My (very belated) 14th week at college

Welcome for the belated instalment of the last week of the autumn term...

Trinity
This week we were spending three days trying to get our head around the Trinity (the idea that God is one, yet there is God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit).  This causes so much confusion as we're really struggling with trying to understand the complexity of God with our tiny minds.  To me I loved the ancient approach to this issue:  God is love and so necessarily God is a community of love.  But maybe it's because I'm a mathematician that 1 + 1 + 1 = 1 (mod 3) works for me!!

Arty stuff
Panicking with the essay deadline on Thursday, coupled with a presentation to the class and one to the Tumbling Bay residents as well as being on community lunch meant that when I was greeted with the news that there would be three afternoon sessions to "explore the trinity through the creative medium" I guess I freaked out a bit. Okay a lot. It didn't help that the first session was terrible. I missed the second due to attending Lizzie's nativity presentation and....I skipped the third session which was a visit to an art gallery. I knew I wasn't right no matter how I justified it - so had to apologise during chapel on Thursday and receive forgiveness from Gaynor. Although it was hard, I'm glad I did it as I had essentially been setting myself up above Gaynor and the change in my heart was horrible. It's good to get things cleared.

Essay
You might recall that this essay was on the nature and character of God and I chose to look at joy. Is God happy? Did Jesus laugh?

I was really glad I did this topic as it is something I find a bit weird - I get the fact that God forgives us and accepts us back when we repent - but the bit in the prodigal son where he then throws a lavish party is a bit bizarre - I expect him to send me out to work in the fields next!  The short answer is that he is happy as he is the only sovereign (so no-one can thwart him), he has great joy in his son and creation flows out of that joy - and brings him joy as it declares his glory (that's why the universe is so big!), he has joy in choosing a people to make a name for himself and rejoices in doing them good and working everything for their good!  He also wants to give us the kingdom of joy and make our joy complete and enter into the Father's joy.  Wow!  (PS Those who want copies of my essays are most welcome to them just drop me a comment by clicking the "comment" directly below this blog)

Finished this essay at only 2.30am - so clearly getting better at this essay lark!!!

Joy presentation
Part of this assignment was to give a presentation to the class on our chosen aspect of God's character. There were some amazing and moving presentations. One that particularly stuck out was the dance representing the life journey of two students and God's graciousness (so from the foetus in the womb to a child following God to a teenager rebelling to being wooed back by God's love into His eternal embrace - particularly evocative was the way they simulated being entwined in His heartbeat - and this is from a guy who really isn't into this kind of dance thing - but seriously wow!).

For me I wanted to somehow convey the utter lavishness and outrageousness of God's joy over the repentant Son. So I had one of my fellow students, Simon, carry round a clay model of a sunflower that had taken me two weeks to make representing God's joy. However, he dropped it halfway round and broke it. I was gutted - it had taken two weeks - as I'm really not at all crafty - and it was smashed and ruined. I was upset and went to leave the room mid-presentation. Simon apologised and I forgave him, embraced him and then shouted let's have a party and began throwing out party poppers, balloons, bags of sweets and then taking round slices of cake. I guess by now you realised, as they did at this point, that the whole thing was a set-up (for the record I am rubbish at craft - so my wife made it for me) - but it was fantastic seeing the shock on their faces and the sharp intake of breath when it was dropped and then seeing them grab the shocking nature of the prodigal (wastefully or recklessly extravagant) love of the Father. He is an amazing God - I am so glad that He doesn't love like we do.

Tumbling Bay
We wanted to give the old people a christmas presentation that would make them think more about Christmas - as it's all too easy to just gloss over the Christmas story as it's been heard before.
So we started with how Jesus was around in the beginning with God before he "became flesh", then God's plan for restoring fellowship with mankind after we messed it up then the plan being revealed through many prophets (at least 400 years BC) about the coming Messiah then the story itself.
Also chose some songs that had good lyrics to help reflect on the birth.

On Christmas Day
This is a new Christmas worship song by Matt Osgood available for free download with lyrics and score from resoundworship - I love the words in this - the juxtoposition of all-poweful God in a helpless baby - beautiful - enjoy:

 

Mary did you know
Here's a classic song about the birth of Yeshua the Messiah with video from youtube:

 

Car
Well with our next child on the way it was clear that our current car just wouldn't fit them in! I tried to persuade Jen that one of us could travel on the moped with the other in the car with the four children but she wasn't having any of it.

Picture below shows our children enjoying the new (to us!) MPV courtesy of Jen's parents life saving policy thing (however don't save with Prudential...unless you enjoy terrible customer service and long delays... ).  Oh yes - and Jen trying to work out how it all works - far too posh for us!  We gave Kenna's our old car which he is delighted with...until his family has stolen it off him!!


Christmas banquet
Term finished with the Christmas banquet - an occasion to dress up and eat fantastic food that was cooked and served to us by the staff (I love this aspect of college - that they see themselves as equals before God - and this is one way that they show this practically). It was fab.

During and after the meal were entertainment provided by us students. The best for me was "blind heresy date" - one student whose theology was feeling flat was looking for something to spice things up - it was hilarious seeing the responses of the contestants to the Trinity and the end times and how they imagined their denomination would look if they got together...

Well catch you next week - will be back on time now the holidays are over...hope you all had a lovely Christmas!

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.