Harmony of Grace

Earlier this month, I attended a minister's retreat in Modderpoort near Ladybrand. We stayed at a beautiful old Anglican Monastery. Most of the days were filled with meetings, but one afternoon we were given a few hours of free time to do as we pleased. I decided to go and explore the surrounding mountains after receiving a tip from another minister about some ancient cave paintings that could apparently be found nearby. Unfortunately, after the recent rains that the area had been experiencing, the path up the mountain was overgrown and not easy to navigate. I spent way longer than necessary traversing up the side of the mountain, often veering off the path and needing to track back to a previous point. I walked for close to an hour with no sign of getting closer to my desired destination. I was about to turn around and make the treacherous trek back down the mountain when I walked through a clearing and was faced with intriguing caves and the most stunning rock paintings ...

Image Source:  Aaron Burden I have taken a hiatus from updating my blog for the past 5 weeks. We have just had a mid-year break at the Seminary and upon some reflection, I decided that I would use this opportunity to have as much of a break as possible, not only from academic work and preaching, but also from writing my personal blog and basically doing anything productive at all. Usually during my academic holidays, I would use the extra free time to work on fun projects that I would not usually have time for during the term, such as writing or recording new music, helping out at my home church, catching up on reading, writing new material, etc. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I was forced into a situation where I was unable to do any of the above "holiday work" that I had intended to. A couple of days after arriving in East London, our family received the tragic news of my gran's passing.  I was devastated.  I had no motivation to do anything.  ...

Image Source:  3rd-strike I love playing board-games (If that came as a surprise to you then we obviously haven't seen each other in a while!) I was recently introduced to a party-style game called Codenames which   is quickly becoming one of my favourites. The game is set-up with 25 random words on a board in front of all the players. The aim of the game is for one player - the  spymaster -  to help his team members say certain words by giving them one related word as a clue. The team is rewarded for guessing correct words and punished for incorrect words. If a spymaster  does their job correctly, they could link 3 or 4 words with one single clue. I am not sure if my explanation does the game much justice, but I would highly recommend that you play this game if you enjoy (mostly) friendly rivalry with family and friends. The difficulty in C odenames  occurs when the spy master  is on a completely different line of thought to the other mem...

Image Source:  Kristina Flour The new chaplain at Seth Mokitimi Methodist Seminary, Luvuyo Sifo, has already brought some new and interesting ideas with him that he is implementing into the everyday life of the Seminary. One of these is that on Wednesdays we have been asked to partake in a complete day of silence at SMMS. He has titled this practice "Benedictine Wednesdays" in reference to the Benedictine monks who place a special importance on silence. There has already been an uproar from many seminarians. Perhaps they don't like change. Perhaps they don't appreciate being asked to be silent when they would prefer to be loud and talkative. But this practice has got me thinking about the idea of silence and whether it truly is important, especially when we all have so many important things to say, or so we believe.... For many of us, a time of silence means that we don't speak, but this could be practiced while watching TV or listening to music (som...