Celtic Prayer Centre Blog

As we continue to look through the letter of Paul to the Galatians we must stop and ask some questions.

Chapter Two

V20 Whose faithfulness are we talking about here.

The concept of table fellowship- how important?

Could Paul have left Peter off? if not WHY not?

Main Arguments

1 Who were the main actors in the plot?

2 What were the issues under consideration?

3 Why was Paul willing to take people to task about these issues so readily?

4 How did the community Paul advocates differ from the Jewish believers version in the way they dealt with sin/moral failure?

5 What badges were the community urged to wear as signifiers of their belonging to the community.

6 Paul’s final statement..’All that matters is a new creation’ seems radical, was he correct? are there other things that matter?

Hi All

We are in the process of moving house from now.  The painting is nearly done and various works start this week.  Please pray for all involved that we may have a smooth transition and that we will honour God in what we are doing.  I certainly feel my stress levels are high and I am certainly anxious that all will be well.  Cover us in prayer at this time and keep us in your prayers for the next few weeks.

Our study of Galatians will continue next Saturday night – please have your character worked out and the question is what is your character doing in the play of galatians.  Have some answers for this and be willing to defend them.

http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/my-prediction-the-coming-evangelical-collapse-1

http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/the-coming-evangelical-collapse-2-what-will-be-left

http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/the-coming-evangelical-collapse-3-good-or-bad

Yes I have installed a small php/flash based chat room on our web  You have to register to join in so do that first and then lets see what happens

so click

here

and try it out.  It could be a simple way to keep contact when one is happy or blue.

Doug’s testing a webcam also here is my shed  login dougheff + the usual

Dylan Xmas Songs here

Must be Santa video here

Bob’s Calls

Use these numbers from cheapcall.ie

Hi, Bob here.

This is just to let everybody know that I arrived safe and sound here last week and am settling in to my job fairly well. The weather is nicer here than I expected it would be and the people are very friendly which makes it easier to settle in.

For those of you who were given my mobile phone number and have sent me text messages: thank you. Unfortunately, none of these text messages seem to be getting through to me (although messages I send get out fine). I’m not really sure what the problem is. So, sorry if I didn’t reply to a message you sent.

Enjoy the meeting tonight. Saturday is the first day of the working week here and it is after 6pm so I am about to go home for some food. This is quite late to work here as people here start leaving their offices from about 3pm! (They do start earlier, things are in full swing here at 8am and many people are here by 7).

I will try to write a few things for the blog in my spare time as a way of continuing to contribute to the fellowship. I’m thinking of writing something about why I think our new practice of meeting for meals rather than having religious “meetings” is important (maybe a slightly expanded version of my talk at Searching Together).

We are going to re-visit the biblical ideas about giving so next week we will draw up groups of 4 for meeting and then the following begin to meet midweek for study.
View “Bible study on Money”

I have added a permanent link to the Simple Church MP3s on the right so that people can find them more easily.

We arrived in Tel Aviv Sunday the 23rd and proceeded to our hostel, where were staying for one night, before moving to our luxury apartment on 14 Ben Gurion. Myself and Paul went to park the cars and we missed each other somehow on the back. I walked up a street called Frishman and then left on to Ben Yehuda, one of the main city streets. Then I looked and did not see any traffic coming and stepped on to a walkway. I immediately was hit from my left by a motorbike/ moped coming up Ben Yehuda. I did not see it at any stage. I was knocked to the ground my glasses went flying and then I was laying just by the road mostly on the footpath. The biker had driven over my left foot as I steped out and then clipped me I guess as he sped past. When I came to myself, I was on my feet in an instant. I felt blood on my face and saw blood on my clothes. I was in shock but I looked down and saw a young man lying next to my feet with his moped on the street side of him. He was alive thank God and seemed okay. I bent down to sympathise with him and then started asking for my spectacles. A young man who wa s standing there picked up my glasses and gave them to me, they were mangled. The frames were all twisted obviusly from the moped rolling over them. I frantically tried to piece them together so I could see clearly what was going on. I was focused on this when people began to tell me to sit down. Just then the ambulance and the police arrived. I must have been out cold for awhile after being hit as the ambulance seemed to be there instantly to me. I would say on looking at the time chain, that I got hit, blacked out, people arrived, someone called the ambulance. Then after a few minutes??? I woke up and jumped to my feet and began being concerned for the young man who was lying at my feet.
The original helpful young man who had picked up my glasses was urging me to sit but I kept telling him I need to get my wife from the hostel. He asked me the name and rang it but no one answered. he then cycled down there and found Julia. Minutes later Gerald arrived and hen Julia, both looking shocked and upset at the sight of me. I then was urged to go in the ambulance and Julia came with me, as did the moped driver who had broken his leg in the accident.
The Echelod hospital (The Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center is one of the largest hospitals in the country) was amazing to me., Julia and all the rest we there with me and were allowed to stay for a long time. The doctors, nurses and other staff were kind, friendly, human and very concerned about me as I was family. In the next hours, I had a cat scan on my head, my foot was x-rayed and I saw an eye doctor. all of this was done with some precision with results being posted on the hospital it system, where they could be viewed immediately. At the end I felt very safe in their capable hands. If you ae going to have an accident, tel aviv Echelod hospital is the place to go.
I have a fracture to my eye socket and a gash in my forehead, which needed 6 stitches. I have bruising to my feet, my knees and my left elbow. Thankfully I was not damaged in any internal organ other than there is a concern about my dodgy left eye. I was asked to come imediately to make an appointment with their eye consultant.
I was thoroughly checked and rechecked before being sewn up and discharged eventually at about 5am, with a summary report in both Hebrew and English. Next day went to the policeand made a statement and they gave immediately their report which today we faxed to the Echelod hospital. This then allows the hospital to not bill me the 6000 NIS approc that is owed. Today also we faxed various docs to our travel Insurance company.

My head is sore and it is tough being in a foreign location when in trauma. I had of course the love and care of my family, Julia, Denise and Gerald ( and Emer of course) who themselves were traumatised by the sight of me. Gerald and Emer went home last night and I know they both were terribly traumatised by all this and did not want to go but were glad to go also.Also Teresa was a great comfort since, it was sad to see her go home last night at 4am and also Paul and Lewis and Craig went home today. This leaves Denise and Amanda here with us.
My eye is all black and blue and I am sore in various places PLEASE PRAY for us and ask that we can continue our holiday without anymore stress and strain. Also we had to leave the apartment we had booked online as it was a dump and filthy. We lost our €800 deposit and though we argued it was to no avail. We moved to Holiday2000.net apartment 5 minutes away. It is beautiful and clean and modern. The managers Yarden ha been extremely helpful and given me some really helpful and practical advice on the accident. He also put me in contact with a lawyer and we hope to talk to him next week.

You can read the notes from the talk that I gave at the Searching Together conference here, for those of you that are interested. They are in bullet-point form and were only meant to be my speaking notes but they should make enough sense to read by themselves.

Dad and I both spoke and both of us had positive feedback. It was good to meet Jon and Dotty Zens again and to meet people like Cliff Bjork whose writings we had read in their magazine & who had had an impact on us from a distance.

here they are the pics of the event