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!