When the Bible speaks for you...

I can't stand your religious meetings.

I'm fed up with your conferences and conventions.

I want nothing to do with your religion projects,

your pretentious slogans and goals.

I'm sick of your fund-raising schemes,

your public relations and image making.

I've had all I can take of your noisy ego-music.

When was the last time you sang to me?

Do you know what I want?

I want justice—oceans of it.

I want fairness—rivers of it.

That's what I want. That's all I want.

(Amos 5 v 21-24 - "The Message")

How disconcerting to find God speaking to his people, in a way that mirror's your own thoughts which you'd assumed to be wrong and based on your own selfishness. Is this applicable to us today?

Just in case...

Brringgg, brringg, Mr Artin your daughter has hurt her knee playing rugby, just in case we'd like her to see her doctor. (30 mins later) Just in case we'll carry her to the car... just in case I'll take her straight to A&E (besides its closer than the GP's). Triage at A&E, just in case we'll have the doc look at it... Doc, Just in case we'll get an x-ray done... Just in case we'll get the A&E consultant to have a look... Just in case we'll have the orthopedic surgeon check it out... Just in case we'll plaster it... Just in case we'll check with the orthopedic consultant... Just in case we'll keep her in overnight for observation... just in case we'll do an MRI...

Ah it's a Anterior tibial spine fracture (type III) and it will require a 3 hour keyhole operation, but just in case can we have your permission for open knee surgery?

72 hours later with a cast from hip to toe (in a very pretty purple with sparkles!) we're back home, just in case you were wondering!

Starting...

Every year I get the opportunity to visit my favourite building in the world (due to an annual industry conference). It is still in construction after starting 126 years ago (and I thought our builders were slow!), outlasting it's original architect, sponsors and artisans. It is of course the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, so many things we start and we expect to see the outcome within months not generations.

I wish I knew the outcome of what I've started, but if I don't start I won't know the outcome, is this where faith comes in?

For Geoff... now on the road

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood,

and I-I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

(by Robert Frost)

Faith above

"For he who loves God without faith reflects on himself, while the person who loves God reflects on God." Soren Kierkegard (Fear & Trembling)

Attempting to re-read Kiekegard's "Fear & Trembling" after a 15 year break still makes me wonder if I can ever understand faith, and even if I could I doubt I could ever make it a constiuent part of me, as I've naturally seen it present in others.

When I look back, I doubt there's more people than I can count on the digits of my hands who I can see as being Knights of Faith, whose faith is an intrinsic part of them. They seem oblivious to this aspect of their makeup, which the rest of us are the benefactors of, through their lives and work.

One of those people will be ordained into the ministry today and I know God will use this most intangible but powerful facet of their makeup, to forward His presence an ministry on earth and bring hope to all those around her.

"a time to believe and a time to doubt,

a time to deflect and a time to come together through faith"

(Ecclesiastes 3 additions...)

Picture : "Faith in what's above"

Thunderbirds are go...

Nothing like an emergency to throw off the lethargy of the holidays. On Sunday the sister-in-law came to stay having dropped off my niece and her university digs, on the Monday we get a call in the late afternoon from her son, to say that "dad" had had an accident (they were away skiing in the French Alps). It unfolds that he has a severely broken leg and has been transferred to the nearest large town hospital for surgery, leaving my nephew alone in the alps.

To cut a long story short we were with my Nephew by mid-afternoon on the Tuesday (not sure anyone slept on Monday night) in the Alps and found my brother-in-law in hospital. Yesterday I drove their car and my nephew back to the UK, while my sister-in-law sorts out the repatriation of her husband with the insurance company (on Sunday all being well).

I have traveled a lot and usually I measure travel by the number of disruptions that happen and yet in the last 2 days we;

- did a full circle of M25 on Monday fetching passports (7 - 11 pm) with no hold-ups

- found a flight going direct on Tuesday morning from a local airport straight to the nearest local airport to the resort in the alps.

- found a taxi driver to take us to a small resort in the alps (an off duty English teacher) as soon as we landed.

- trouble free 700 mile drive from the Alps to the UK in 11 hours door to door.

- Euro tunnel accepting a ticket for another date and a different driver without any quibbles and putting us straight on the first train.

For all of the above I can only thank God, and continue to pray for the repatriation of my brother in law at the weekend.

Going backwards

Faith, hope and love and the greatest of these is... the most written about, examined, felt, etc. Over advent I have found myself going back through these three (mostly the first two)first I looked at hope, spurred on by Danny's posts and my own reading and thoughts.

Hope, when you're economically inactive seems such a temporal entity, it rises and falls like the tide as a new job prospect looms it rises, then as time takes it's toll it wains. Yet that is not hope just expectation, I think hope is something anchored in God which does not vary, He has a plan for me (despite my seeming failures) and is working it out. I need to follow it through, a lot of it involves waiting, which I am not good at, and work at what has been given to me which I procrastinate on.

Picture - Wrabness "going backwards into the wind" 28/12/08