LIFEandTIMES with ANGUS GIBB

Pinny is taking a break, watch this space...

We have a voucher for Orange Tenpin Bowl valued at $60 to give away each week, so the family can go bowling!

Each week we’ll hide a small version of “Pinny” (pictured) somewhere in OCLife. It could be anywhere. To enter, simply find him, write your name and phone number on the back of an envelope, along with the page number you found him on, and send in...

Looney Lotto

Win a voucher for Co ee and Cake at Coco’s valued at $20, treat yourself or a friend today.

TO WIN: If you have a personal or business phone number with these 4 numbers appearing in any order within it, put in an entry and we’ll draw a winner from among all correct entries each week.

This Friday, March 10, we celebrate one of the more obscure days in the international calendar. This Friday will be International Bagpipe Day. The bagpipes are the avocado of the musical world. You either love them or you hate them. As a redhead with proud Scottish heritage, I must confess that I love the sound of the pipes. There is something about this instrument that warms my heart in strange ways. I know, however, that it is not a love shared by all. I have only tried to play the bagpipes once and I probably won’t ever again! As a string player, I struggle to navigate any instrument that requires me to blow into it. But I do enjoy listening to them. I have many fond memories of the bagpipes that have intersected with key memories in my life. When we were on a family holiday in Scotland as a child, we saw a piper standing alone on a hill, and the sound of the pipes carried out across the moor. A friend played their bagpipes from the summit of a mountain that we had just climbed as a group of university students. When my old pastor, who had a big influence in my life as a young man, retired from his ministry at our church in Tasmania, he was piped out as he left the church. My sisterin-law played her bagpipes out in the fields as the sun was setting at our wedding. Yet despite my love of the bagpipes, there are moments when it is not quite as appreciated as it could be. This is mostly when they are not being played the way they should be. But just because they are not being played the way they should be, does not mean that they are bad in and of themselves. I have heard someone once talk about the Christian faith in this way, using the image of an instrument not being played the way it should be and saying that Christians too, sometimes play the tune of Jesus beautifully, and sometimes very poorly. But this does not mean that the instrument itself is bad. And what is the tune? Jesus called his followers to a radical ethic of love. He said in Matthew 22:37-38: “And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself’.” This is what a Christian is called to do. Sadly though, like the bagpipes being played poorly, followers of Jesus haven’t done this well. But when these words of Jesus are being lived out properly, it is truly beautiful and is like sweet music that stirs your very soul. It shows you how life is meant to be. So if you happen to hear the sound of bagpipes this Friday on the 10th of March, rather than stopping your ears, listen to the music and maybe think about the tune of Jesus.