And.Oh.Happy.Day

Ahoy mehearties.


Today is my favourite day of the whole year. No doubts.
It's been a great family day, a great week. Lots of work being done and making me happy to be home with the fam...church and a long walk on Cannock Chase involving a distinct lack of directional sense and a horse were high/lowlights of the day
Also, a day off of revision made things a bit more relaxed to muse over things like:

THE TOMB IS EMPTY!
I try to spend a every day of my life reflecting on and living in the good of the significance of what we remember today, but the culmination of thanksgiving in overflowing gratitude and celebration on this day is a brilliant thing.

I'm struck by so many things today that I will struggle to put them all down into words....and I suffer from chronic verbosity and jargon-use, so as usual, it's a case of searching for the pearls in amongst the rubbish.

Firstly, in reflecting on the purpose of Easter and existence as a whole, I'm filled with a humility that comes with the amazing realisation that the I AM created me and gave me a smaller 'I am' that I.....well...am (!)
(Does that make sense? In other words, He gave me everything I have, including my very self that I call me)
What makes me absolutely amazed is that even though that same 'I' rebelled and was twisted almost beyond recognition of what it was supposed to be- scandalous, preposterous grace, love and desire to know us drove the I AM to a horrific death to deal with my own rebellion.
He was scorned by the ones that He came to save, so that the 'I am',that deserved nothing less than death, could be suffixed with 'His' forever. I am His.

It seems ridiculous that anyone would go to those lengths to be in relationship with me, let alone Him.
Faced with the hugeness and holiness of God, the crushing realisation of how far I fall short nearly makes me to miss the fact that the point of the whole plan was not condemnation, but the gift of knowing Him.
Despite my navel gazing, He gently lifts my eyes from my own shortcomings upwards to His sufficiency in victory.
We were never going to make it on our own, and relationship with Him means acknowledging our helplessness on our own, and falling into His open arms.

Like a stumbling toddler being caught by a father, we can then be taught how to stand straight and walk, run and dance in the new life He came to give us.

'How refreshing to know you don't need me, how amazing to know that you want me.'
Casting crowns, you speak the truth.

I also love this line from a song we sung this morning:
'See God's salvation plan, wrought in love, borne in pain, paid in sacrifice'

I think the challenge is living in the full belief, knowledge and conviction that it both has significance to our lives now, and that the sacrifice was big enough to cover everything that makes us fall short.

It makes me so sad seeing some Christians (often the one in the mirror) not living as if this amazing gift makes any difference, and/or racked with guilt to the point of incapacitation.

I resolve to constantly remind myself;
He did not knock on the door, only for you to open it and then make Him sit on the front step.
He has major renovation to be getting on with......regardless of me saying that I want to be a little quaint, comfortable cottage.
I may let Him into the downstairs loo to fix a leak, sort out some damp and cover up some cracks on the walls, because it makes the cottage nicer to be in.
But it hurts when He starts knocking through walls, pulling out the wiring and doing it again, putting up towers and courtyards and extra floors....because it's so far away from what I expected or even wanted.
Then I see that the purpose of all the work is not to make the cottage comfortable for me, but to create a grand palace that is fit for the King that is coming to live in it.

I love that analogy...kudos for CS Lewis for nicking it from Chesterton.


I must end because I could go on and on.
Just some things to leave you with:
There have been a few other songs that have captivated and impacted me at this time, and I considered typing out the lyrics, but I think links to go and listen to them yourselves is a better idea.


Theif- Third Day
Why- Nichole Nordeman
King of Love- Delirious?
Message of the Cross- Delirious?


I'll finish with one line from King of Love.
It sums up the response I want to have to all that I have been impacted by today.

We will take up the cross and follow you
Now we live for the glory of God


Easter love, hope you've had a great weekend and enjoying the holidays.
Ciao amigos.

PS...stuff on Timothy coming next time...it's typed, but still some things I want to think and pray about first, which links in with the whole 'what loving people actually looks like' thing...I'm thinking a lot lately about the balance between love, tolerance and boldness and the way our attempts of love may be perceived wrongly. should be good.

Brace!........the ramble is in full flow

Yo yo yo...
Right, sophomore blog post...now that I've come to the realisation that people are actually going to READ this, part of me comes with a tendency to go off on one and ramble and try and make unfunny jokes and vaguely witty comments.
I shall do my best to avoid that and focus on my audience of one.

So, revision is getting off the ground at 'the pace of an arthritic slug', but is starting all the same and days are longer and less wasteful. Result!

A great time at Borderlands regional celebration this evening....good talk....love and the church being the hope of the world, some ace stuff that has been buzzing excitedly about the grey matter about a stones and dwellings and other such things....but that's for another time!

I said last time that I may delve into the Creationism/Evolution thing.
So, I realise that I've come a way down this track to be able to reach a certain intellectual point, but I think all that knowledge has served to augment what can be reached with or without knowing the structures of amino acids and DNA and genetics etc.
Simply put, I don't think that it's academic suicide to say that it doesn't matter as much as some people are making it out to.

With a little help from Conor Cunningham's ideas put forward in 'Did Darwin kill God?', I'll try and explain why.

As I see it, it's only the extremists on both sides that have created and subsequently aggravated this argument and apparent gulf between science and God.
The extremists on one side are the fundamental Christians who, perhaps misguidedly, interpret everything the bible says to not only be truth, but exact, literal fact from cover to cover....hence the argument for creationism and the proposition that the universe is, give or take, 6000 years old.
The extremists for 'Science' are the ones that not only say that the world is a lot older than this and that life developed naturally, but take Darwinism and apply it to everything, ie saying that all ideas and impulses that we experience are like the genes by which evolution is proposed to have worked- by survival of the fittest- as each gene 'selfishly' tries to survive, so the ideas and impulses (or 'memes') survive selfishly too.
This suggests that everything that we know and are could be truth or fiction, as long as the meme can perpetuate itself, meaning that everything is subjective, rendering everything (including religion and its ideas about our existence) a fabrication, necessitating atheism.

They appear at complete loggerheads, and at face-value the battle between them seems valid.

We must notice the flaws in both of these approaches.

Firstly, these Christians. Until the time of philosophers and apologists like William Paley in the 1700s, there was no mainstream concept of a literal understanding of Genesis. The church fathers acknowledged God as the creator, but not the exact mechanism by which He did it. They found it more important in the why and who, not how.
Indeed, Augustine warned of a literal understanding of Genesis.
This way of thinking also reveals a strange method of reading the Bible.
If we assume that Genesis 1 is literally true, whether days as our days, or days as a long period of time, it is clear that
'the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind' before the man was created.

But in Genesis 2, 'every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew', the man was created from dust- before the plants!
If we are taking Genesis as a pure history book, then there is a contradiction in the first two chapters, and it is a logical conclusion to throw it out as worthless, as many do, sadly.
In any case, I find it strange that people still attempt to reconcile (by ignoring) the contradiction and piece together the exact timing and age of the earth using nothing but the Bible.
But as I read the Bible as a whole, I find there are often seeming contradictions that highlight something that should be considered more deeply, and beyond their face value is a wealth of truth and I think the same applies here.
Dig deeper....I don't think we have to believe that Adam shared the garden of Eden with T-Rex.

Secondly, the ultra-Darwinists...taking the evolution thing to maxed out levels and saying that it ultimately leads to atheism. Using the memes philosophy, they say that there is no absolute truth, and the ideas in religion about God etc are just stories being perpetuated by people passing them on. But they shoot themselves in the foot by saying that the Memes philosophy is the truth. The memes thing could also be just be a lie.....on its own definition, it's no more likely to be true, real or good than religion or existence itself.
I'm an 18 year old trying to pass the first year of a science degree, I'm not a philosopher, but even I can see that that's ridiculous, and as a theory, it self-negates.

So, we end up at a point where evolution as a process does not take away from biblical truth, but at the same time, science is to do with facts in the known realm. It isn't its place to make a claim on any other domain.(And clearly, when it attempts to branch out into another area by itself, namely philosophy, its ideas are self-negating and go against its own self-governing philosophy of objectivity)
I don't think it's an irrational or heretical step to suggest that God, in His wisdom, could use evolution as His mechanism of creation? The Bible wants to show us that the why- the getting to the point of man being able to have relationship with Him (the who) is more important than the how. I don't think it takes away from our intricacy or the intimacy He is desiring.
Maybe these two things that seem to be at war are two ways of saying the same thing?

Also, it's also important to remember that science grows. Evolution, of course, is a theory. Theories can be disproved, but in this case, I think it is more likely that it will be shown that it isn't the be all and end all.
When Newton had his apple moment, within his lifetime they thought they'd more or less got physics pinned down. Then Einstein and relativity happened and now the physicists are looking for a theory that unifies both. The picture is much bigger than ever seemed possible.
The same may be true of evolution. I'm not trying to make excuses for it, or plugging the gaps with my God-thing, it just seems more scientific to not pin everything on one theory and not give it room to be bigger. Because there are some things that seem irreducibly complex that evolution as we know it just can't seem to account for.
Whether science does or doesn't find a natural mechanism that explains the development of some crazy biochemical systems that I shan't bore you with, I'll highlight again, I'm not using God as a gap-filler.
I believe He is running the whole show, and regardless of where science ends up, it's not its place to attempt to refute that He's not.

In conclusion, I think it's possible to read the Bible, believe it to be God-breathed truth, and be in relationship with Him AND be comfortable in lectures about evolution, because the former is far more important, the second is neither as clashing nor important as it seems.

In my mind, there is no doubt that He is powerful enough to have created the universe as literally described in either of those chapters in Genesis. I just don't think it's imperative to believe that He did. I think that the idea that my faith and the things I learn in my lectures oppose each other is a misconception.

The most critical thing is that here and now we need Him, no matter how we got here.
There has been too much unnecessary fighting over this.
And whilst some on both sides of the fence may disagree, I would much rather have good discussion about how these arguments are poorly constructed than attempts to provoke and fight because of a commitment to one of the 'camps'.

I hope that people won't take this post to be an attempt at preachiness, because it's not meant to be. It's just an explanation of how I got to where I am on this thing that seems to be bothering a lot of people lately. I'd hope that maybe someone will read this, see as I did that it's not one or the other, and that that would promote more thinking.


Just keep remembering the bigger picture and live deeply.

Drawing it all together, I find that the bigger picture itself is a beautiful paradox...zooming our perspective out, apparent complexities lead back to simple truth and revelations of the bigger picture, both in this case, and life in general.
Stereophonics said that 'you gotta go there to come back'
Perhaps they weren't far off.


Finally, apologies that I didn't get onto the whole 'what love looks like' thing. (that will be a short, easy post, eh?)
I've been reading some top stuff in Timothy too that I wanted to get to, but am shattered now, we'll get to that next time.

Bedtime.
Peace out and big love, peoples.

Inaugural Post

Hurrah. It's back. After a couple of years, it's finally that time to get all those thoughts into writing.
I'm putting it out there because I'm hopeful that someone will be able to sift through the rubbish and find some sort of encouragement or help, and to be able to do the same back.
Those familiar to the way I write will be aware that this isn't going to be a daily diary of every minutiae that goes on in my life, rather the bigger things going on in my head will hold the floor, and a bit of update will go on too.

It's difficult to do a first post after not blogging for so long, because there's a tendency to try and condense all of the past few years into one post.
That's not going to help anyone, and isn't the reason why I'm doing this.
I'm more interested in now.
So, where am I at?

A Christian figuring out what it means to be salt and light, loving neighbours as myself, and loving God with everything I am. By no means do I come close to managing this even half the time, but the grace is good and I'm learning, and have some top people around me that keep me grounded.

A first year student living in Birmingham studying Biochemistry.
It's hard, but I love it, and have some top people there too, and incidentally, contrary to popular assumption, it's served to bolster rather than sway my faith. But we'll get to that another time. Probably next post. We'll see.

Single.
I said that I wouldn't go into the past.
Where I'm at now is content with being able to throw myself into as many different things as possible, serving at church, being there properly for as many people that need me as possible, and attempting to nurture this drumming thing that has got hold of me. That means that single is good for me right now to be able to do all this stuff. (No scoffing, Russ)
I have no doubt that I'll reach the season where I focus on a romantic relationship for long term, but it's not now. And it's not time for her either, whoever she is.


Anyway. There are a few things going on in this all-too-active mind of mine, and it feels far more constructive to put them into words.
Constructive is a good place to start.
I'm at home in that horrible place of "This-is-technically-a-holiday-but-I-need-to-revise-or-I'll-fail-my-first-year".
I have a printer-box full of books and notes to revise from, and yet I can't get round to doing any. Every tiny thing is a distraction, and four days have gone with very little done in terms of work.
When I have got to something useful, ie reading the word, I've been reading around the back end of Ephesians because the armour stuff in Chap. 6 has never applied more, but before that I rather uncannily found this in Chap. 5 (from The Message):

"Don't waste your time on useless work, mere busywork, the barren pursuits of darkness [..] So watch your step. Use your head. Make the most of every chance you get. These are desperate times! Don't live carelessly, unthinkingly. Make sure you understand what He wants."

I'm reminded of an old DcTalk track that said 'All the money in the world could never stop the hands of time, and a wasted day in your life is more than a crime'.

What I'm not getting at is that my uni work is useless, that's ridiculous, I'm talking more about the way I take life so much for granted that an entire day can go by without doing much at all that points to Him, or shows love or positivity to anyone, and time just disappears doing not much at all.


So right now, I'm figuring out that being studious and doing the necessary work is something that I can do to glorify Him, that's some good stuff, but to be doing constructive stuff in the spaces I'm not doing the work as well...building people up, telling them that they are important and loved, getting stuck into the word and prayer, making the most of every chance that I get. It's so cliche, but I know that's what 'He wants' as the verse says.
Just a case of figuring out what's the good, careful stuff is, and what's the bad, wasteful, unthinking stuff. I guess the bit from Phillipians about being able to glorify Him for actions is a good place to start....anyway it's clear that the heart of Christianity is not merely in the things people deem to be religious, but in the small things, the menial things, the everyday things, where we are most of the time...where is our heart at in them?
Lest I be guilty of a crime, or worse, as the song says.

Song.
Heh.
A nice way to segue into my next vein of thought.
Since the night that Tim and I played a song with Al at the acoustic night, my admiration for John Mayer has been growing.
We played 'Slow Dancing in a burning room' that night, and I got some of his stuff so that I could practice. My first impressions were that this guy could really make the guitar sing...reminiscent of a young Clapton or BB King...the sort of thing my Dad absolutely loves.
Since then he's really grown on me. His earlier acoustic-pop stuff is infectious, his latest album, Continuum, is a masterpiece, and 'Try!', his power blues rock live album even more so.
The audio for the live concert 'Where the light is' brings all three of these things together and lately I can't listen to much else (mostly Stevie Ray Vaughan, I'm loving the blues at the moment!).

Whilst listening, I was amazed at quite how good it is, but also was struck by something he said in it. In the breakdown during a cover of Hendrix's 'Bold as Love', I was interested by what he said.
He talks about how he's tried every approach to living....buying a bunch of stuff and thinking 'nah I don't like that'...shutting himself away to try become mad to make genius appear....pacing himself well, seeing a load of cool stuff at 30, making "a lot of stuff happen for myself" which he emphasizes to show he tried to synthesize love and soothing, which you can't do, and he arrives at the conclusion that the "one thing that I gotta check out, before checking out" is to "love- give and feel love for my living, not roman-candle, hot-pink Hollywood love, but 'I got your back' kinda love".
He makes the admission that it sounds corny, as I regularly do, but things in life that seem cliche are often the best lessons that we can learn, and their familiarity has bred a bit of contempt, methinks.
Anyhoo, I was struck by his admirable sentiment, and agree wholeheartedly, however....it's like he's got to this point of realising that real, gritty love is where it's at, but not really knowing why. I look at 'Something's Missing' and see him struggling with the same thing---so, so much in his life, but stuck as to what happens next. (friends check money check well slept check opposite sex check guitar check microphone check messages waiting for me when I come home.....but something's missing, and I don't know how to fix it)

Often people look at me blankly when I say that lyrics are probably my favourite part of a song. With Mr. Mayer, I can't say that wholeheartedly all the time because he's so freaking amazing on the guitar, but these lyrics highlight something very important- a case and point for my lyrics obsession.

It's very easy for me to say that materialism is a bad thing. I have my opinions, and I have quite a lot of 'stuff' that doesn't begin to satisfy, but this, from a very successful and talented chap in the world's eyes, carries more weight.
A lot of people have come to the conclusion that love is a good thing. Look at the hippies. Love and peace man.
But if it's merely being nice and 'getting the backs' of other people 'til death, and nothing thereafter, then it makes absolutely no odds how we live. This is taken to a logical, if extreme, end by The Joker in Batman, who sees the world, doesn't care, feels no love and creates chaos because he can.

I don't think everyone is in that place, I reckon most are closer and indeed yearning (more than they would dare to admit) for a bigger purpose... a reason and source for all this love that our philosophies end up at.

And before we get too near to preachiness, I'll end on that note.

In conclusion, John Mayer is a great musician with good things to say, and where I'm at is loving and having an awareness as to why.

Rad.

In next issue we may venture into Evolution and Creationism (one of my favourite things is to watch people when I'm talking about it....some scientists and some Christians seem baffled..) because that's a big but happy thing in my head right now.
So yeah, might get stuck into that.
And also more of this love-stuff....the way it actually looks beyond an overused phrase and mistletoe.

Peace out, my peoples- love you all. Really, I do.


p.s I'll try and post what I'm listening to in posts, but hardly need to this time.