... bungee idolatry

when i'm coming home at night i typically cross the street at the top of my street, turn into my street, walk past the two driveways before my own, then up my drive and footpath to my front door. before i get to the first driveway, i'm usually distracted by something shiny on the ground.

it's an old piece of tar or chewing gum or something similar, something that has been stuck to the footpath for some time, worn flat with the passage of time and pedestrians. it has a dull sheen to it which, glinting in the light from the shops behind me, makes it look like a dollar coin.

i know it's not a dollar coin. i know a dollar coin is hardly worth bending down to pick up (but a dollar's a dollar and enough of them makes you a millionaire, i suppose). i know it's just something stuck to the ground. but i check it anyway, because in my heart of hearts i hope it's a dollar.

and here's the awful truth people: i want something for nothing. i want free comfort. i want contentment without investment. i want things my way and i want them that way now and i don't want to have to wait.

now here's the amazing truth: i know that i'm wrong. it's a crock, a big crock of kobold droppings. because there is no comfort, there is no contentment - i can't have things my way and it's probably for the best.

idolatry is where people put something in the place of God in their lives. it's the thing that keeps you going, that makes you say when the rest of the world is crashing down around you, "well, at least i have that". here's a few:
* "i still have my health"
* "another $10,000 a year would be fine"
* "once the house is paid off it'll get better"
* "i've worked all year and i deserve a break"
* "it's wafer thin, monsieur!"

most of them don't sound so bad, i think, and in and of themselves i think some of them are just fine. some of them are actually good. (despite my low esteem of my own body, i think it's important to make some effort towards being healthy!) still, none of them are the best thing to have uppermost in our mind.

God is who we should have uppermost in our mind. consider:
* "so, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." [1 cor 10:31, esv]
* "and he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God..." [acts 17:26,27, esv]
* "the Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom i take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold." [ps 18:2, esv]
* "when i look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?" [ps 8:3,4, esv]
* "i say to the Lord, 'you are my Lord; i have no good apart from you.'" [ps 16:2, esv]
* "so i became great and surpassed all who were before me in jerusalem. also my wisdom remained with me. and whatever my eyes desired i did not keep from them. i kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil. then i considered all that my hands had done and the toil i had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun." [eccl 2:9-11, esv]

worshipping God is what we are made for; it is its own blessing; all else is a chasing after the wind...

i was thinking this evening that repentance is much easier on the knees than on the heart, because bruises on the knees fade, but scars on the heart cut much deeper. we pray to God in repentance, asking his forgiveness for our inability to put him first in our minds, and thirty seconds later we're thinking while we're praying about which movie we're going to see tonight, or the aftershave of the man behind you that's slapping you about the nose, or the book in your bag you'd rather be reading than your Bible... and if we catch ourselves, we repent again and get back to the job at hand.

for me, i desire to live simply, to have a wife and family. i don't think we need to own a house and i don't think we need to have high-powered, high-paying careers. they might make some things in life easier or give us a greater feeling of security and they might enable us to give more to ministry work or missionary work. in and of themselves, they are good things. a friend of mine, though, has a saying: good is the enemy of best.

my idols are good, but God is best. i keep forgetting that, and i hope that i will continue to have people around me and God's Spirit within me to remind me of that.

... what to say?

i've been a Christian now for about... oh, i'm practically coming up to my sixteenth rebirthday, about sixteen years now. i don't think i was a Christian before that, and if i had lost my life beforehand i imagine that i would have died "in the flower of my sins" (as the bard has it) and gone to hell.

some people i know would contest that; holding to a calvinist understanding of predestination as i do, it's somewhat of a contradiction in terms that i believe dying before my conversion would have ended with me in hell - surely if you're predestined to be converted you wouldn't possibly go to hell? i suppose my reasoning is that my predestination at that point wasn't to convert in time, but rather predestined for the judgement of God rather than for his efficacious salvation. now that i am converted from living death to eternal life, i know my place in heaven is assured; next question, please.

but what do i say to someone who doesn't think that? the text we looked at last thursday at Bible study (not last night, but thursday night last week) was on paul's second missionary journey and the events particularly in phillipi. the disciples meet lydia, they heal a slave girl of a demon, and they meet the philippian jailer, who like lydia is baptised along with his household.

i don't know if the general thinking is that the slave girl was likewise converted to Christianity but i don't think the text makes it a natural extrapolation from the narrative. it would be great if she did but i don't think it's a fait accompli that she did.

concurrent to this, i have just finished reading the New Testament, which i was reading every workday morning on the train leg of my journey to work. the revelation to john pulls no punches when it talks about who will be with God in the new heaven and who will not. john elsewhere talks about those who had seemed to be Christians but who left the church and in doing so proved that they never were Christians. did they know that the whole time? had they fooled themselves into thinking they were when they actually weren't? and what kind of God would let people think that?

these are questions that might be asked by one who has been a Christian for some time and now no longer knows why he believes what it might be expected that he believes; he questions if there really is a God at all; he hangs his future actions and happiness on the answer to a question it seems he has already decided for himself.

paul says to the corinthians that "if in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied" [1 cor 15:19, esv] but until we die we have no ultimate way of knowing if our hope has been directed correctly or not! the Christian says by faith that he knows he will be in heaven; he trusts the scriptures are true; he trusts that the Holy Spirit in his heart is interceding for him when he prays; he trusts that Jesus' blood shed on the cross makes him clean before God. the Christian trusts that God has done everything for him, then lives trusting that it is so.

i say, "the Christian does such-and-such", but that is the Christian when not torn by doubt, plagued by insecurity, overwhelmed by circumstance and emotion. "the ordinary Christian" does suffer from these; some feel them more acutely than others.

does this cancel out the efficacy of that in which we have believed? by no means! rather we have moved away from God, not trusting in that which he has provided for us.

so if we will not pray, if we will not read the Bible; if we will not be persuaded by our brothers and sisters; if we will not consider our hearts from other than our own perspective; if we will not believe God, what then remains?

for me, nothing remains. my faith is literally what keeps me alive. if i do not believe, then the last sixteen years i have lived are all for nought, and i should have done what i'd planned in that bath tub so long ago. i can see no sense in the world without God, no point to this "quintessence of dust" except to eat, drink and be merry. the writer of Ecclesiastes is equally bleak about a world without God; that his words remain long after he fell away does not undermine their power, but rather proves that God's truth outlasts all things.

don't get me wrong. i'm not saying i'm perfect, or that i am the Christian who actually manages to do such-and-such. i have done more wrong after i converted than ever i did before; and yet i know that my redeemer lives - i believe God, and trust that he credits that to me as righteousness. i struggle to show my faith by my deeds.

don't we all?

(... to be continued, i think...)

... a few things

i realise with a few guilty feelings that it's been a little while since i blogged. to be honest, i haven't really felt pushed enough by my thinking on the things that have been happening in my life. Bible study last week was good, but didn't ... provoke the same push to consider things that earlier ones had. so i thought i'd put up a short (probably longer than i'm expecting here in the first paragraph, though) post about what's on my mind right now.

i'm feeling the imminence of my time in melbourne. next month i'll be down there for a couple of weeks, sussing out living and working arrangements, and hopefully having both sorted out before i move down in january next year. i've been keeping half an eye on the weather, half an ear on news... i'm looking forward to it with a growing anticipation that is beginning to reflect what so many feel to be the enormity of this "big step" of moving south. i have a league team (the storm) that i follow, and an afl team (essendon) i also follow, so my sporting interests are covered, although i'm told that the afl tribal boundaries of melbourne are beginning to dissolve, so i'm not too worried about living in st kilda territory and barracking for the bombers.

time is flying. i turn thirty-two this year, which isn't terribly amazing in and of itself, but moving has made me a bit of a calendar watcher, and i'm aware that the remaining weekends have been filling up rather quickly. i have sixteen saturdays left before i move in the second week in january; of those, i think i have activities that fill up the saturday on nine of those weekends.

i was thinking while i was sitting on the loo earlier that all buying and selling for profit is tantamount to gambling, so is insurance, and i wonder if i can perhaps grow a little respect for people who make their livings as professional gamblers.

... cut to the quick (long post)

tonight we looked at hebrews 10-12. it's a little bit dry but it's still interesting, and it's encouraging as well... much as a stiff drink in the face of an unwelcome chore or bad-tasting medicine in the face of dire illness.

hebrews is widely regarded as a letter of encouragement to Christians, especially those facing opposition from the world without and backsliding fellow-believers from within. i was unsurprised to hear (joseph, called) barnabas being put forward as a possible author for the book and adding him to the list of other suggested authors, including paul, apollos, priscilla, and aquila. in these particular chapters, i feel the encouragement is slightly stick-and-carrot and it feels that way to me because of the particular people being encouraged in this section - those thinking of giving up on their faith.

in chapter ten the writer to the hebrews sets forth a strong argument supporting the new covenant in Jesus over the old covenant of law - he demonstrates Christ's superiority to the angels who delivered the law; Christ's deity; his sonship; his high-priesthood; his sacrifice being of immeasurably greater efficacy than the sacrifices offered by priests in accordance with the law. in every way, Jesus is presented as being in one man everything the law should have been and could not be. in chapter eleven he gives the "roll-call of faith", people in israel's history who looked forward to the salvation that God would put forth in Christ. in chapter twelve the writer deals with the hardships that the hebrews have already dealt with, those that may be to come, and why they should persevere in the face of such experiences.

i think what makes this passage a bitter pill to swallow is that it's not just as easy as holding up under persecution. if society rounds up all the Christians and says, "right, you lot - it's time for you to go to the wall - recant or die", history seems to show that lots of Christians tend to find enough faith to say something like, "for eighty-six years i have been his servant and he has done me no wrong. how can I blaspheme against my king and saviour?" (polycarp at his martyrdom, smyrna, a.d.155)

what i think could be harder to deal with is when family, when friends, when even oneself is faced with the possiblity is recanting one's faith in Christ. i am always torn because i know in my heart that the gospel is real and true. i always have, ever since i was a small child at sunday school or in scripture classes at school. i never once thought that the Bible was full of lies - although to be perfectly honest, there have been times when i have wished it was. i have more than a few times wished that i could be free to live like everyone else, uncaring of a life after this one, unworried of how the way i live my life now might impact the health and welfare of my soul after i die. in so many ways life would be so much easier!

the temptation to give up my faith is always there, as paul says, "so i find it to be a law that when i want to do right, evil lies close at hand." [romans 7:21, esv] however, i consider it a great blessing from God that i find that temptation too obvious, too easy, too false to even pursue the thought very far. i sin - heaven knows, i sin - but when i sin i pray to God for forgiveness, for strength to resist the temptation to sin again, and for faith to no longer dwell on past sins but focus instead on future opportunities to serve him.

but that is me. when i see people falling away, what can i say? what can i do? i can encourage them, "read your Bible! pray!" i can do the same. i can "be there" for them, spend time with them, hang out with them, pray for them, do my best not to be a burden to them, give them their space to work things out. what kills me is that i can't make them change their minds, and i can't know if God will or not. it's not that i don't know if he will or not - God will, or not, according to his will, and his day-to-day will is not something he advertises on billboards. his eternal will - that all people should hear the gospel and believe - has been sent out all over the world. no surprises there. how that is effected throughout the world? loads of surprises there.

i get thoroughly disheartened when i hear that someone has turned away from being a Christian, or has "fallen away". i think so little of myself and my mean little belief that when i discover someone else has let go of Christianity, i am rocked that someone might have less faith than me or that maybe i am wrong. "if in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied." [1 corinthians 15:19, esv]

such a feeling lasts only a little while, because God soon reminds me that my faith (small) has a great object (God, eternal, infinite) which gives my faith an eternal and infinite impact. God isn't about, oh, that's your last chance, no more opportunities, you've really blown it this time! God is all about redemption, saving us from our sins, saving us from ourselves - saving us for himself. those people who have turned away from God can turn back. every breath they take is an opportunity to turn back to the one who paid for their lives with the blood of his very own son. (would you let your child go to the electric chair instead of jeffrey dalmer? would you put your baby in front of the car that hoon is driving down the street if it meant that that hoon would then be able to go to heaven, pimped-up ride and everything? - God did!)

so i pray for all those who have doubts, who are falling away. i hope they can feel that they're falling, that they become worried about it, that they seek help. i hope that when i feel like that, people will do the same for me. our God is a consuming fire, so he deserves reverence and respect - we shouldn't take him for granted, even if he does promise rest from this weary life. if you're falling away, don't give in. fight tooth and nail. if you once believed in the gospel, ask what has changed for you to stop believing in it - i guarantee the only thing that hasn't changed is the gospel. and it is no less trustworthy now than it was when you first believed - perhaps you've just become less trusting?

once you were sitting on balloons in a room full of pins, moving from one seat to the next, never quite knowing when you could relax. one day you sat on a milk-crate, and for the longest time you didn't have to worry about your seat disappearing from underneath you. all anyone in that room wants - at the end of the day, in one way or another - is rest, rest from work, from worry about the future, from trying to provide for every possibility. so now that you have that rest, why trade your seat for another balloon?

... rain

it's late and it's raining. not very hard, at the moment, but the rhythm of the rain against the eaves, the windows, the path next door... it contrives to promise downpours and storms without any evidence to back the promise up.

i've been missing the rain. i like the rain. winter this year hasn't felt terribly wet, or at least it hasn't felt so to me. one of my favourite nights was about twelve and a half years ago. i was living in north wollongong, sharing a flat with a friend from school, and a quite heavy rainstorm hit about seven or eight o'clock one saturday night. tim was out somewhere and i had been at the computer trying hard to conquer dune in westwood's game "dune 2", a fantastic precursor to the revolutionary command & conquer. i smelled the rain coming before the storm broke, keeping one eye on the screen and one on the window in case i had to turn the computer off in anticipation of an electrical storm that might cause a blackout.

once it started raining there came no indication that it might ever stop. it felt primordial, ancient, as if every droplet of rain was a tyrannosaurus compared to a front-garden skink. i stood on the verandah for a few minutes, breatheing in the coppery air. it was invigorating.

i took off my watch and glasses, shoes and socks, put on beach sandals, put the house key in my pocket and wandered out the door. i went walking in the rain for an hour or two, i don't quite recall how long for. it felt very liberating to be ambling along in the rain, taking all the time in the world, while everyone else that i passed seemed to be very keen to get in out of the rain.

we seem so strange to everyone else, i think, wandering around in the rain when everyone else just wants to get out of it. while i'm wandering in rain, i'm rarely worrying that i'm in the rain. it can't rain all the time and a time is coming (and is not far off) when it won't rain - some of us will be enjoying a city without sun or stars and a river running through it.

thunder's coming.

... grace

i'm typing this in editpad lite because typing it into the blogger page using opera can have some nasty typo side effects if you're not careful about what you're doing. i like using opera for its keyboard shortcuts and handy mouse-gesture shortcuts, but occasionally it bites if you scotch a bunch of stuff you just spent five minutes typing for what should have been a really quick post.

i was going to put up a follow-up post to my one on acts 15 but my opinions on the passage have not changed and i remain convinced that the application regarding table-fellowship is a natural outworking of the passage but not the main thrust of the passage itself.

i am going to say a few words about grace. ironic perhaps, given the vehemence of my previous paragraph, but heartfelt nonetheless.

i love that God loves me, that he sent Jesus to be punished for my rebellion against God and my inability to live up to God's righteous requirements for entry into his heavenly kingdom. i love that there's nothing anyone, not even i myself, can do to separate me from that love that God has shown in his work of salvation in Christ. i love that when i pray, my weak and distracted thoughts and words are transformed by the Holy Spirit's power and intercession into prayer that glorifies God and shows my life in submission to his will. i love that everything that makes me Christian is entirely an act of God and none of mine. it's very comforting.

relient k, in their song be my escape says, "the beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair", and that's the truth because what we mere humans forget is that the definition of fair is not ours - it's God's. we say, "that's not fair!", because we feel it's not fair to us. it's like a dog barking to its owner that it's not fair that it's getting meaty-bites again!. it's not up to the dog what it eats - that's up to its master. we don't like to think of God being our master because to us, to our teensy-weensy pea-sized brains, it's not fair. do small children always know what's good for them? how do they learn? what's the best way? in the face of eternity, surely it's hubris to think that we know better than God what's good for us.

the thing i love most about the grace of God afforded those who after receiving it call themselves Christians is this: all you have to do is repent and believe the gospel. that's it. admit that you don't do things God's way, accept that Jesus' death is punishment for your sins laid on the one God chose to punish, trust that Jesus' resurrection is the preview of your own resurrection, and welcome the Holy Spirit into your heart and be changed by him.

that's it. you don't have to follow rules to become a Christian. you don't have to make some huge sacrifice. you don't have to sell your house. you don't have to quit smoking. you don't have to quit drugs. you don't have to leave your boyfriend and go back to your wife and family. you don't have to do any of these things to become a Christian. the offer is made to anyone with ears to hear and mouth to say "yes".

what you do after you become a Christian will reflect your understanding of what God has done and what he says his ideals are for your life. sometimes that means change, sometimes not. sometimes what you didn't have to change when you first became a Christian will become something that has to change as you mature in your faith. that happens in any relationship - some things you do with friends are only appropriate after years of friendship, some things you outgrow.

all the things i do that are wrong; all the things that are right that i don't do; all these things i repent of, now and for as often as you require of me, o God. search me, o God, and know my heart, test me and find all my evil, then lead me in ways that will be everlasting and i'll serve you, my God.

... an interesting study (long post)

tonight we looked at acts 15:1-35. on the face of it, i suppose, that might not seem terribly exciting stuff - a disagreement on what does or doesn't make someone a Christian, an example of how the early church worked through the issue, and how the two disagreeing parties were to be reconciled afterwards. (in fact, just typing that brings a fresh light to my thinking on this as well - evolution in opinion on reflection! stay tuned...)

in brief, luke records that men had come down from judea to (syrian) antioch teaching that unless believers were circumcised according to the law of moses they could not be saved; that this led to much debate in the blended church in antioch and that a delegation, led by barnabas and paul, should go to jerusalem to discuss the matter; that the aopstles and elders met over the matter of mosaic lawkeeping for the new gentile Christians; that peter recounts God's work in the matter of cornelius, and paul and barnabas tell about the signs and wonders done among the gentile believers; that james refers to scripture (amos 9) regarding the inclusion of gentiles into israel; that the jerusalem council sends a letter advising the believers in antioch on the matter, and which is a joyful encouragement and strength for those who received it.

in our study, one question (after addressing verses 1-5 and 6-12) turned a simple reflection on decision-making into a lively debate on the deeper issue of the passage: "the issue appears to be the acceptance of gentiles. in fact the issue is far deeper. the very nature of what it means to be a Christian is under dispute". do you agree with this statement? the discussion came to a point after verses 13-21 through another question: what does james suggest as being the appropriate course of action? why?

on the surface, the judgement is rendered in verses 19-21:

"Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood. For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he is read every Sabbath in the synagogues." [acts 15:19-21, esv]

"It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood. For Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath." [acts 15:19-21, niv]

does this mean that gentile Christians are saved by grace and not required to obey the jewish law... except for these four rules? if four, why not three? or five? why not one, or even eight hundred-odd? peter says that the yoke of lawkeeping was too much for the jewish fathers to bear, so why lay it on the gentiles? and if this is so, does this then mean the council was deciding how light a yoke was kosher, so to speak?

why then these rules? the line taken by many in our study (and, it seems, many commentaries) is that these rules are about table fellowship - allowing the gentile Christians and jewish Christians sufficient common ground to be able to eat together without offending one another. jewish law was pretty strict about what was and wasn't okay to eat and gentiles might very well have eaten anything they pleased, provided it wasn't sacred to whatever god they happened to worship i suppose.

why then is that not spelled out in the letter that luke quotes for us in verses 23-29? (from... to... since... therefore... so, four rules... cheers!) why is there no exhortation to peace within the church in antioch? and i can't really see paul sitting comfortably for this: is this a get-out-of-getting-over-kosher-food free card from the jerusalem council for jewish Christians? when he writes to the romans about causing brothers to stumble, is paul talking about people eating food of questionable provenance (food sacrificed to idols) or of questionable ritual cleanness (not unclean according to moses)?

i do not see a question of table fellowship here at all, except in the working out of the liberty i see gentiles being afforded here. the rules they are given seem to me to have more to do with the way of life that many pagans would have had in the first century. temple prostitution and eating meat sacrificed in pagan temples were common practice; these rules would have set that way of life firmly in the "former way of life" category. paul's letter to the galatians is a clear exploration of exactly these issues: liberty from law permitting love that leads to peace.

what i see james saying here is to turn away from their old way of life (meat, blood, sexual immorality - temple cult) and not to worry about chasing after the jewish way of life (moses has been preached...). their old way of life was an empty worship of idols, and the jewish way of life was based not on grace but on works that were impossible to live up to. if this new liberty is to be taken seriously then table fellowship will be the natural consequence: jewish Christians will be freed from the food laws required in the law of moses; gentile Christians, saved by God's grace apart from law, will be gracious to those coming out from under it.

by returning at every point to the first principles of salvation - grace apart from works for jew and gentile alike - and the golden rule for a relationship with God - love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength - and with others - love your neighbour as yourself - surely a peaceful table must be the natural outworking! the council's words, "if you keep yourselves from these you will do well" ("these" being strangled and sacrificed meat, blood, sexual immorality) are very nearly the understatement of the first century!

i can see how a "table fellowship" understanding is borne from this passage now but i'm not convinced that was its primary purpose. the question prompting paul and barnabas' journey to jerusalem - did gentile Christians need to be circumcised to enjoy salvation? - was not a table fellowship question, but an earnest search to understand the nature of God's offer of salvation to the gentiles.

i'm still turning this over in my mind, but would love feedback, comment and discussion!

... not one... but two!

two aussie movies!

lately it's been my dvd viewing that's been rather adventurous, hardly renting a film i've already seen. tonight i went to go see two new aussie movies - kenny and 2:37.

both fantastic, and more about each later, perhaps. for now, my gut reactions:

kenny was great; light-hearted and warm, it is without a doubt the next castle. the lead actor brings such a genuine warmth to the role, and eve von bibra (formerly of the chantoozies and a supporting role in the big steal) is a great surprise and i hope to see her in other movies. the story is great, and the toilet convention in nashville is awesome. amazingly light.

2:37, in stark contrast, was incredibly dark. the soundtrack, the washed-out, late summer colours, both perfectly reflect the harsh realities of the students' lives as depicted in this film. american high-school filmic reflections have a lot to learn from this australian outing, which has echoes of pump up the volume and the kind of bold approach to its material that we don't see in enough films these days. every parent in australia should see this film and promptly make an oath to spend another two hours a day hanging out with their kids - every day.

go see them both. kenny is rated M (mainly for swearing, i think); 2:37 is rated R and deservedly - strong themes and graphic visuals.

... (not quite) fully si(c)k

i hate being sick. i like to eat, but i really hate being sick.

i'm so utterly uninterested in being sick, it's probably impossible to plumb the depths of my dissatisfaction with the state of being sick. if a book was written to explain how little interest i have in being sick, it would be the literal neverending story.

my despite of being sick is probably bad enough, but when i theorise about the specifics of my sickness, diagnosing the symptoms, speculating on the internals of how my sickness is presenting... and then hear my doctor say the same things... well, i get a little bit despondant.

i thought, "well, there's no petichiae(?) that i can see, so it's probably not bubonic plague..."

boil going bad? pilenital sinus? ingrowing hair? infected sweat gland? something serious to do with a lymph node? (that last one would actually give me the heebie-jeebies a little bit...)

whatever it is, i have some kind of lump growing under my armpit. came up in only a day or so. i didn't do anything about it right away because sometimes these things just appear and vanish in equally speedy measure. two mornings after it first presented, however, i thought i'd better see the quack, if for no other reason than i'd like to be able to use my arm painlessly again. i feel like my underarm hair has become entangled and is being unknotted with every movement of my arm.

i'm on some drugs now, and hopefully they'll get the swelling down, and whatever is causing this will right itself.

... the good with the bad

i enjoy eating.

i should be ashamed of it sometimes but most of the time i'm not at all ashamed of how much i enjoy eating. "food for the stomach and the stomach for food" - i know it's not how God wants us to look at the world and i recognise in certain moments how right he is... and at other times how wrong i am to sometimes believe it.

once upon a time, not so long ago, i was invited to lovely! pancakes. it always is in my mind lovely! pancakes even if that's not what it's called these days. pancakes at the rocks or some equally unimaginative name, i'm sure. lovely! pancakes used to have an old-fashioned newspaper-photo-in-lines (daguerrotype?) picture of an oliver twistian-woman with a knife and fork and steaming pancakes all cramped together in a very small logo. i remember seeing the same woman being used to advertise a production of oliver! around wollongong, i think.

i like eating pancakes, so i replied in the definite affirmative. we all met up (eventually) and sat down to a late brunch. i rather liked the look (in the menu illustration) of the sausages and hash browns, so i decided to go with that. with an extra sausage and hash brown because, tempting as it was, the photo in the menu was looked a tad spartan.

i was hoping for hash browns that looked as pancake-like as the photo implied. i was hoping for delicious sausages, although who goes around ordering sausages that they hope taste like sawdust i have no idea. i was neither hoping for nor expecting what i received - hash browns that looked like deep-fried julienned potatoes that were burned at the edges and raw in the centre, and sausages that looked like i had cooked them on a bbq (implication: i burn everything i put onto a bbq. except maybe water. maybe.)

obviously i was rather unimpressed with my lovely! pancakes brunch experience and while i'm happy to try their pancakes on future occasions i might suggest that they narrow their menu to what they can cook palatably. i was less unimpressed at not being able to get into the lovely! pancakes at north rocks for half an hour - i took it as a sign that lovely! pancakes was not to have my business for a while. such is life.

two of the same friends and i went on a road trip today, although i was told by an acquaintance that driving from sydney's north shore to wollongong hardly counted as a road trip. to that, while i understand where they're coming from in making the comment, i reply that my definition of a road trip is not merely a factor of distance travelled, nor is it a matter of destination per se, but rather that wherever we're going and however far it is, travelling with friends in the car is an integral part of the activity. if i were to go to wollongong on the train (as i am wont to do) it would be a day trip.

the gastronomic feature of the day was a stop at piato in the gateway on the mall (or whatever they call it now) for lunch. very nice food. a tad pricey if you're a cheapskate like me, but well worth the cash. i has a fantastic pumpkin risotto but better than that was the fetta mashed potato! mashed so smooth they were almost creamed, the fetta adding a delicious salty/smooth texture to already delicious smooth potato. worth another visit, i feel, and i must do my best to remember to order at least a side of the fetta mash.

... and i was so ready to have a good day

i had planned to write a blog about how glad i was that God has blessed me in being able to read my Bible every work day for the last two and a half weeks. i just finished reading the gospel of john this morning and i'm ready to start ploughing through acts tomorrow, but it goes to show the insidiousness of the sinful nature that i now am ready to walk out of work and go home.

every workplace has tensions, people get on one another's nerves - it just happens. i don't question why it happens, i merely accept that it does. if anything, i question why it continues to happen when the Christians involved (at least) have a measure of understanding about what is happening (and why) and some spiritual recourse to alleviating the problem. one workplace i was in was in some ways extremely unpleasant to work in because it was full of Christians who didn't get along. it pains my heart and makes me just want to remove myself from the space i'm in, not least because i have my own outbursts too.

my plans to move to melbourne continue apace - i feel confident i will find work with little trouble, i expect to have a place to move into well before i arrive in january, and i think the hardest thing will be finding a new church. moments like this, however, tempt me to just hand in my notice and take the next train south, and it browns me right off that i feel that way. i don't think it's justified - i know that it's pride and selfishness, the sinful nature continuing to work out its consequences in my life. it gives me the irrits and i can't wait for Jesus to return simply so i never have to worry about it again - the sinful nature again, wanting God to salve my will and conscience, not simply and ultimately to reveal his glory.

so whoever you are, reading this, please pray for me, and for all Christians in workplaces, especially if they work mainly with Christians. pray for us to exhibit the marks of faith to one another that should be marking us to everyone as us having the Holy Spirit. faithfulness, gentleness, peace, patience, kindness, joy, goodness, self-control - love in all its outward forms driven by its inward abundance in our hearts by the grace of God.

and thank God that my Bible reading continues well. it's an interesting side-blessing of living so far away from work that God has provided me with ample travelling time for my quiet times!

... 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.

... discussion

had a somewhat lively Bible study on John 3:36 this evening, with a consideration (among other things) of the question, "what does it mean to have 'eternal life'?"

there are a number of pat answers one can give without really getting to the nuts and bolts of our own personal understanding of what eternal life means. "a full relationship with God"... "no more tears, no more pain"... "being the person God meant for me to be"... "to live forever and never die"... are all examples of the kinds of answers i've heard over the years, with first leaning towadrs a more thoughtful understanding of eternal life, and the last leaning towards a more basic (and slightly flawed, perhaps, unless Jesus comes back in our lifetimes) understanding of it.

my own understanding of "eternal" is less a quantitive one and more a qualitative one, i hope. certainly, the eternal encompasses an infinity of temporal space, in which one could imagine replaying the whole of human history and seeing every event in minute detail, treating time as a river one could get out and wander up- and downstream of. i think, though, that my own ability to grasp the concept of the true nature of the eternal is inherently flawed and incapable of the most basic grasp of it. i remember a quote from somewhere, "if the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we'd be so simple we couldn't." i think it's a good quote because it underlines our limited view of the world around us. all that i could possibly ask or imagine in this life will barely fit into a fob pocket in my jeans in heaven (assuming we still wear jeans in heaven!) and the concept that everything could all be rolled up in such a way for us is laughable.

God is an energetic, creative God - if he had been content in himself to be simply eternal and self-relating, he need never have created us at all. it is because he loves us and desires that we be in relationship with him that he deigned to breathe life into the dust of the ground and call it "made in our image". God is love - and with that powerful, revealing-himself-as-father love comes an anger when his children do the wrong thing that is equally awesome, or awful. my parents were angry when i did the wrong thing because they love me and wanted me to do the right thing, and how much more than my parents does God love me!

my understanding of eternal life is that it is a restored relationship with God - to pray and be heard, to see his hand in the world around us, to find his character in my brothers and sisters, to see his image in the faces of strangers, to have his Spirit in my heart - it is not a restoring of our pre-fall status per se, i think, but a moving-on from that. adam had God's breath in his nostrils, but i have the Holy Spirit inside me; similar but different. God met with adam in the cool of the day, walked in the garden with him, but God is always and ever with me now and i am always and ever now with him: God has a place for me in his house, he has called me a son, and what he speaks is.

i do not enjoy the fullness of this restored relationship yet, because i still am in the world. sin continues to exact its toll in my life, reduced though it is according to God's grace, but what i suggested in Bible study tonight was this:

eternal life is a little like having a backstage pass at a concert. it's great to be at a concert or performance. everyone's there to have a great time, enjoy the show. some people have queued up for ages, some people had their tix as gifts, or won them in some competition. some are in the mosh pit, some are in the nosebleeds. everyone is there, enjoying themselves, the show, the company, and most are not thinking about what will happen after the show. they revel in the moment because, were they even able to admit it, the moment is all they have.

for those who have backstage passes, however, the concert is an amazing precursor to the freedom and privilege of going backstage. meeting the band! seeing the techies! maybe even jamming with the band! getting autographs! for these people, the concert is not the main event. for these people, the concert's end is not a reason to feel down, to go out and take your time getting to the car, knowing that a eighty thousand others are all going to be clamouring to get out before you. for these people, the end of the concert is the moment when they can go backstage! where others' experience ends after the last encore fades, their experience is only beginning.

in the gospel, i think God is offering us backstage passes (in a way). we don't have just the moment to live in, we have all those moments after these. and we should treasure the gospel. you don't go to the concert and leave them at home! you can't get in unless you've got them front and centre, where the door guys can see your credentials. and what's even better is that we get to give these backstage passes away ourselves! to anybody!

warren commented tonight he'd heard someone say that Christians are beggars who have been given bread - and tell other beggars where to get more. i know that i rarely share the gospel with people and i know that it is even more rare for me to sit down and truly dwell on the awesome nature of our God and King, and the power of the gospel to save. i don't live the way i should, not fully enough, not loudly enough, i think. my pass is in my pocket, in my bag, not around my neck. and the more i think about it, the more i think i'm losing out by being so reticent about it all. i'm terrified that my failures will make the gospel look bad, when in fact they can only make it look even more amazing - if it works for me (and look how much more screwed up i seem compared to how you think you are) it must work for you too!

can't half tell it's after midnight, eh?

... one for each day of the week...

some books that i've been reading lately:

• the fruits of war - michael white
  
• aphrodite - isobel allende
  
• loves me, loves me not - laura a. smit
  
• charlie and the chocolate factory - roald dahl
  
• romanitas - sophia mcdougall
  
• poems and prose - gerard manley hopkins
  
• the cracking codebook - simon singh

... and, of course, the Holy Bible (nasb, for the time being)

... 101 reasons

well, i killed off my other blog. i think if i couldn't keep updating one blog, there's not really any way i can in all good conscience (even with something as trite as my "101 uses for...") try to run two at the same time.

from time to time i might use it as a header here, but i'm still toying with my "stupid seven" concept.

... stupid seven

seven things that should happen to stupid people who...
...pee on seats in male public toilets

1. be made to wear a dress for a month
   
2. given electro-shock treatment
   
3. be made to clean toilets with cotton buds
   
4. be disallowed use of toilet paper and issued with pumpkin vine leaves
   
5. be disallowed use of a toilet seat... for all time
   
6. be made to use a colostomy bag
   
7. physical castration and removal of penis

does this seem harsh?