 CELEBRATING ROSH HASHANA...
On 9th September, Jews in Israel and around the world will celebrate the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashana: ‘Head of the Year’).
Rosh Hashana falls on the first day of Tishrei (the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar), and is the first of the Jewish High Holidays or Yamim Noraim (’Days of Awe’), on which Jews focus on repentance before Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement).
On Rosh Hashana, Jews observe a day of rest (Leviticus 23: 24). Rabbis sound a shofar (a trumpet made from the horn of a ram, goat, or antelope), to symbolically awaken listeners and alert them to the coming judgement.
KARYN MARKWELL's blog on the history and culture of Israel... |
more... |
 THOUGHTS ON CONTROL...
U2's song Moment of Surrender has a line which simply says “to be released from control”. It is yet another line from a U2 song which has hit me like a brick.
Just about everything we do in life is designed to keep us in control of our lives. But the life of the cross is about relinquishing control to the only one who is ultimately trustworthy. Oh to be released from control on that day when we will have new bodies and new minds in the fully consummated kingdom of God.
NILS VON KALM'S blog on faith, life and how it all might fit together... |
more... |
A RHINO CITY; WHY WE CAN PLAY A VUVUZELA BUT CAN'T GO WURFING; AND JESUS ON TENNIS
We've already heard of island archipelagos designed to resemble palm trees or maps of the world. So why not a city shaped like a rhino in Africa? That's the design planners in southern Sudan have reportedly come up with for their capital, the city of Juba.
DAVID
ADAMS writes about the odder side of life... |
more... |
 THINKING ON POLITICS...
Thinking on politics... Sometimes a door opens and as a Jesus follower you have to decide whether to walk through it. If you are fair dinkum about following you don't leave your God clothes in a pile by the door - you just wear em and walk on in. Mine don't come off.... and they are always clean and fresh, He washes me daily!
ANN
WOJCZUK's blog about life, the universe and possibly everything... |
more... |
FRAGMENTS OF BRONZE AGE LAW CODE FOUND IN ISRAEL
Fragments of a cuneiform tablet containing a law code which parallels parts of the famous Babylonian Hammurabi Code have been found in northern Israel.
The find - the first of its kind in Israel - was made during excavations conducted by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at Hazor. The fragments date from the 18th and 17th centuries BC - the Middle Bronze Age - and are written in the Akkadian cuneiform script. They refer to issues of personal injury law relating to the relationship between slaves and their masters and the researchers say they also reflect the Biblical concept of a ‘tooth for a tooth’.
DAVID ADAMS reports... |
more... |
FOR
SIGHT'S BLOG LINKS, HEAD TO OUR BLOGSPOT PAGE...
|
It’s 75 years since Penguin Books was founded in the UK with the idea of democratising great literature – making it readily available to everyone at an affordable price.
"African grass dances rhythmically in the hot afternoon breeze. At the end of the dusty track stands a smooth, round mud brick hut in a clearing of finely-swept red earth. Its grass-thatched roof – tightly packed bundles of straw and bamboo – sits atop the mud walls like a Chinese hat. Smoke from a charcoal stove fills my nose while scrawny chickens scratch the dirt at my feet. 
2010 brings in the dawn of a new decade – remember the start of the last decade? I can remember going and restarting all my computers at about 12.05am on 1st January, 2000 – to check if they were still alive – they were. No aeroplanes dropped out of the skies. The banks didn’t misplace all our money. Everything that contained a microchip didn’t cease to tell the time. But how many millions of dollars were spent on policies, procedures, software and hardware to try and avoid the “millennium bug”?
It was a familiar scene for me at the supermarket’s check-out line. Lilly, my youngest daughter, wanted a Snicker’s bar. She’d never had one, but she was sure it must be good.
Both chicken satay and gado-gado are traditional Indonesian meals that I experienced when travelling there a couple of years ago. The satay are popular with tourists - immediately likeable, they are familiar chicken skewers often topped with a spicy peanut sauce. 
If I mention the word olive, does your mind turn to a particular
paint colour, perhaps a dear old aunty who dates from the
early 1900s or Popeye’s famous girlfriend “Olive
Oil”? Or you might relate them to food, perhaps the
ever present black olive on your weekend pizza. In this case,
olives are a bit like anchovies: most people either love or
hate them.