OMG

I've been reflecting on a tweet from someone, showing a piece of Argos Jewellery - a necklace, which merely has the letters "OMG" to hang around someone's neck. The tweet suggested the total pointlessness of either the manufacturer or Argos themselves, and I agree.
Of course "OMG" is the new abbreviated form (seems to have entered our language in this decade) of the old swearing statement "Oh my God", which I find as I listen - seems to come out now from even 4 year olds.
There are several points to make here: First, for the Christian, God's name is precious and the scriptures leave no room for argument that taking God's name and misusing it is not right, and especially so for the Christian.
Secondly, I find myself puzzled, bemused even, as to why there is this fascination with an abbreviation of "Oh my God." I suppose the virus of abbreviations is arguably bound to hit everything eventually, and it was only a matter of time. Perhaps three words are, for some, just too much and saying "OMG" is somehow a lot less hassle? Or is it that the message of not misuing God's name has now got out into people's minds, and someone has suggested that saying "OMG" is somehow less offensive? Well, it isn't!

For me, whenever I hear someone say this I always want to feel that I should turn to them and say "ah, but who is your god then? - as if to make the point. But the long and the short of it is that I find it offensive. And I find the celebrity trend of somehow saying it live on TV, or singing about it, ...or whatever else, is horrible, and I don't like the example that that sets or suggest to such a mass following.

To widen this out - I hear, as we all do, an enormous amount of swearing - and when I get very stressed or angry, I have found myself sadly doing so. But when I hear someone saying "Jesus" or "Oh my God", then that makes me cross. Is that hypocrisy I wonder?
Of course, the anguish behind what makes us (all?) swear is an interesting study: that surge of stress or anger that frustrated us and makes us scream out aloud. Isn't that a little like what the psalms do in the scriptures? But they're not full of bad language - anger sometimes - yes. I've often mused at the story of the old Chistian man banging his head on the same shelf and saying "Praise the Lord!"

Is swearing then just about poor vocabulary? I have in my 46 years heard that said by a good few people - was it my English teacher? Certainly, families that are brought up in an environment where swearing is the norm, then often the children see this as what they should do too.

Then of course, we might argue that there is swearing, and then then swearing - ie, plain rudeness and then those words that dishonour the name of God. Does that make the former acceptable and the latter not then? I know the some have studied the root of each swear word and discovered that actually the truth behind each is quite alarming - eg "Blimey" was apparently originally "Blind-me".

So where does this end? Better education? Better example? Christians standing up and being counted? Probably all - though I also have cringed sometimes when Christians have been so "in someones face" as they have cut into them about their bad langauge and wanted to run a mile from such hypocrisy. How do we win such folk for Jesus when someone has already ploughed in and mucked up the playing field? Certainly Paul reminds us that the peope of the Holy Spirit will want to live by the Spirit.


Moving onto a entirely different subject ...my Android Mobile and O/S upgrade.
Ice cream sandwhich - thought I'd note this for anyone who has to travel this road. My Samsung Galaxy S2 finally brought me to a point where the SD card was malfunctioing and internal memory as a result was crashing out. Vodafone said all these problems I had would be sorted with the ICS update.The word of the street for months has been about this O/S upgrade from gingerbread to ICS, Ice Cream Sandwich!

So for me the phone was becoming a struggle and not an effective tool. A visit to the vodafone shop last week said "Sure, we can do the upgrade, but havr you backed up?" So back home to backup to Samsung Kies. This I managed, eventually.
Back to the shop - "Oh, it says we can't do it afterall, but we can send if off!" No, I didn't want that as I couldn't be without my diary. So then I phoned Vodafone only to be told that they weren't responsible for O/S upgrades, but Samsung are. A classic moment in techy life - finally the open source nature of Google and Android catches up with me. This is its strength and its weakness.
An upgrade I was told would sort my original problems, but the £40 quid paid to vodafone every month doesn't cover that scenario then?! Kind of leaves you "naffed off" (ooh is that ok given my words above?) and running the argument that this would never happen with Apple or HTC!
So, to conclude I finally get through to Samsung who ........wait for it .......tell me I can't upgrade ......yet!


So, this week is the calm before the storm (or is it the other way around as parents look forward to days of peace?), as we try to gather some last few days of rest before schools go back and routine kicks in.

We haven't had much of a holiday this year.One week, and it was stressful! As we spend money on new uniforms and equipment, the economic news is not imporoving for the UK, and the financial pressure continues to target the middle and lower income families of the UK. We are one of them, and there are many. The light at the end of the tunnel is not showing up, and despite the Jubilee and the Olympics, the nation is in general rudderless an lacking any good economic news. Unless something changes, then I see a General Election in the pipe line!

Sports in Schools - the real problem

Okay, so I'm going to throw my 5 quid into the arena on this, and I think I can do this with some credibility. Here's my argument - the measley 2 lessons (practically its 1) of PE a week in each primary school shows up where our values and priorities have drifted. Numerous governments have played with the national curriculum arguing that their electorate has demanded change for so called failing schools. Such schools if they are deemed to not be reaching the required standard, are set targets, and the entire Ofsted nightmare of every school seemingly being measured by whether it has had a good one or not. This either shames or applauds a local school in a community and presumably provides informed decision making freedom for parents. But here's the problem - all that is based on academic prowess, not on sport. Did they achieve in maths and english - for example.
When I was growing up in school, every morning was set for lessons and every afternoon was for compulsory sport. Summer or winter, good weather or bad - we would be either running or playing rugby or hockey in winter, and atheletic and tennis or cricket in the summer. For me, the sport was survival. The academic side was a real struggle, but the Sport kept me alive and gave me value. Goodness knows what would have happened if I hadn't had that. In the mornings we thought and worked better, and in the afternon we burnt off our energy and played sport to high standards.
But now we have a virtually sportless school culture in the state school system. The sport has been tossed into the court of after school clubs.
If the Olympics is to change our sporting future, we have to kill the notion that the value of a person or a school is based on how well they achieve academically, and return to the days where a whole person approach is seen as a good thing, not a disability.