…relating to Nothing in Particular…

I wish I was focused enough, and alert! enough to write about so much more than I seem able to manage. Jotting down ideas on Post-Its, backs of envelopes & shopping list-type tablets just adds to the ever-expanding morass in my mind! which clutters up my focus! I’m caught between a rock & a hard place, or in a vicious (?) cycle…nonetheless, I keep jottin’ those ideas down. They are EVERYWHERE. Titles of books I want to buy – going back to G,H & Y’s beginnings – having been hastily scribbled on hot pink or lime green mini-Post Its, are everywhere, too. No system. (Plus, I hate lime green!)

(One thing I have learned, though – if you’re going to use Post-Its, you’ve gotta buy the real deal. No generic brands. They NEVER stick. Never. All over the floor and/or lost forever…I mean, who wants to keep bending down & pickin’ ’em up?)

So, as I was saying – capturing a moment of inspiration on a scrap of paper doesn’t guarantee it will ever become a fleshed-out article. Oh, it may! but…so I was thinking of something earlier today, and rather than jot down the idea, I thought I’d tap it out right here, right now. No biggie. No research, no notes.

I have heard that faith, without works, is dead. Now here is a Scripture that can really be distorted, so watch out for the legalist when dealing with it! (Maybe even the legalist that still has a hold on your own mind…or mine…) I remember a preacher saying – or writing?- by way of illustration – that when God told Abraham that he & Sara would conceive a child in their old age, Abraham started building furniture for the nursery…

So you get my point here.

Somewhere between one to three years ago, I decided that I wanted to start selling on eBay. For most people, that would be a simple matter, easily accomplished. But for me, as technologically challenged as I am!/have been…it was an impossibility. But still, though my computer barely moved, one printer after another kept malfunctioning, and a digital camera was financially out of the question – possibly forever, at the rate I’m going – I started collecting small to medium corrugated cardboard boxes (that were headed for the trash baler at work.) And bubble wrap, headed in that same direction. (Got a small mountain of this stuff in my bedroom right now.)

Of course you know where I’m going with this.

By this time tomorrow I will have placed my first listing on eBay.

High five, everybody…

Convicts & Courtesans

 

“Fear not, O land; be glad and rejoice: for the LORD will do great things.” (Joel 2:21 KJV)
“I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten…” (v.25)

Did you know that the most heavily-populated city in Australia, the city of Sydney, began its existence as a miserable, seemingly God-forsaken English penal colony? A thriving metropolis that today boasts well over four million residents once was a dumping ground for the criminal and the unwanted. Once only the destination for murderers, thieves and prostitutes, today this same locale is rated a beta world city, and ranks 16th. in Foreign Policy‘s 2008 Global Cities Index . This motley group of miscreants spawned the city that would eventually “help set global agendas, weather transnational dangers, and serve as [one of] the hubs of global integration.” (Wikipedia, “Global City”, 2008 Foreign Policy Ranking)

Talk about redemption!

As it turns out, this post actually does tie-in with my main Revolutionary thrust. Then called Sydney Cove’s, this harbor’s becoming an established outpost for prisoners was an absolute direct result of the Declaration of Independence, (which as we all know, was written by Mr. Jefferson, our man of the hour on ‘God, History and You’). No longer British territory, England could no longer transport her prisoners to American shores. Another solution had to be found. And so it was, on the shores of Australia instead.

Interesting how, as God and history would have it, both ‘settlements’ were founded out of the necessity of exodus relating to law. In one instance, fleeing the laws of tyrannical government; in the other, government expulsion of lawbreakers. How amazing (Amazing Grace?) that both ‘camps’ have so flourished over time. America the Beautiful and Sydney, world-class city!

God is good.

So here’s how it went down:
In January, 1788, eleven British warships and supply ships landed on Australian shores, bearing among other forms of cargo, over 800 convicted criminals (link) Governor Arthur Phillip commanded the expedition, and his assignment was to somehow create a fairly prosperous, i.e., self-sustaining penal colony. Records indicate that exactly the opposite was what developed. Since the voyage from England to the outpost took about eighteen months,
supplies ran out and were not replenished. Farming attempts had failed, so near-famine conditions existed, and the lack of medicines allowed sickness and disease to abound. A shortage of women led to aberrant and/or violent sexual activity. On the whole, I think it would be safe to say that the colony was on its last leg when help arrived in a rather unexpected form. Expecting food and medicine, instead the prisoners at Sydney Cove got a ship full of females. Desperately needing equipment and supplies, the men got women convicts instead. An assortment of over 200 thieves and prostitutes disembarked the ‘Lady Juliana’ in July of 1789, and basically saved the day.

Girl power! Chicks rule!

(Well, “…male and female created He them.” (Genesis 1:27) Ya can’t argue with that…the guy/girl dynamic has been known to work, and is a basic building block of society, right?)

 

Please return for more of the story, in Part 2 of ‘Convicts & Courtesans’…