AJP's weblog » English http://www.poelarends.com/blog Thoughts on life, theology and anything else... Tue, 05 Apr 2011 04:19:39 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 A Year in a 100 Pictures http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2009/12/31/a-year-in-a-100-pictureseen-jaar-in-100-plaatjes/langswitch_lang/en http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2009/12/31/a-year-in-a-100-pictureseen-jaar-in-100-plaatjes/langswitch_lang/en#comments Thu, 31 Dec 2009 01:52:34 +0000 AJP http://www.poelarends.com/blog/?p=419&langswitch_lang=en All pictures have a caption. Click on the blog title and then on the first image to see a slideshow… (it doesn’t work if you’re on the main page of the blog). The only thing that is missing is an impression of my time at L’Abri in England. I will put up another gallery for that in another post.

Winter/Spring 2009


Summer 2009

Fall 2009

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]]> http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2009/12/31/a-year-in-a-100-pictureseen-jaar-in-100-plaatjes/feed/langswitch_lang/en 0 Rain: the new album of Sons of Korah http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/08/05/rain-het-nieuwe-album-van-sons-of-korahrain-the-new-album-of-sons-of-korah/langswitch_lang/en http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/08/05/rain-het-nieuwe-album-van-sons-of-korahrain-the-new-album-of-sons-of-korah/langswitch_lang/en#comments Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:52:59 +0000 AJP http://www.poelarends.com/blog/?p=345
RAIN: Sons of Korah

RAIN: Sons of Korah


The long awaited new album RAIN of Sons of Korah is finally there. For those who don’t know about Sons of Korah; SoK is a Australian band who put the psalms on contemporary music, inspired by the tradition of folk and worldmusic. Over the years they have become one of my favourite artists, for their music is both uplifting and comforting (and much more), as the psalms themselves cover the whole spectrum of human emotions. Growing up in a psalm singing church I developed sort of a love-hate relationship with the psalms, but Sons of Korah definitely turned that around to a deep love for the songbook of the people of God of all ages. So, if you don’t know them, check them out on their website, where they also have some samples of their music. If you’re on facebook, you even can listen to a couple of full tracks (even from their new CD RAIN) on their own facebook page. You can read an interview with Matt Jacoby, the leader of the band, here. It will probably take some time before RAIN is available in the stores in the USA, but it definitely worth waiting for it. I’ve deeply been blessed by their music, and so I wish you!

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]]> http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/08/05/rain-het-nieuwe-album-van-sons-of-korahrain-the-new-album-of-sons-of-korah/feed/langswitch_lang/en 1 Summer in the Lou http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/07/30/zomer-in-the-lousummer-in-the-lou/langswitch_lang/en http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/07/30/zomer-in-the-lousummer-in-the-lou/langswitch_lang/en#comments Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:42:32 +0000 AJP http://www.poelarends.com/blog/?p=334 More content will be added later, but I would like to put some pictures online of my parents’ visit to Saint Louis. (Gallery is divided over two pages, so don’t forget the second page… and, sorry, captions to the pictures are in Dutch)

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]]> http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/07/30/zomer-in-the-lousummer-in-the-lou/feed/langswitch_lang/en 1 Easter http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/03/23/easterpasen/langswitch_lang/en http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/03/23/easterpasen/langswitch_lang/en#comments Sun, 23 Mar 2008 20:31:48 +0000 AJP http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/03/23/easterpasen/ chagall45_easter

“Scripture – the Old and the New Testaments – is the story of creation and new creation. Within that, it is the story of covenant and new covenant. When we read the scriptures as Christians, we read it precisely as people of the new covenant and of the new creation. We do not read it, in other words, as a flat, uniform list of regulations or doctrines. We read it as the narrative in which we ourselves are now called to take part. We read it to discover “the story so far” and also “how it’s supposed to end.” To put it in another way, we live somewhere between the end of Acts and the closing scene of Revelation. If we want to understand scripture and to find it doing its proper work in and through us, we must learn to read and understand it in the light of that overall story.”

“Our task in the present [...] is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and foretaste of the second.”

N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope, HarperOne, 2008, 281 & 30.

Marc Chagall, Easter, 1968.

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]]> http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/03/23/easterpasen/feed/langswitch_lang/en 0 Good Friday http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/03/21/good-friday/langswitch_lang/en http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/03/21/good-friday/langswitch_lang/en#comments Fri, 21 Mar 2008 21:13:11 +0000 AJP http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/03/21/good-friday/langswitch_lang/en chagall121_exodus

"All the Jewish festivals are packed full of meaning, and Passover is the most meaningful of all. The festival involves a dramatic retelling of the exodus story, reminding everybody of the time when the tyrant was overthrown, when Israel was free, when God acted powerfully to save his people. Celebrating Passover always carries, to this day, the hope that God will do so again. Jesus’s fresh understanding of Passover, given in interpreted action rather than abstract theory, spoke of that future arriving immediately in the present. God was about to act to bring in the kingdom, but in a way that none of Jesus’s followers (despite his attempts to tell them) had anticipated. He would fight the messianic battle–by losing it. The real enemy, after all, was not Rome, but the powers of evil that stood behind human arrogance and violence, powers of evil with which Israel’s leaders had fatally colluded.[...]
So he spoke of the Passover bread as his own body that would be given on behalf of his friends, as he went out to toke on himself the weight of evil so that they wouldn’t have to bear it themselves. He spoke of the Passover cup as containing his own blood. Like the sacrificial blood in the Temple, it would be poured out to establish the covenant–but this time the new covenant spoken of by the prophet Jeremiah. The time had now come when, at last, God would rescue his people, and the whole world, not from mere political enemies, but from evil itself, from the sin which had enslaved them. His death would do what the Temple, with its sacrificial system, had pointed toward but had never actually accomplished."

chagall98_white_crucifixion

"The next few hours were tragic and brutal. Jesus wrestled in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, with the darkness which he felt caving in upon him while he waited for arrest. The chief priests did what one might have expected: carried out a quick, quasi-legal procedure–enough to frame a charge of seditious talk agains the Temple and ultimately blasphemy. [...] The Roman governor was weak and indecisive; the priests manipulative. Jesus went to his death on a charge of which he was innocent–actual rebellion against Rome–but of which most of his contemporaries were guilty, at least in intention. Barabbas, a rebel leader, went free in his stead. A centurion, looking up at his thousandth victim, saw and heard something he hadn’t expected and muttered that maybe this man was God’s Son after all.
The meaning of the story is found in every detail, as well as in the broad narrative. The pain and tears of all the years were met together on Calvary. The sorrow of heaven joined with the anguish of earth; the forgiving love stored up in God’s future was poured out into the present; the voices that echo in a million human hearts, crying for justice, longing for spirituality, eager for relationship, yearning for beauty, drew themselves together into a final scream of desolation.
Nothing in all history of paganism comes anywhere near this combination of event, intention, and meaning. Nothing in Judaism had prepared for it, except in puzzling, shadowy prophecy.

The death of Jesus of Nazareth as the king of the Jews, the bearer of Isreal’s destiny, the fulfillment of God’s promises to his people of old, is either the most stupid, senseless waste and misunderstanding the world has ever seen, or it is the fulcrum around which world history turns.
Christianity is based on the belief that it was and is the latter."

N.T. Wright, Simply Christian, 2007, 109–111.

Marc Chagall, Exodus, 1952-66

Marc Chagall, White Crucifixion, 1938

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]]> http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/03/21/good-friday/feed/langswitch_lang/en 0 Snowstorm II http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/03/04/sneeuwstorm-iisnowstorm-ii/langswitch_lang/en http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/03/04/sneeuwstorm-iisnowstorm-ii/langswitch_lang/en#comments Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:05:20 +0000 AJP http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/03/04/sneeuwstorm-iisnowstorm-ii/ I thought the winter was over… this weekend we had beautiful weather with temperatures into the 70′s and we all said "spring is in the air!", only to experience a few days later that the weather here in Missouri is as unpredictable as it always has been. Yesterday we had some sleet and ice, today we are in the midst of a pretty large snowstorm and everything is shut down, including the seminary. It’s nice to have a day off, I can catch up with some reading and writing, but it’s already the third day this semester, so it’s affecting our progress. But anyway, it looks great outside, and I decided to make some pictures (not to make you all in the NL envious or so ;) ). Still some hours to go before it stops, some 2-3 inches more expected!

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This is how it looked like this morning around 6.30 AM, it is not really bad yet.

 

 

 

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This is the situation around 10 AM, a nice snow cover already and some heave snow coming down!

 

 

 

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An hour later… (around 11 AM)

 

 

 

 

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Around 12.45 AM, still snowing!

 

 

 

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]]> http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/03/04/sneeuwstorm-iisnowstorm-ii/feed/langswitch_lang/en 0 Icy beauty http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/02/22/ijzige-schoonheidicy-beauty/langswitch_lang/en http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/02/22/ijzige-schoonheidicy-beauty/langswitch_lang/en#comments Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:49:12 +0000 AJP http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/02/22/ijzige-schoonheidicy-beauty/langswitch_lang/en Sundogs in Minnesota

For a high resolution picture click here.

A short impression from our way back from Rochester MN to Saint Louis is shown below. We decided to stay for one extra day in Rochester, due to the very bad weather conditions forcasted for Sunday. But even on Monday the roads were still pretty bad, with lots of blowing and drifting snow, all packed into a thick sheet of ice on the surface of the roads. The area that was hit most hard was the central part of Iowa, around Cedar Rapids and Iowa city, and the roads were very bad here as you can see on the photo’s.
After Iowa city the conditions improved pretty fast, and so we could continue the rest of our trip without any problem.

In the midst of all the forces of nature, there was however also a lot of beauty!

For a bigger picture, click on the photo’s.

sundogs
leaving Rochester MN, a beautiful sundog (or parhelium) appears…

sundog
… and becomes very bright!


Just south of Rochester on highway 63, the conditions are still OK, with a strong wind from the west, lots of snow is drifting over the road…


… but the further south we get, the more snow and the more icy the road gets.


A very icy countryside


The amounts of blowing snow increases as we get further south into Iowa, the road is sometimes barely visible


Conditions get worse and worse… visibility becomes sometimes very bad and whatever they try to clear the roads, it doesn’t really help…


A very icy road, close to Waterloo, Iowa


Blue skies and a beautiful countryside along Interstate 380 in Iowa


A lonely tree


A very ice but beautiful countryside along I-380


Suddenly the conditions get worse again, just south of Cedar Rapids


Messy


More messy


This is supposed to be I-380, a four lane interstate…

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]]> http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/02/22/ijzige-schoonheidicy-beauty/feed/langswitch_lang/en 2 Blizzard http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/02/18/sneeuwstormblizzard/langswitch_lang/en http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/02/18/sneeuwstormblizzard/langswitch_lang/en#comments Mon, 18 Feb 2008 04:43:03 +0000 AJP http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/02/18/sneeuwstormblizzard/langswitch_lang/en I’ve had two fabulous days at the l’Abri conference in Rochester! Great conversations, very good spreakers and met a lot of nice people. I stayed during those days with a family from the church in Rochester, who invited me to stay with them when they heard about my physics background. He works in the Mayo clinic, one of the best clinics in the country (and possibly the world), and we had a lot of good conversations as you can imagine. Unfortunately though, we’re still in Rochester, since traffic in the eastern part of Iowa is completely shut down due to an intense snowstorm earlier today. In order not to put our own lives in danger (and that of other people) we decided to delay our drive home one day, and I think that’s a pretty wise decision. Hopefully the roads are not too bad anymore tomorrow, as they were today. Anyway, I had to cancel my work, but in exchange got to know one of my professors much better and we had together dinner with a large group of college students from Columbia, MO, which was a lot of fun!

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]]> http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/02/18/sneeuwstormblizzard/feed/langswitch_lang/en 2 Common grace http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/02/15/common-grace/langswitch_lang/en http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/02/15/common-grace/langswitch_lang/en#comments Fri, 15 Feb 2008 04:45:24 +0000 AJP http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/02/15/common-grace/langswitch_lang/en
I’m out of town for a couple of days to attend the annual l’Abri conference in Rochester, MN. The theme this year is Common Grace, “God’s goods gifts in all of life”, and it seems to be a very interesting conference. A couple of my professors are speaking and they also brought in some other gifted speakers from all over the world. I promised before already to say something more about l’Abri, and I am going to postpone that to another blog soon, but I can say that I feel very much at home in an environment where there are no easy answers to hard questions about Christianity, or as they say on there website: “where individuals (christians and non-christians) have the opportunity to seek answers to honest questions about God and the significance of human life.” I hope I’ll have the opportunity those days to blog a little bit more about this, but for now I need to go to bed… the travel was long and exhausting.

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]]> http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2008/02/15/common-grace/feed/langswitch_lang/en 1 Hello from St. Louis! http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2007/08/07/hello-from-st-louis/langswitch_lang/en http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2007/08/07/hello-from-st-louis/langswitch_lang/en#comments Mon, 06 Aug 2007 22:01:33 +0000 AJP http://www.poelarends.com/blog/2007/08/07/hello-from-st-louis/ So, greetings and a short update from St. Louis. I am doing very well, especially considering the situation here. Since my arrival no or very limited access to internet, excessive heat (higher 90′s and lower 100′s) and nothing to do yet. Bought some furniture with my roommate Steve, so my room is actually furnished. Unfortunately, two bookshelves were not enough, so I have to look for a third one. Due to the fact that I don’t have a car yet, I am cycling back and forth to the seminary, which is about 5 miles from where I live. It takes me about 20-25 minutes, which is OK, although not under the current extreme circumstances. I met a lot of people already, on the seminary in Sunday at the church that I went to, which actually is Memorial Presbyterian Church (PCA) right across Forest Park and close to the main campus of Washington Univ.
Tomorrow I will have internet access in my room, so will probably tell more. Have to leave now. Bye!

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