I went to NeboKerk again last Sunday. The sermon references were I Timothy 3: 15--"That thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth" and Nehemiah 8:1-13, with an emphasis on verse 10-- "Then said he unto them, Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared: for this day is holy unto our Lord: neither be ye sorry, for the Lord is your strength."
Mostly the sermon was about enjoying the Lord's day but just today I saw, on Facebook, this article about the duties of the Sabbath, as referenced in the Sabbath-keeping decisions of a professional athlete, which I thought was quite interesting as well as being marginally related. And Ben, this guy is from Glasgow, Scotland, so you just know he's a good guy.
Another interesting connection was that they had a special prayer for Prinsjesdag and the Dutch government. Prinsjesdag is the official opening of the Dutch Parliament which seemed like a very good idea.
Prinsjesdag occurs on the third Tuesday of September every year. It is full of pomp and circumstance and, if I had gone to Den Haag and fought the crowd, I might have even gotten a first-hand glimpse of the Queen or her fancy carriage on the way to open Parliament with a speech. You can see the official homepage of the 2011 Prinsjesdag events here.
The Queen opens parliament by reading a "state of the nation" address and then the Finance Minister also gave a speech. I listened to the speeches on Radio Nederland, which is kind of the Dutch equivalent of NPR, and was able to follow somewhat. The Queen has a very nice speaking voice and spoke very clearly so it was pretty easy to understand her. The speeches weren't very positive. Apparently they figured that things were going to get worse, economy-wise, before they got better. You can see a picture of the queen reading her Troonrede (the official mane of her speech) here. There is a very large photo gallery of the events that you can look through, if you are so inclined.
In my class on Monday, the teacher told us that if we went to Den Haag we could see the Queen riding around in a Golden Cage. He mentioned it a few more times before realizing that people seemed a little perplexed. Then he had to describe what he meant before we realized he meant "carriage." Then, when we went to the Dutch Cafe that evening, the teacher had a newspaper that showed a picture of the carriage and, when she was explaining what had been going on English, she had to ask for the English word for carriage. It was interesting to see that same tiny gap in English vocabulary in two people who otherwise have pretty impressive vocabularies. I suppose, though, that there just aren't that many times, anymore, when you need to know the word for carriage. If you want to see a picture of the carriage (which is very, very gold, by the way), you can see it here.
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