Mark preached at church this morning on Ephesians 5:18-33. For a passage that causes great confusion and is often miss-quoted, he gave probably the most illuminating exposition I've ever heard. He began by stressing the link between verses 18-21 and 22-33, which are broken up by a heading in most Bibles. When you actually pause to think about verse 21 the link is quite obvious, but I've never heard it mentioned in a sermon before. He then explained the concept of being filled with the Holy Spirit, drawing comparisons with a room filled with people or a wall filled with pictures. In each case it is that which fills which becomes the most obvious thing, i.e. the most obvious thing about the room is the people. A drunk, as in verse 18, is instantly recognisable through not only their behaviour but also their look, sound, even their smell. And it is their drunkenness which is their most obvious characteristic.

In talking about verses 22-33 he pointed out that 22-24 are addressed "Wives" and 25 to the end of the chapter "Husbands". There is really no need for husbands to read the first part or vice-versa. The responsibility for fulfilling each part of this passage lies with those to whom they are addressed, and they need be of no concern to the rest of us. The most important part for us all lies in being filled with the Holy Spirit. Looking at it this way one gets rather more of an insight into just what a royal priesthood should look like.

I've seen on a few blogs. Dan blogged it today, so I've checked it out and added myself. If it's fun I'll add it to the sidebar when I get round to doing some proper design.

Bruce Almighty (spoilers!) is a film with theology that I agree with, which surprised me quite a bit. It was recommended to me by a friend who told me that it wasn't as dodgy as it looked. I didn't believe him, and I've never really been a fan of Jim Carrey anyway, but after enjoying Hulk I was up for going to the cinema again. Cinematically I couldn't say it was great, though I guess if you liked Liar Liar then this is probably your thing. The plot is predictable, and a lot of the characters and jokes extremely obvious. Where the film shines, though, is in it's portrayal of a man coming to know God and the realisation that his will is not the most important in his life. The ChildCare Action Project still manages to find things to slate, but the moments when Carrey's character surrenders himself to the Lord and says his first prayer are genuinely touching.

A friend of Dan's has commented on a documentary called Did Jesus Die? The part of the show that I saw contended that Jesus was actually a Buddhist monk, taught by the wise men from east during the time between his presentation in the temple and his baptism. It seems to me that the BBC devotes an inordinate amount of time to trying to discredit Christianity.

I've just seen Hulk. It seems to be getting quite a bit of bad press, but I'm going to stick with my initial reaction and say that I'll be surprised if we see a better summer blockbuster this year. The plot was somewhat confused, but next to The Matrix Reloaded it seems to make perfect sense. Ang Lee demonstrates that he has 1000 times more style than McG could ever dream of, and, well, I'll believe the good press about Terminator 3 when I see it.

It's not what we've come to expect from a comic book adaptation, and neither is what we might expect from Ang Lee, but I'm not sure it was ever going to be, and I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing. The CG character is, for the most part, convincing; the performances are great, and draw out the comic style in all the right places. And the use of split screens, framing and fast zooms to imitate the pages of a comic book succeeds in a way I've never seen before.

Chris had started a web site where he's publishing some film reviews that he's written. He didn't like Hulk, but he doesn't seem to have said that on there yet.

I've been off-line for ages again, so I just took a look at my Nationstate. Apparently my economy has imploded. I guess that means I've successfully killed off business. Go me!

While I've been away Dan and Paul have been abusing me again. I don't want to get personal, but come on Paul, show us your efforts. Also, Richard has put a link to my blog in his side bar. I should probably do something similar, but I don't have enough friends with blogs. Paul, get yourself a web site. I guess he does have half a point though. I'd sort of like to have a go at playing with the CSS Zen Garden but I should probably sort out this site first. Some people pad out their side bar with links to the A-list, but I don't really want to look like some kind of wannabe. Actually, what I wanna do is say insightful things about prayer movements in Bradford; but I'm not doing terribly well there, am I?

At my graduation ceremony on Friday Brian Blessed was made an Honorary Doctor of Letters. I'm not entirely sure what that means, but he seemed genuinely excited by it, even saying it was the best thing that ever happened to him. Better still, he said Gordon's Alive! and did that lip-shaking noise thing from The Phantom Menace.

I finally gave in to temptation and bought Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. As a result I've not read much for the Baku-Ceyhan campaign, but I'm really going to now as I finished it this morning. It was all very good apart from the huge continuity error I'm sure I noticed fairly close to the end. I'll have to go back later and check that I didn't just miss something, which I guess is quite likely. Sometime maybe I'll write about why I don't think Harry Potter is Satanic, but I can't really be bothered now.

I've got far to much going on write on everything just at the moment, but the man from Telewest finally came and set up our cable, so now I'll be able to update a bit more regularly. I've spent today at the Granada Studios in Manchester watching the filming of University Challenge. They didn't ask us to keep the results secret, so I think it's safe to say that it wasn't Bradford's finest performance. It's the first time we've had a team for years and years, and it was great fun though, so congratulations to them all. The job's been fun so far, but I think I'm wearing myself out. Last night I failed to finish my curry and then had to come home about half midnight! I've also had a look at the new union web site. I think there's probably quite a lot of work to do. It's not at a permanent address yet, so I'll link to it once it is.

While I was at Glastonbury I committed to reading some of a huge BP document an behalf of the Baku-Ceyhan campaign. BP are trying to build a pipeline across Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey 70% funded by tax-payers money. Now I have an Internet connection again I'll be able to download parts of the document and look for the holes in it. I'm not really sure what I'm looking for, but I'm hoping that someone'll be able to give me a little guidance.

I'm now at home in Sevenoaks. On my way home from Glastonbury the other day I got a call from Andrew, who told me that Jon had asked him to invite people to his wedding. Jon used to run a great web site about Renegade, but I'm pretty sure it's long gone now, so I don't have anything of his to link to. The wedding was lovely, so congratulations to Jon and Tessa Senior. It's a little weird, as Jon is the first of my school friends to get married, but provided they don't go off and spawn a peculiar Danish pop family I guess we'll be OK.

I've spent the last few days on a training residential in an extremely remote village outside of Skipton. I'll be back in Bradford tomorrow, though Telewest still haven't sorted out the transfer of our phone and Internet connections, so it'll probably be a few days before I'm back to doing this every day.

I realised that I didn't post a link to any information about Sigur Ros the other day, so if you've never heard them visit the official Sigur Ros web site and download some tracks.

Oh, and I got a 2/1 for my degree. I was pleased. Very, in fact. I'd use exclamation marks, were I not so tired.

OK, I've been back from Glastonbury for three days, but Telewest haven't yet called me back to say when they're going to install the Internet conection in our new house, so updates could be sparse for a while. I also started my job yesterday and we're off on a three day training residential starting today.

Glastonbury musical highlight is Sigur Ros, who were stunning. Comedy highlight is the moment God answered Tim's prayer that he would meet festival organisers Michael and Emily Eavis. He and I were standing in the queue for Oxfam's free candy floss when a girl approached us and asked us to sign the Make Trade Fair pettition. Tim explained that we'd already signed it, and we didn't realise until we spotted the the camera crew as she was leaving that it was Emily Eavis. God is great, but we are stupid.