... i am a tool

i forget important stuff all the time and have a brain filled with the stupidest trivia ever. the Bible says that if your eye offends you, pluck it out; if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off; i sometimes think i need a lobotomy.

dorfl the golem, in terry pratchett's novel feet of clay, says, "either all days are holy or none are". i think of paul every day, with every abba song, with every doug anothony all-stars moment, with every chorus of the time warp, with every thought about going to the gym or playing squash.

so (belated) virtual hugs from me too, if you would like some.

... in the morning

i've been really tired. why that is, i'm not sure - i don't think i'm doing any more or less than i ever have before, and at 31 years of age i hate to start playing the "i'm not as young as i used to be" card. i'm up early, i plan for a snooze. i don't go to bed much later than i ever have before, but this week, i'm doing something i haven't done in a long time - i'm planning to be in bed by 9:30 each night. (except tuesaday night and thursday night - i have commitments with Bible study those nights!)

so i went to bed about 7:30 last night, and at about 8:30 (i think) my mother called with my health fund information for me to be able to do my income tax return. when i answered my mobile, i was shaking so hard it was almost like i was having an epileptic fit! i thought, "wow! it's really cold..." my housemate alex thinks i was in the grip of a fever.

i don't think i've ever had a fever before, not like this. i've never shaken so hard before from shivering, and while i don't mind shivering (it can feel good if you're in the wrong frame of mind, i guess...), this was rather more... energetic than i've ever felt before. not something i'm terribly keen to experience again.

it has made me think, though, that perhaps i treat my body with a little more contempt than it deserves. i've never had a terribly high self-image, for a combination of a bucketload of reasons, and one way of dealing with this has been to hold my flesh pretty much in contempt. i know that come the resurrection i'll get a new body, one that's perfect, one that won't be subject to the whimsy and decay of the sinful nature this side of glory. knowing that means that (in my sinful way) i think less of my body than i should.

i have a book by josh mcdowell called his image my image, which i grabbed in a moment of introspection some time back. i think, now that i have some time factored into my daily travel schedule for directed reading (as opposed to entirely recreational reading), i'll pick it up again and have a read. maybe walk up to where i get the bus to the city from, instead of getting another bus to that one. start taking a bit better care of myself.

crikey... it almost sounds like i'm beginning to be concerned about my health.

... harvesting

i was reading my Bible this morning, trying to ingrain a (good) habit of making the train ride from the city to work my Bible-reading time, and hit upon the passage in matthew about the workers harvesting in the vineyard. the boss of the vineyard hires some guys at 6am and comes to a workplace enterprise agreement (is that what they're called?) with them for a denarius for the day's work. he gets some more guys around 9am, then noon, then 3pm, then finally at 5pm! all done, he starts paying them from the most recently-hired (the 5pm guys) and gives them a denarius, and when he gets back to the 6am-starters they get only a denarius too. disappointment all round for those guys, who seemed to be expecting raises.

the point of the passage is that the pay is up to the master of the vineyard, not the workers. it would have been understandable that jews who kept the torah should be upset that Jesus starts saying people need to repent and get right with God and thus be on even footing with "the righteous". imagine how they'd have felt knowing that serial killers and rapists and murderers - gentiles, the lot of them! - would be getting into heaven too!

it reiterates to me just how little i see the world from God's point of view and persist in using my own frame of reference. idiot that i am.

... journalling

to whom it may concern ;)

i'm not going to post my journal until 22 july, owing to the delay in receipt of it at the last exchange. hopefully, it also allows time to return home, or send me an appropriate address to send it to.

cheers :)

... spicks and specks

please
please
please

if anyone i know ever hears me do what adam richard just did on spicks and specks (abc television, wednesday nights at 8.30), please shoot me.