Virtual Methodist

Being a sports fan is an up and down business… more down than up if you’re an Arsenal fan at the moment… but I won’t rub salt into the gaping wound there… It's even more complicated if you participate in the myriad "fantasy" competitions out there, where you can end up wanting your team to win but not by too much, incase any of your fantasy players incur too many points against them. I'm currently registered with 6 different fantasy leagues - four football (that is real football for all you American readers out there... you know, the sort played with your feet!) and 2 World Cup Rugby ones. However, things have been so busy lately I haven't had time to look next nor near them, except to register the fact that I was effectively bottom in all of them. However, until Sunday it was a good weekend, for me… Ulster won convincingly against Cardiff in the rain on Friday night… Then Saturday morning Ireland put all their fans through the wringer as they won a close encou...

The news is full of the Pike River Mining Disaster , made so much more tragic in the light of the recent Chilean mine "miracle". God forgive us glib comments about miracles and prayer and the sovereign grace of God. God forgive us that we take the dangers that miners (and oil platform engineers, and deep sea fishermen) face, for granted. The loss of these 29 lives is a tragedy... But it has also raised for others the many livelihoods lost in coal mining areas in the last major recession in the 1980s... The work down the pits may have been hard and dangerous but it was all that the people of those areas ever knew... And nothing adequate has ever replaced it in most cases... Call centres and car washes... The same is true of all the old industries including the shipyard in Belfast... In memory of those who have died, and in honour of all those who have worked in coal mines the world and the industries fuelled by it, here is Sting's "We work the black seam together......