My (belated) 7th week at college and "Reading" Week

Hello there! Welcome back.

"Reading" Week
Well last week was holiday, err I mean "Reading" week - and was a chance for us to read all those excellent books we've been recommended during the term...only they set us two essays to be due in the first week back...aargh! So did reading for the essays...but to be fair one of our essays is on the "Love ethic" - Jesus saying "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" to show God's divine love for all mankind whether people love and respond to him or reject him. Man! Has it been good to get into this...once I realise how he chose to love me (even though I was nothing special even though I was horrible for my wife for years even though I had addictions even though I chose to turn my back on him) then can I show anything but love to others when God has shown such love to me? Awesome!

Baby scan
Friday was our first scan of our sixth baby...and here is our jellybean doing a dance:

It was so good to see the little ones heartbeat and a joy to celebrate his/her life. In fact in chapel the week we were talking about different seasons of the soul. And I really felt God challenge me that I was still living in the season of death and being afraid to truly celebrate just in case we lose this one - and I should embrace this season of life - so I went to Sainsbury's and purchased some baby grows (which are hanging up in our bedroom) and a card (strange but true...there are no "congratulations you're pregnant" cards - is this just our supermarket or has anyone else experienced this?!?!?)

Also again it's so funny how the world is with pregnancy - after losing 2 babies we are all out for celebrating our baby from conception (as we don't know how long we'll get with them) - at the scan the man was like "well it's early days, not much point" and we were like "it's got a head, a body and heartbeat! This is fantastic - they're alive and doing a little jiggle!!!" and even today at bible college someone mentioned that the lecturer was "halfway to becoming a father" - and I was like what are they missing a wife and so only got one of the components necessary for conception??? Ho hum.

THE essay
Week before last week was THE essay week - which I finally finished at 5.14am on Friday morning ready for its 9am hand-in. The night included a 2 hours of chopping to get it from 3800 to 1800 words! I'm starting the next one a lot earlier!!!

New Testament intro
Well that's essays - what else has been happening? We've been doing a brief intro to the new testament over these last two weeks - so lots of history of the Jewish people in the run up to Jesus' birth (and you can see why they were after a military Messiah who would deliver them from the hand of their oppressors after nearly 600 years of foreign rule of Palestine by Babylonians, then Persians, then Greeks and finally the Romans) - in particular the rise of four distinct groups (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and Zealots) as ways of dealing with the occupation and Jewish identity. Looked at the book of Revelation (that weird book at the end of the bible with pictures of beasts with many heads and horns) and it was so great to see what these images represented at that time and so get a real handle on what's actually being said. (PS The images were used as a kind of code to talk about their persecutors - the Romans).

Reflections
Well living in community does have its benefits - and they all seem to stem from rubbing each other up the wrong way! Well it had to happen - I managed to put my foot in it big time and upset someone. So it's been a great opportunity to develop maturity (as you can't really avoid someone in close community for 10 months!) by apologising and accept forgiveness and seeing the relationship restored and then moving on in that forgiveness (yeah this last step was hard - wanted to hide a bit). But I am genuinely grateful for the chance to mature (and boy do I need it) - I rather suspect this'll be the first of many such opportunities...

However, in a confession conversation with a friend at college I was challenged to think about how I impact others - in particular my lovely humour.... My humour was originally developed probably as a coping mechanism to deal with the extensive bullying at school and other and became very much a way of getting attention (people laughing is a great ego boost!). Now I've been healed of that - does the humour go? No - God's into redemption (remember the "nothing is wasted" post) - He wants to use all of me to glorify Him and that includes my humour ! Scary thought - but I'm game for letting God transform and use it...watch this space!

My 6th week at college (well almost!)

Well OK I'm having an essay crisis and to be honest I was just going to write a sentence to say something along those lines but...

Was chatting to God this morning (after being in a right grump about how little I'd achieved the night before and how the children had made me cross and ...) and really felt like he was saying that I want Him to help me out with my work and honour all the effort I've put in on this essay but actually I haven't honoured Him. I want Him to come and fix my problems but I'm not spending time with Him and seeking His priorities.

Then Zoe in the morning devotions was talking about how we want God to come and heal us so we are better but actually God heals us so that we can serve Him and carry out His purposes.

Man! I was so blown away by this - before my essay was everything and I was trying to apply God to my essay and my priorities but actually it's Him that's to be the priority.

I just felt this wave of peace come over me and I was totally changed - from panic and stress to reliance on God - I can't describe the transformation I am so different in my outlook and I'm really looking forward to doing my essay...right now in fact...

Bye!

My 5th week at college

Preamble
Hello there - 5 weeks down and only 2 more before "reading" week - however since my Old Testament timeline is due in the end of this week and the big exegetical paper is due in at the end of next week - I think I'll need a week to recover!

Apologies for subscribers who didn't get the email last Monday - there seems to be something horribly wrong with the system. Once again I'll always aim to update on either Sunday or Monday every week...famous last words...

So let's get on with the blog...last week was our brief overview of the Old Testament (all 4000+ years) so this week followed on by looking in detail at just a few parts of it (we'll do much much much more detail later in the year) to give us an exciting taster (or at least that's what they told us )

Introduction to Judaism
We had an absolutely smashing day on Tuesday learning all about Judaism - their main pillars of belief (monotheism, covenant, election, purity, messiah and The Land), including the many feasts and festivals (passover, Shauvot, Sukkot, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur and Hannukah). Man these people know how to celebrate - Christmas and Easter are dull in comparison (and completely secularised in this country) - methinks we need to party more as Christians (see photos later on) - am putting on my thinking cap of how we can celebrate All Saints Day bigtime (why should halloween get all the fun?!)

But the thing that blew me away is how they view the law - not as a burden but as a privilege. They see it as the responsibilities of being God's chosen people. I guess the best way of seeing this is to think of marriage. My marriage vows to Jennie including sharing everything and loving her through thick and thin (and boy have we been through the thick...) - do I see this covenant as a burden or as a privilege of being the only man in Jennie's life until she dies...

Lamentations
Had a day looking at the book of lamentations - which reflect the sorrow of the people at the destruction of Jerusalem (and the temple) by the Babylonians in 587 BC after a three month siege.

It's just a fab book to express your deepest sorrows - this really resonated with my journey - that expressing these feelings is totally ok - it's part of our honest and real relationship with God - and we needn't be afraid of it. Brill.

Other stuff
We also looked briefly at how the old and new testaments fit together - is the God depicted before Jesus the same as the one depicted afterwards?

And finally looked at the historical and theological run-up to the birth of Jesus - particularly who were the key players in the social world Jesus was born in (Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes, zealots and Palestinian and Hellenistic Jews), the difference between the temple and the synagogues and the expectations that people had about the coming Messiah and why Jesus didn't quite fit into their mindset of the one who would set them free from the Romans. Really interesting stuff and we'll being doing more on that next week.

Cooking
Part of our service is cooking for all the students - so me together with 3 others (well actually three others with me! ) prepared a meal for 38 of lasagne and banana cake. They were stuffed - so mission accomplished.
Jennie's 30th birthday party
Finished the week with Jennie's fancy dress party - we all had to dress up from one of the decades of the 20th century. So Jen went for 60's and of course I had to be 80's...



Jim and Claire from the 20's:


Mikko, Olivia and baby lydia all in 60's outfits (the baby one was so cute!):

Penny and Andrew from the 70's:

Dan and Lulu from the 70's (Lulu shaved her head especially - such dedication):

And finally Jennie with my friend, Paula, from bible college:

It was great fun (though the tidying wasn't! )

Baby is still with us after 10 days of us knowing about him/her - so we are very happy. The sickness and heartburn (according to the doctor) are indeed good signs!!

Until next week readers...

My fourth week at college

First the apologies:

Sorry for the late posting.  I'm aiming to always post on Sunday nights ready for that Monday morning look-at-posts-rather-than-do-your-work moment - but what with attending my brothers wedding on Saturday and err...oh all right I admit it I had a night off on Sunday!

Also sorry that I still haven't got the toga version of the Greek alphabet song for you.  Don't know if you can view it yourselves on the facebook KBCTC 08/09 group...

Now on with the blog...
 
Well after one induction week, one overview of the bible week, one week of exegesis, we have moved onto two weeks on the Old Testament (ie the bit of the bible before Jesus was born).  I have to say that my head was spinning at the speed at which they were trying to give an overview of some 4,000 odd years of history...and didn't help having our first exegesis deadline on Friday I was a tired bunny (well a tired man actually).  Though it was interesting what a deadline does for the popularity of the library! 

Tom Sine
On Thursday had a break from the Old Testament and had Tom Sine give a presentation based around his latest book "The New Conspirators".  Basically it was an exciting overview of how many Christians are radically living out their faith and being counter-cultural.  It's something that has been stirring in me for a while - why do we resemble our society so much - how much are we truly influenced by God and how much by our culture and advertising, etc.  We already have our home as a drop-in centre and share our lives (and holidays) with people and dream of building an extension so we can have people live full time in it - and this passion was re-ignited anew by Tom (who lives in a community).  Community is something that is desperately needed by the world and too often we have swallowed the home is my fortress (or whatever - it is late!) line...

NEWS FLASH Thought you all might like to know that we found out on Friday that Jennie is pregnant with our sixth child. 
The children are VERY excited and the consensus is that they would like a boy.  Lizzie thinks this is important as we have had 3 girls and 2 boys so far - so it'll be balanced!  Josiah would like a boy to play with and looks at the pregnancy test each day to see if mummy is still pregnant.  Hannah just keeps saying "baby in mummy's tummy" and "can I touch the baby?"
Public "thank you" to all those who have said "congratulations" to us - your affirmation of our baby's life means so much to us.  We don't know how long we will have to love this one - so these moments have been so precious.
If you want to pray for us then please pray that we would love this one without holding back (it would be so easy to do so after losing the last two to protect ourselves from pain) and that Jennie would not be afraid of living (avoiding doing anything that might cause a miscarriage - but there's no life living that way).
Am very happy.

Monday's devotions
Finally for those who have asked how me leading the Monday morning devotions went (we have half an hour first thing every day except Thursday where we have "chapel" later in the morning)...I did it on Lamentations (a cheery thought indeed for Monday morning!) First I started with a quote from Matt and Beth Redman's book "Worshipping God on the road marked with suffering" (great book by the way - written by people who have been through the mill):

 Worship is always a choice.  At times it's an easy, straightforward one.  When life is peaceful and painless, the choice to respond to God in thanksgiving and praise may not be such a hard one to make.  But at other times in our lives, worship becomes a much gutsier decision.  Caught up amidst a whirlwind of pain and confusion, the decision to cry out, "Yet I will praise You," is a costly act of devotion.  In the life of every worshipper there will come times when worship meets with suffering.  And these moments shape what kind of worshippers we will become.  Yes, praise be to God for times of abundance and plenty in our lives - those carefree days full of peace and laughter.  Yet we praise Him also in the wilderness times - those dark and stormy seasons of the soul when we're left crying out with the psalmist, "How long, O LORD, how long?" (Psalm 6:3) When trials come, trust must arise.  When there's nothing to rock the boat, our trust in God is rarely tested.  The question then is this: Can we still find our way to the place of praise?  We may have faith to believe in God as Lord of the calm - but do we also have faith to believe in Him as Lord of the storm?

Then we watched the video clip:



I wanted a video to engage people's hearts.  It's very easy with something like this to only give mental ascent to the ideas whereas I wanted people to open up to hear what God had to say.  I was also wary of using a video as I didn't want to just create an emotional fix - but have people meet with God and be changed.

I then talked about how my wife and I sought to worship God when we lost our baby (Rachel) last Boxing Day - one of the first things I did was talk to a lady in our church whose husband walked out on her and her two kids for another woman and asked how - how did you worship God? She said "worship is a choice" - she was so right and has it made the difference in her life - she sought after God and has been transformed - she has no bitterness only joy and all the more so now her prayers for a godly man have been answered (she gets married in 2 weeks!).  So we did choose - we chose to trust that God is who He says He is and worship Him and we don't regret it - we are different people as I said in one of my previous posts.

I had a number of passages that I felt were right to use and then prayed about which people to give to read them.  God was so good as they seemed really speak to those individuals.  If you're interested, they were:

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=habakkuk%203:17-18;&version=31;

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm%2013:1-2,5-6;&version=31;

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=lam%203:20-24;&version=65;

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm%2042:1-6;&version=31;

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=job%201:18-21;&version=31;

We then sung "Blessed be Your name" and "Even though I walk (You never let go)" by Matt Redman.  Great songs to worship God in all circumstances - the first was written after 9/11 and then second after their third miscarriage in a row.

Finally I pointed out how many of the passages tell us how they remembered.  When in these circumstances we should remind ourselves what God has done for us, who He is and the hope that we have in Him.  So had someone read Psalm 103:

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ps%20103;&version=31;

We finished off with singing "Our God is an awesome God" by Rich Mullins.

"Mint!" as JK would say.