Westy's Weekly Blog

  It’s interesting to reflect on the word ‘polarise’.   If I remember correctly I first came across the word in connection with a photography hobby.   When I bought my first 35mm camera as a teenager I bought some ‘optional extras’ that included a polarising filter.   Later I learned that polaroid sunglasses had already been produced since 1935 – a decade before I was even a twinkle in the eyes of my parents.   Technically speaking, the polarising filter on my camera ensured that the vibrations of light waves worked only in one direction, giving a much sharper view, for example, of clouds on a sunny day.   It allowed me to photograph a fish in the water as the filter cancelled out reflected light from the water’s surface. The literal meaning of the word makes a lot of sense and we’ve come to understand the word these days especially as representing two extremes – as though they are from opposite ends of the earth.   Something becomes ‘polarised’ as i...

  Someone recently reminded me that I once said in a sermon that sometimes we ask the wrong questions.   Her reminder had a context – a tragedy had taken place that had caused immense pain and difficulty for her and her family.   And isn’t that precisely the moment when serious questions arise in our minds?   I recall a grandfather who lost three grandchildren in as many years.   At the funeral of the third one he asked the question: “Why didn’t the Lord take me instead?”   He even preceded that question with a lament, “Lord, you took the wrong one!” Okay, I’m sure the Lord God doesn’t mind us asking our questions.   Did not even Jesus ask that probing and desperate question: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” - an agonising question from the depths of hell.   Isn’t that perfectly understandable?   Understandable... not only when Jesus cries that out from a cross of crucifixion on a hill called Calvary... but also when King D...