Good trivia: To a trivia night – a fundraiser for SRE (Special Religious Education) volunteer Bible teaching in schools in eastern Sydney, that filled a large-ish church hall at Holy Trinity Kingsford. It is a treasure of fifties architecture with original steel windows. Surely the National Trust will step in. Impressively young vibrant scripture teachers were the target of fundraising,
Probably the first time ever Obadiah has done a combined prayer meeting and trivia night.
He’s happy to try it again.
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Ozymandias: To Bondi and Tamarama wandering through Sculptures by the Sea. As he prepares a pic of Michael Purdy’s “two thousand and twenty” to show you, Ozymandias comes to Obadiah’s mind. Purdy has a series of shattered classical columns poking out of the headland, which to Obadiah’s mind captures the fragmented post-modern movement of ideas and institutions.
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem Ozymandias has a ruined statue buried in desert sands signifying the downfall of a king, but Purdy’s columns say much the same about our time.
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Well, it was on top of a headland, plenty of people about, and it was the sea that stretched far away, but the general idea was the sam. To Obadiah, anyway.
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Un-coincidence: one of those stories that reveal the working of God in the world was told at Obadiah’s church this week. Our church had quickly met a challenge to raise funds for computer St Patricks Theological College in Madagascar. But concerned that giving should be more widespread among us, our Minister Al Lukabyo asked us to keep giving because the college, which serves a desperately poor nation is not about to run out of needs. Last Wednesday, Anglican Aid sent through the new total of funds raised which was $X. Later that week urgent texts came from Madagascar, and the news was that the local diocese (church region), based in a famine-hit part of the island nation had no money to meet their promise to fund the college.
Readers probably can guess what happened next. When Al ran the total of the extra need on top of the earlier target through his currency calculator, it came to $X.
College principal Berthier Lainirina, was concerned we might have raised the money for computers and felt they would have to only spend the money on them but he was able to be put at peace that the extra giving was unrestricted.
And for us, we were blessed to know God had been working behind the scenes.
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More theology from the Mario Fenech: The “Marrickville Mauler,” boxer Mario Fenech gave the world “I love youse all” a saying which summarises God’s care for us and our duty to mankind. Now comes this story, recounted in the SMH, about Fenech’s 1991 loss of a world title, which has now been overturned by the WBC – World Boxing Council.
“It happened for a reason and made me a better person,” Fenech said. “I was a three-time world champion and didn’t like the person who I was.
“If I was a four-time world champion and undefeated, I would have been [a lesser man].
““When you have that sort of success, you get a big head and I had that. I wasn’t the same, I was different. Fame and fortune changes you.”