this
person referred to me as “sexy”, humm, the mind boggles!)
This has been a major celebration time in my book. I’d like to say a huge big thank you to everyone who has sent presents, cards, texts, face-to-face greetings, handshakes, hugs and kisses, and generally not so much made my day but made my week! I am truly blessed to have such friends.
God bless you all.
Jon Richards
(Now a 28 year old)
Busy Friday
by jon on Jun.06, 2008, under Church Stuff, Rant, Soteria
i’m telling ya, it’s a busy time of it tonight; oh yes indeed.
Right after work I’ll be quickly sprinting down to Pool to meet Tracey (one of our Church’s singers), Tim (one of the preachers) and his son Toby (possibly the youngest budding writer in our Church). There we plan to have a look at Toby’s new lyric, so far we’ve had a quick look at the chorus and it’s coming along well. Not at all bad for a seven year old!
Then later tonight we have music practice. Jane (our deacon of worship), who normally organises this event, is away and asked me to fill in. Jane is a great, grade 8 style, piano player so putting a muck-about guitarist in the place of organising it for and evening will have quite an effect. You can kiss multi-part harmonies goodbye for a start, that’s well beyond me!
Tomorrow’s pace doesn’t let up either, Rose should be coming round to work on DaySpring some more, and then there’s this big video night in the Church.
Altogether it sounds like I’ll need the extra energy I’ll get from that bad of mints I have outside in the car.
In other news Rob (Soteria’s Editor) has scarpered for the weekend to see the Renault race at Silverstone. Hope I get some time to write some reviews while he’s gone.
Here’s to another packed weekend.
Jon
P.S. We have an exciting new project in the pipeline, well we actually have several, but there are one or two coming up in the near future. Keep an eye on the Soteria blogs for more information.
