Monthly Archives: June 2009

Wordle

Gaz Simmonds | June 24, 2009

Before i write what i am going to write, take a look at this. You may have seen it already, Wimbledon today, its beautiful. I love seeing things like this in the world today. news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/tennis/8117785.stm

So i found a website the other day which produces things called ‘Wordle’s’ maybe you have seen them before, i haven’t so i figured i had to share it with you! Basically you type in or copy and paste in some text of anything, the longer the better. And then it creates a ‘Wordle’ of that text, where the words that appear most in the text are drawn as the biggest words, and the less the words are mentioned then the smaller they are on the ‘Wordle’ Its amazing. It cuts out all the words like ‘and’, and ‘the’ etc so its pretty cool.

I did this one below of the whole of the book of Revelation, and here’s what it looks like…

And i also did another one of this Blog. Which was cool. Maybe i will upload a new one each month to see what i talk more and more about…

This made me think though, especially looking at the one of this blog. I am happy that ‘worship’ and ‘God’ and ‘peace’ are fairly big, though i would prefer ‘God’ to be the biggest. A little disappointed that ‘really’ and ‘just’ are the biggest, those words don’t really describe what this blog is about! “It’s really just a blog!”

So this made me ponder, if someone made a ‘Wordle’ of our life, of all the words we ever say, and have ever said. What would our Wordle look like? I know what i would definitely want mine to look like, but i am not sure if it would. Even this blog, Jesus isn’t the biggest word, when i think he should be. And i am pretty sure Jesus wouldn’t be the biggest word in my life Wordle, but He needs to be.

So my challenge to you, what would be the biggest word on your Wordle? Is it what you would like it to be? Why not try and make it what you want it to be…

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How He Loves

Gaz Simmonds | June 23, 2009

The David Crowder Band have just brought out a new single, now on itunes. And it is amazing! I definitely recommend it to you. It is originally written by a guy called John Mark McMillan, and the version i knew well before was by Kim Walker. Though the David Crowder band really bring something fresh to the song, and David Crowderified it!!

The Lyrics are amazing, i may have even posted about them before here. So yeh, go buy it, listen carefully to the lyrics, and allow them to sink in, they really touched me.

Posted in General, Worship | Leave a reply

Alpha

Gaz Simmonds | June 23, 2009

So i thought i would let you know that the Alpha documentary that was filmed here at Aldates earlier this year, is going to be on Channel 4 this Sunday at 7pm. Check the link here… http://www.channel4.com/programmes/revelations

It is part of a 7 week series i think, on religion and stuff. So yeh hopefully it will be cool. It will be interesting to see what take they took on it, as they filmed 8 weeks and a weekend away, and created a 1 hour program! So to be honest how it looks is just as much up to them than it is the church!! So yeh, watch it if you get chance, or Sky plus it. Look out for me in the background somewhere haha

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Twitter

Gaz Simmonds | June 21, 2009

So i recognize that lately i have been rubbish at keeping this blog up to date. And the truth is, i have been swallowed up by twitter. This revolutionary site that allows you to quickly write a couple of sentences of what you are up to/been up to or anything has overtaken Facebook on my to-do list each day. And here’s the shocking news, on my iPhone i have even chosen to place Tweetie (The catalyst for my Twitter ‘Tweets’) on one of the permanent 4 spots, along with ‘Phone’ ‘Email’ and ‘SMS’. Which means it replaces ‘Safari’ because i realized i use it more!! Shocking.

But what this means, which brings me to my initial point of this blog. Is that it is now quite an effort for me to write more than 140 characters! Because i can’t do it in 10 seconds, it requires more thought! And i just spend all my time on Twitter! I am not saying it has taken over my life, because i can still live with out it! But it is a wonderful addition, and i have found it a great way to regularly keep up with friends, without stumbling into the more often than not awkward ‘Hello, how are you’ conversations! So if you don’t have Twitter i suggest you get it! You will find me at twitter.com/gazsimmonds i think.

I half wrote a blog last week which was going to tell you all about an amazing conference i went to where Loius Giglio was the main speaker. But i found it difficult to concentrate so left it to go and update my Twitter status! What i am trying to say ladies and gentlemen, is Twitter is where its at. Some would say it is the ‘Bees knees’ or the ‘Cats Pyjamas’, i just think it’s pretty cool. Our Church is even on it, along with many other Churches!

But having said all this, i am definitely not going to abandon this blog, because i love it. And soon i will get inspiration to write something good on here. Maybe we could even give it a little make over, like changing rooms! I feel i look a bit weird on those photo’s now as they are getting older by the day.

Anyway. God Bless

By the way, i bought a new football today, it’s amazing. I got that excitement i haven’t experienced since my child hood, where you buy a new football. We went to play with it for the first time. Only on grass though (Obviously) and then after i gently held it and flicked off all the dirt and made sure there were no major scratches. It is sitting proudly in my room as we speak.

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Peace

Gaz Simmonds | June 9, 2009

Lately I have been pondering a lot on the word ‘Peace’, and what it is really all about. For those familiar with the Anglican Church, we have this strange practice of going around shaking as many people’s hand as we can in 2 minutes proclaiming, “Peace be with you” or we end a Sunday service by saying “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord” But what is it really about?

One of Jesus’ Characteristics, or titles was that He is the ‘Prince of Peace’. I know for me I have used this name for Him many times, in Church, in worship songs, and read it in the Bible, but never really thought about what it truly means. It may be easy to think of Jesus being the Prince of Peace when we see the nice, fluffy pictures of our Lord sat on a cloud. But when we see the Scenes in the Gospel message, as Jesus is being flogged, beaten, and ridiculed as the soldiers mocked Him, still at that moment, He was the Prince of Peace.

When I think of the word peace, the first word that comes to mind is ‘Rest’. So often we match these words together, and give them the same meaning. But I think this is far from right. We can have rest, without being at peace. And at the same time, we can be not resting, but be at peace. So often I find myself with an evening off and I think great, I can rest. But then I will go to bed at the end of the night often more stressed and tired than I was at the start, because I wasn’t truly at peace. Yet I can be at peace, and get loads of stuff done, even work! I believe that our main priority should be to always be at peace, and when we are fully at peace, only then can we fully rest.

So there are some of my current musings, maybe i will post more on the matter as i look into it.

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