First Impressions - a visit to Prague end of March 2013.

            It was lovely to have the opportunity to visit the city of Prague, filled with so much history and tradition.  We were visiting our son and daughter-in-law, and that always makes visiting a new place easier. There are always interesting things to take in when visiting a new place, and so I thought it would be interesting to record our impressions of our visit.

            The first thing you will have to face is travelling on the ‘wrong’ side of the road, unlike in UK or Japan which is on the left side of the road.  You will need to make sure to look left when crossing a road, and if crossing from the tram stop, look the other way.  It took awhile to get use to that, and so to make sure I didn’t get knocked over by a car, I looked both ways at first!! 

            Getting around Prague is reasonably easy on the tram, metro or bus.  You need to buy a ticket before you get on the transport system.  You can buy tickets from a dispensing machine at certain locations, and you buy by the hour rather than the destination.  They have 30 minute ticket, 24 hour ticket, 76 hour ticket, etc.  When you first get on the tram or bus, you need to activate the ticket in a slot on the vehicle.  If you ride without a ticket, or an expired ticket, and the conductor comes round to check on your ticket, you could end up with a hefty fine.  However, having a ticket does mean you can get on and off a tram, or metro underground train, or a bus at will, so does make travelling around easy. 

            There was some snow about when we were there.  The city council has a very efficient snow removing team on the job very promptly.  They clear the pathways so they are not generally slippery, and roads are soon cleared, and traffic does not seem to be unduly hindered. 

            Having a meal in Prague also had some things which were interesting to say the least.  The first, is that they will often bring a little basket of bread or rolls, which in some restaurants you will pay for if you eat the bread.  The other thing was that as soon as you had finished your meal, they removed the plate.  This was different, and not quite sure what the reasoning may be behind it.

            In one café, we ordered our drinks, and I had a milk chocolate.  The others had various kinds of flavoured tea.  My milk chocolate was very thick, and while I could drink it, it was easier to drink with a spoon!  I think this was just this particular café as in another café it was more how I would imagine it should be. 

            Tipping was different.  I paid for the meal with cash, and they just assumed that all the money I had given was for the bill and tip.  Fortunately, it wasn’t a lot more.  Apparently they round up the tip by 10%, and so must have assumed that was what I had given.  Life is different in different places!

            We were in Prague just before Easter and there was a lot of evidence of how they celebrate it from painted Easter eggs, Easter bunnies and other Easter paraphernalia.   Lots of churches too, but how Easter is actually celebrated or remembered, I am not quite sure. 

            The public conveniences while available in some of the more prominent tourist locations do require a coin, either a 5 or 10 koruna coin will be needed.  Sometimes MacDonalds can be used without the coin, but the MacDonalds in Wenceslas Square require a coin. 

            The people are not very friendly, and very rarely greet you when out and about.  This, we were told, is probably a hang over from the communist regime time, when you didn’t trust anyone.  Also at Tescos, the lady on the till was quite impatient not giving one any time to pack your bags before the next persons shopping was coming through.  But there were also some nice people too.  The guy at the pottery shop that we popped into was very friendly and chatty. 

            It would seem that a lot of people shop on a daily basis for their food items.  So you get strange looks if you are carrying the weeks shopping home on the tram. 

            Prague is a very beautiful city with a lot of character.  The buildings are very interesting, and there is a lot history to many of the sites that one visits in the Old Town, or on the Castle grounds and Cathedral.  Lots of statues of different individuals, and ornately decorated buildings.  The parks too were nicely kept, and a pleasure to visit. 

Time for Spiders

September is the month for spiders. They are everywhere, and getting bigger. Some people like them, others don't. Here in Japan we get some pretty big ones. How about this fellow:


This is called a Wasp Spider because its markings are very like that of a wasp. Its scientific name is Argiope bruennichii, and Japanese name: Nagakogane-gumo. Gumo in Japanese is the word for spider.

Spider webs are amazing. Just watch a spider weave his web and you will notice how methodically he goes about it, and getting the distances and gaps just right as he measures the distances with his legs.



Notice the web silks from tail end and from the head. This is another kind of spider. It does not bite. This one is called Joro-gumo in Japanese and Nephila clavata for its scientific name.

The human eye is capable of detecting objects at a distance of 10 cm with a diameter of 25 mm. The average diameter of a thread in a orb web is around 0.15 mm. The smallest measured thread was only 0.02 mm thick. We are able to see the web only because of the reflection of sunlight on the thread.



You can just make out the web of this very large spider, Scientific name: Argiope amoena, Japanese Name - Kogane-gumo, but yet it will catch insects as large as cicadas, butterflies, and flying beetles.

These thin wires are capable of stopping a bee flying at full speed. This thread is not only strong but also very elastic. These properties make the material very tough. Another comment I read was that a spider's thread with a radius of 3 cm could stop a Boeing 747 in full flight. That is amazing. But of course, the spider's webs that we usually see are no way that thick, and if they were we would soon be caught in such a web. The web is not only elastic but sticky, although the spider can also spin non sticky threads so that he doesn't get caught up in his own web.

The spider is mentioned twice in the Bible. Once in Job 8:14 where Bildad the Shuhite is accusing Job of forgetting God. What Job is being accused of is that anything that he might put his hope in, such as his innocence, is useless and inadequate, such as we might found when leaning on a spider's web. He leans on the web, but it gives way; he clings to it, but it does not hold. So says Bildad, your trust in God and your righteousness is like that. However, Bildad was to be proved wrong later.

The second reference is in Isaiah 59:5 where Isaiah the prophet, describes the wicked as those who hatch the eggs of vipers and spin a spider's web. They cannot make clothing from cobwebs, they are useless for clothing and they cannot cover themselves with what they make. What Isaiah is saying is that they are harming themselves, the hatching of viper eggs, and cobwebs can easily be seen through and God knows all that they are doing and they cannot hide from Him. God's judgement will be revealed at the proper time.

These Arachnida creatures created by God are part of God's great wide world. Though we may not like them, we can still appreciate them for being part of God's great creation.

My call to be a Missionary

God calls each of us in individual ways, and what I share here will be particularly how God has dealt with me, and should not be considered as a method by which God will call everyone. However, in sharing these experiences, my hope is that we will learn something of God - that He does lead, that He is concerned about the details of our lives, and particularly His patience in His dealings with us when we so often try and go our own way or do our own thing.

The second thing I want to say at the outset is that my call to Japan was not because my parents were missionaries to Japan and I was just following in their foot steps, nor because I grew up in Japan, spending the first 17-18 years of my life there. My call was a definite call of God to go to Japan because that was where God wanted me to be, not because I wanted to be there. In fact, when I left Japan, I had no desire or thought of wanting to be a missionary, and when I did feel the ‘call’ of God, it was not to Japan, but rather to Africa. So how did I end up back in Japan?

I attended the Canadian Academy in Kobe, Japan for most of my school years. One thing the school encouraged and arranged was for the students in the final year of high school to go on an educational trip for about ten days to some part of Japan. Our year decided on a trip to western Japan and the Japan Sea coast, taking in many of the interesting places such as Hagi, Izumo, Matsue and Tottori. The Japan Sea coast line is a beautiful area to visit with pottery, ancient temples and places full of history. However, because it is rural, many of the places we visited did not have much going on in the evenings. Such was the case on our last night in Tottori. Autumn in Japan is a pleasant time of the year, and so a walk around Tottori in the cool of that October evening was quite an enjoyable thing to do. However, it was to have a lasting impact on my life, though at the time I was not aware that this would be so.

As we walked about the town, a very strong sense of the spiritual darkness came over me, so much so, I thought to myself, “When my parents return from furlough this needs to be where they should come. I knew that they had been thinking about whether to move from Kobe when they returned to Japan following my graduation and one year in UK. I didn’t think anything more of it, nor did I say anything to my parents, and promptly forgot about it. I was on my way to the UK. The future was before me and the big world was waiting for me! I was looking forward to it and had been investigating various possible careers that I might enter.

God, in his infinite wisdom, arranged in a rather remarkable way for me to start physiotherapy training the autumn I graduated. This was quite amazing, because most of the schools that I had applied to could not take me until the following year. I ended up at the West Middlesex School of Physiotherapy in Isleworth, Middlesex, and was not all that far from Mill Hill, North London, where my parents were based during their furlough. It meant I was able to get home a number of times, and even managed to be there for a midweek report meeting one November day. A missionary male nurse who was serving in Ethiopia was sharing his experiences on that occasion. That night I felt what I can only describe as ‘a call’ of God to serve Him as a missionary. Rather than pray about it as I should have done, I began to think and plan how I thought I could serve God as a missionary. Because my ‘call’ had come through a missionary using nursing skills to reach out to the people, and because of my situation as a student of physiotherapy, I thought the logical option was to consider medical missions. Most of the people that I knew who were involved in any way in medical missions were in Africa, and so my focus was in that direction, and more particularly towards Ethiopia. Physiotherapy on the mission field up until that point did not exist, so I realized that I would be moving very much in a new direction as far as medical missions was concerned.

However, these thoughts were placed on the back burner for the first two years or so of my training. I did not really pray too much about it, or give it much thought during that time. However, as I entered my third year, I realized I would need to begin to think and pray seriously about what I would do after I had finished training. Firstly, I would have to fulfil my obligations of two years service in the National Health Service as part of my commitment for having received a bursary to study. However, this requirement was discontinued just before I finished, so was no longer a constraint as to the timing of my departure.

Several things happened during that final year that were to have big influences on what I would finally decide to do. The first was that I began to read my Bible in a way I had not done before, and read through the whole Bible in three months leading up to the summer. This had a tremendous impact on my spiritual life and was noticed by others. The second thing was that I read Watchman Nee’s little book, Release of the Spirit, which was a great help to me. The third thing was that I felt that I should try and do an exploratory trip to Ethiopia to see how a physiotherapist might fit into the work. Because of the cost of flights, I looked into the possibility of charter flights. However, that did not work out or coincide with my holidays. The fourth thing to happen was that a retired senior missionary from North Africa came to our church to speak. He spoke at the evening service and then at the young people’s group. I cannot remember anything in particular from what he said but I know that it affected me to the extent that I read through John 13-17 that night. As a result of all of this, I entered into a correspondence about my missionary call with him which continued from the September through to the New Year.

The outcome of that correspondence led me to realize that I was making a big mistake in respect to missionary thoughts and plans. What I had been doing was offering to God my qualifications of physiotherapy but what God was wanting was me! I confessed my mistake to God and prayed, offering myself to Him for whatever, wherever He wanted to send me. Within three days, I felt vividly as if it had been the night before, the sense of spiritual darkness and oppression that I had felt three and half years earlier in Tottori, Japan. This was too coincidental to be chance and I began to pray fervently asking God to show me what He was meaning by this. It gradually became clear that God wanted me to return to Japan.
That spring, I approached the church elders about all this and they concurred with me believing this was of God too. Several questions were asked, including what would I do with my physiotherapy training. A letter I had received shortly before from a senior missionary in Japan helped me to see all of this in perspective. God never wastes our experiences, and the purpose for which I had gone into physiotherapy might now be coming to an end, or it might still play a part in the work God had for me to do. One thing was clear though, and it was that God had used it to get me thinking about missions. Furthermore, while in Ube, Japan some nine years later, we had a lot of contact with the doctors at the University of Yamaguchi medical school, and having a background in the medical field enabled me to relate more meaningfully.

Over the next few months as preparations continued several concerns arose, one of which was my lack of experience of missionary work and inability to do what I had seen missionaries in Japan do. However, how God reassured me on that issue will have to be the topic for another blog.

About eight years after that initial experience in Tottori, my wife and I boarded a plane for Japan to begin service for God there.

I believe that God had made his initial ‘call’ to me in Tottori, but my life was too full of other things, and so did not give it any thought. However, God, in His mercy, was patient with me, and got my attention through the medical missions route. God is like that sometimes. God can still get us to the place He wants us even though we may not respond how God would like us to. God is not interested in what we can do or not do. Our gifts or qualifications are all received from Him anyway. What he wants is us, wholly given to Him for His use in whatever way He wants to use us. We can leave the rest to Him. Just as God called Moses there at the burning bush, inviting him to join Him in His work of delivering the people from their bondage, so too God is inviting us to share in His work. All Moses needed to be was the vessel God could use to fulfil His purposes. That is what God is still wanting of us today. Will you let God invite you to be involved in His work wherever it might be?

Itotonbo - Damselfly - アオモンイトトンボ - Aomon-ittonbo

Seen in the garden recently. I was very pleased with how this photo came out as they are not very big. This is called an Aomon-itotonbo, it's scientific name is Ischnura senegalensis.

Click on the photo to see it enlarged.

In the Garden

We have a little garden here in Japan, which we haven't done very much in. It was quite over grown when we moved in, but we did do quite a bit of weeding, but have not made a lot of impression on it. However, Mr. Nakanishi took it upon himself to be our gardener, and did work on it when he came down for Church services from Nobeoka each week. He grew vegetables in the main, although there were flowers from time to time as well.



This was one June day a couple of years ago. In the photo on the left is an orange tree. A fig tree is next to it. Then to the right is a camellia bush.

Now Hironori is working in the garden a little, and is growing some Japanese radishes (Daikon), and some beans.

The organge tree, not the usual oranges, but more like a natsu mikan, which is closer to a grapefruit in it's taste a little, had lots of flower buds, and we were hopeful for a lot more fruit this year, but the fruit which initially began to develop has dropped, so there is very little on the tree at the moment. Will have to see how many we get when they ripen. The kinkan (kimquat}tree is a mass of bloom at the moment, so that could be good news for those that like these little round orange coloured fruit.

The other plants that have done well this year are the mombresia, which seems to have spread a lot this year. Also the melastoma (Nobotan in Japanese) plant that we got from Michelle from Australia when she was here, has really developed into quite a big bush, in spite of having been cut back last year. It should flower well when the blooms appear.

New Photos added to my Flickr collection

A new photo that I added recently from one of our walks in Heiwadai Park here in Miyazaki. To see more photos click on the photo: The scientific name for this butterfly is: Arhopala genesa It's Japanese name is: Ru-misu-shijimi ルーミスシジミ

Freedom in Christ – Part 2

In a previous blog when I considered this subject, I was asking for some thoughts and comments on how freedom in Christ worked in our lives, and in what sort of situations we could see it in practice. Some further preliminary thoughts have come to mind since then.

Someone did suggest that we really need to begin by asking what we mean by freedom. That, I suggest, is really the answer I am looking for, because if we can understand what freedom in Christ is, then we will be able to more readily know when we are experiencing it in our lives.

Last time I mentioned Rom.7 where we saw Paul’s struggle to live a good life in his own strength, only to find that there was a power at work in his life that was preventing him from doing what he knew to be right and instead doing what he didn’t want to do. He did not feel free at all and would have defined his position as a slave of sin. He says that Christ has set him free from that master and power, and so he is now able to live in a freedom that enables him and gives him a power, to do what is right and not do what is wrong.

One thing that did come up last time that would form part of a definition of this freedom in Christ is Galatians 5:13 You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. Our freedom, according to this verse is based on a choice. We choose to live in a certain way, and that freedom in Christ does not allow us to live according to the sinful or selfish nature that we still have resident within and with which the Holy Spirit is continually in conflict with (Gal.5:17). This freedom is not a disregard of rules and standards, doing as we please, but is rather a way of life characterized by love. It is putting others in a position of importance rather than ourselves (cf. Phil.2:3). Of course, we cannot live this kind of life in our own strength. We need the Spirit of God in our lives.

The Lord Jesus also referred to being free in John 8:31-32. To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." Here a different concept seems to be presented to us. Knowing the truth will set us free. The context makes it clear that it will be freedom from sin. The disciple who is holding the teaching, that is, treating it with respect and obeying it will know deliverance from sin. The reason the disciple will be able to experience this freedom is because he has been delivered from slavery to sin, by being set free by the Son. But more is implied in verses 34-36 than just deliverance from slavery. Sonship is the position that the disciple now has. A slave has no permanent place in the home, but a son’s rights in the home are forever. Christ’s act of setting us free has brought us into the family of God. The Life Application Commentary on this passage sums it up well:

Sin has a way of enslaving us, controlling us, dominating us, and dictating our actions. It manifests itself in self-centeredness, rebelliousness, possessiveness, dysfunctional love, and addictive behaviours. Jesus can free us from this slavery that keeps us from becoming the person God created us to be. Even if sin is restraining, mastering, or enslaving us, Jesus can break its power over our life. Jesus himself is the truth that sets us free (8:36). He is the source of truth, the perfect standard of what is right. He frees us from the consequences of sin, from self-deception, and from deception by Satan. He shows us clearly the way to eternal life with God. Thus Jesus does not give us freedom to do what we want, but freedom to follow God. As we seek to serve God, Jesus' perfect truth frees us to be all that God meant us to be. (from The Life Application Commentary Series Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000 by the Livingstone Corporation. Produced with permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.)

So to sum up these thoughts, we can define this freedom negatively by saying that freedom in Christ is being set free from the slavery that keeps us from becoming the person God created us to be. Positively, we can say that with our sins forgiven, and our consciences cleansed, we can now say ‘No’ to sin and temptation and choose to follow the way of truth in Christ. This is no longer a bondage, because our lives are now governed by the love of God within. To love God and our neighbour is not a burden, because love always has the good of the other at heart.