Perseverence

Here's a weird little story.  On Monday I had awful hayfever,  every year I get it for about a week and it sucks.  Anyway,  I was lying in bed, bunged up and snotty and Helen asked if she could pray for me.  She put her hand on my nose (bold, given the amount of nastiness) and had a little pray.  Straight away there was change,  exactly one half of my face got completely better!  My left sinus stopped hurting and my nose was cleared,  the right hand side stayed exactly the same.  We were tired so I accepted that as gift from God and went to sleep 50% more comfortable and 50% still blah. Funny.

Since then I've been thinking; why did that happen?  Its an experience that's not unique.  Often when I pray for people that Jesus would heal them they tell me things immediately get better; not totally but substantially improved.  I talked to a friend recently who has been asking God for some big provision too - car MOT,  holiday, that kind of thing - and been finding that he's giving them about 1/2 the provision.  The rest they have to save for or work for.

Why is that?  I don't know.  But I have to admit I quite like it.  I guess it fits with the weird life we live right now where we are in the kingdom of God and at the same time waiting for it.   The trouble is that there is still this gap with what I see in the bible stories (everyone who came to Jesus gets healed,  everyone gets what they need in terms of provision) and my experience.  Maybe God allows that frustration at times to keep us hungry,  to keep us going back and persevering but he also gives enough so that we'd keep hope and keep going.

The only bible story I can think of where this sort of happens are in Mark 8 where Jesus heals the blind guy.  First time he puts his hands on the guys eyes and he can see things like trees walking around,  second time he does it and the guy can copletely see again.  I guess its encouraging that even Jesus had to persevere.

Whatever,  I am increasingly confident that God wants to do good things with people,  he wants to heal,  he wants to provide,  he loves.  I'm excited I'm starting to see of that happen in my own life and at the same frustrated that its still only partial.  I'm going to keep asking him to help me and I'm going to persevere.

Back

So I think its time to resurrect the blogger Distinctly Askew. As I've thought a bit about my (ahem) web strategy I've realised I actually want 2 different things. 1. Somewhere to share God stories and thoughts with people who are interested in that sort of thing. 2. Somewhere to talk about mucic, shiny things, pretty pictures and genearlly have a bit of a (even bigger ahem) lifestream.

So henceforth (or until I get a different idea) Distinctly Askew Blogger will be strictly Godtastic. I want to get in the habit of writing about the stuff I'm thinking through and would hope some of you out there will talk to me about these ideas. Distinctly Askew Tumblr will continue to be what it is, a messy scrapbook of pics, tweets, links and stuff that excites me. I'll make sure you get a little teaser summary of each of these posts over there but you'll need to click through in order to get the full thing.

Got that? Ok, lets go.

New Year Changes

Hello there, happy new year,  I hope you had a great Christmas.

So you've probably noticed that blogging has been infrequent here for a while.  Other people are making some great changes to their blogs to gear up for 2009.  I'm choosing a different path; abandonment.

I've been running a second blog over at tumblr for a while now.  It just fits with the whole reason that I blog; which is to have fun sharing things with other people and open up conversations that can spill over into "real life".  It also plugs into my other online presences, like flickr and twitter so it works as what geekier types call a life stream, holding all my online activities in one place.

I'm not totally leaving this place.  I'll keep the blogger Distinctly Askew going and think I'll probably put up the very occasional, longer post.  They'll more than likely become more and more faith based.  When I post here,  I'll also put up a summary over on the tumblr page too.

Thanks so much to the people that have read the ramblings here,  have commented and got involved or said nice things to me.  I hope you'll come over to the new place and continue to keep up with things there.

See ya.

Slow Down

A little meditation I’ve written for Church on Sunday:

Slow down, Christmas is coming,

don’t worry it will arrive.

The unwritten cards really don’t matter;
you don’t need to fret about presents still to buy.

The office party is all in the past.
The long journey home, on Christmas Eve,
through sleet or fog or freezing rain;

for now, it doesn’t matter.

Forget about Nigella’s, or Jamie’s or Delia’s time plans.
Don’t fret about what you’ll say to Mum, or your uncle, or your brother when you see them,

or about having to be nice for a whole day.

Don’t worry about what you’ve spent so far,
or haven’t bought yet
or whether they’ll like it
or whether they’ll be there.

Don’t worry if this isn’t how your family does Christmas
or if it doesn’t seem right,

or if you just miss them
and this time of year hurts most.

Slow down,
Christmas is coming,

it will all happen soon.

But there is something more.

God loved people like you
so much that he gave his son.

Slow down,  

Christmas is coming

Slow down,

stop,

remember.

God loved you
So much that he gave his son.

Celebrate what he’s done.

Form blogs

A couple of good blogs from other people involved in Form this year.

Hannah leads some of the student work at St Toms and is also on the team helping lead Form with me.  She writes really well, particularly about her experiences with God and Church.

Pete is one of our trainees.  I love his blogs name.  He goes for a more current affairs/cultural critique approach.

Its cool to see how much people's personalities show in the way they write.

fickle

I am properly trying out tumblr now.  I really like it,  it just seems a bit more fun.

I'll probably keep this blog going too - at least for a bit - for the more thought out things I occasionally do but over there I'll post lots more.

I really hope it does snow tomorrow like everyone is saying.

After a busy but fun wek its been great to have a couple of days mainly doing Dad type things.

You are beautiful!
Pure and simple.

Call + Response

Is this coming to the UK?
find out more, respond,  join.