Check-list.

And now I will show you the most excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails.

Beauty. I read this a lot. (Like seriously, if I talk about love a lot, it's nothing compared to how much I ponder on it.).

We can do so much that is nullified if it is not done with love.

I like that here, love is defined often by what it is not, or what it doesn't do. Because God knows that we've got a distorted idea of love in our broken world- people want to be happy, feel needed, feel like they own something- a plethora of loves askew. Just 2 years ago I broke at a lyric quoted at me by my then-partner:

"When we swear, 'my love is real', we mean, 'I like the way you make me feel'".

- a simple line with crushing implications.

But here God says that He wants us to know real love. The unconditional love that never changes. And His challenge is for us to love like this. My challenge is to use this list as a checklist. In situations day-to-day, asking, am I being patient? Am I being kind? Am I proud here, boasting, or am I envious of this person? Am I doing this for their benefit or secretly mine? Am I protecting or endangering? So often the answer is the wrong one. My love falls short.

His does not.

Perspective.

'It is, I think, entirely possible for one to respond to things at their natural value while seeing clearly their value for eter-nity. "Wisdom"-knowing the causes and ends of things-clarifies, rather than blurs, one's perception of the purely natural. The little wisdom that comes to us merely through the accretion of age does not render us incapable of understanding the passions of the young. Such wisdom helps us to understand passion better, indeed, than those possessed by it. Nor does such wisdom inhibit our sympathy for the sufferer. It is the old who know best what the young feel and who offer them the sincerest compassion.' - Elias Schwartz : The Possibilities of Christian Tragedy

This is a beautiful idea to stumble over during essay research. The notion that the longer you live, or the more you face, the more you can grow in compassion. Not that the skin would be hardened by difficulties, nor the heart be deadened by cynicism, but rather that such experience allows you to love the young and inexperienced more.

I am only twenty, and thus cannot speak as a seventy year old. But for my little part, I'm thankful for the hardest times in my life so far that have placed me in a position to love people through theirs. I know that part of my life's calling is to mourn with those who mourn. Even if I'm still working out what that looks like.

Pulse.

The one thing that I'm feeling at the moment is the need for people to pursue what they're passionate about. I think in my own life, I'm not decided on the vast majority of things. But that's fine. What's important is the one or two things you know make your heart beat faster and bring you to life. And what you do about them. I'd like to ignore everything I'm beige about, and run full pelt after the rest.

This sounds like a weird hybrid between the abstract gravity of my usual Romanticism and the immature optimism of a Taylor Swift song. I just believe that we spend too long plodding along when we could be powering after something. And I don't want to be the person I know who is constantly wishing for something without taking a step towards it.

This has been on my heart for a long time now...I guess I've just pondered it more recently (that's what essay season will do to you). How do we encourage people to find what makes them passionate? How do we encourage people to push for it? I feel like this should be something started in youth...but what about the cynical adult too?

I would love to facilitate this. I would love to see people challenging eachother to take their dreams seriously and make them a reality. I don't know what it looks like yet, but there's defintely potential for beauty. I'm pretty sure somebody saying 'what if?' could be the difference between living and being alive for some people.

"Some men see things as they are and ask "why?". Others dream things that never were and ask "why not?"" - George Bernard Shaw


I'm not sure I've ever explained the name of this 'blog', pretentious as it is to call it such. (I strangely detest writing on here for just that reason). It's a phrase that struck me in an early morning worship and prophecy session I snuck out to during my a-level exams. 7am in Nottingham, a few youth gathered to seek Jesus. As we started to worship and ask for his direction, we just had a guitar and voices, and some one pointed out that we had so little to bring.

'If you want drums...you'd better start stamping your feet'.

It's a call to worship with what He's given us, all we are and all we have. And it's a challenge to put the effort in and actively pursue the desires and callings God has put on our hearts. Glorify Him. And get up and get on with it. Go.

"For need breaks all laws and has none." -Martin Luther.

Forget whatever I was just about to write-

The point is, my chest has been awful today. But I just sat down and read the bit in the Bible where Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. This took 2 minutes. In those 2 minutes my chest completely cleared up. Claimed.

Here in dust and dirt, O here
The lilies of His love appear!

Drunken mistakes.

"Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit."

If recollection and mine eyes serve me well enough, getting drunk on alcohol tends to make people do silly things, things they would be less easily tempted to do when sober, and often things that they regret shortly afterwards.

I could argue that being filled with the holy spirit has a similar effect. Contentious? Maybe.

Make no mistake, I don't purport to be 'filled' with the spirit. I reckon it's in me, but I don't feel at full capacity. Anyway, this week has been quite demanding and really challenging in terms of faith and the like, and so I've maybe asked for a little more, paid a little more attention, invested and stepped into more of what God's got on offer. Exciting and humbling times. This meant that after the crazy few days, I was buzzing a little bit still, and whilst sauntering around the peace gardens (actual, not metaphorical), chucked up an optimistic, jovial, on-the-offchance-because-i'm all spiritualized prayer to change a particular aspect of my life and help me stop messing up.

Anyway, later, when spiritual sobering had taken place, I was slightly perturbed to discover that God had taken me at my word and stepped in, cutting off my route to that particular form of screwing up. Brilliant! Except, the truth is, when we're really honest, we like to sin. Not great to point out, but if it wasn't fun, appealing and pleasurable, it wouldn't really be an issue. So here's me, the morning after as it were, berating my yesterdayself for being so stupidly intoxicated that I would do something so silly as to pray a real prayer.

Obviously, I am thrilled at this really. But it has highlighted how much conflict there is in us. In me at least. And why minds really do need to be renewed before any change of actions can be made effective. Change your heart before you change your shirt.

Pink fluff.

Valentines day.

I partake quite contentedly in the viewing of this holiday as overly commercialised, money-making, obligatory and clichéd. Why should one day be designated for showing affection anyway? It's status as such demands that all other regular days be made less. Bad times.

Rant averted. There are redeeming factors.

As somebody who lives for love, joy and all things beautiful, I choose to avert my eyes from the mush of Valentines day and think rather about the fact that love is on the minds of a large proportion of the population today. Whether they're in it, wanting it, remembering it, missing it, resenting it, people are acknowledging the most incredible thing in existence.

Because what else could make somebody live for another person? Or die for another? It's incredible and it's powerful and it's the thing that leaves me with no doubt in my mind that God exists. When love remains against all odds, selfless, serving, forgiving, patient, I know that we were made. Love is the fingerprint in the painting of the world.

God was blatantly a fingerpainter.

Anyway, I hope that somebody, somewhere today, wonders how they love, and how they're loved.

I could harp on about this subject for literally hours. I have done in the past. And will again I'm sure. It's worth it.

Tireless hope.

So, I've had a really bad week in terms of getting things done. Work for uni has happened, and that's a new experience in many senses. But top of my priority list was designing flyers for Healing on Campus.

I kept sitting down to do it and just getting so stressed. I found myself unable to write the gospel down in a way that didn't make me want to implode. I fear regurgitating cliched words that can only be said outloud with a misty look on a lofty face. I hate religious language. If I can learn to speak without saying 'sanctified' and 'redeemed' every other sentence then I'll be on my way. Make no mistake- I live for this- I love what God has done for me, for everyone, and I in no way wish to devalue that. It's just this whole semantic field that's so specialist and exclusive. I feel like a subculture, separate from the world we're living to reach.

I had no idea how to explain on the flyers how we have authority in Jesus's name to heal the sick- because He died on the cross- to be the perfect sacrifice for sin- which is us turning against God- and thus because of all this we're heirs and that means we inherit everything that Jesus has from His father...there's so much assumed knowledge when we talk about this sort of thing.

So I asked if God could let me know what to say, how much, and what the message needs to be.

And it turns out that He just loves us.

Beauty.


So I got on with it. Simple. He wants to heal. Heal what? Everything. Wrote them down. Why? Because He loves us. How? Through the cross.

So, for about two hours I've been staring at a selection of 20 conditions that God can heal. Just moving them, reshaping, resizing, bigger, smaller, here, there. And just through doing this and thinking about how soon we'll be offering prayer to people for these very real things, my faith's tripled. I struggle with healing. I don't get it all the time, and there have been admittedly bitter disappointments for me in the past in terms of asking for others to be healed and it not happening. This made me really nervous about going with this initiative, especially this year. But I've just spent 2 hours making the words of sickness fit into the shape of the cross. And Jesus spent His last hours putting the real forces of sickness and death under Him on the cross, so I think it's probably going to be okay.

Exciting times. I think the kingdom of God's actually bursting in.

(Still twitching at the terminology).

Nevermind.

"Death is a cold, blindfolded kiss.
It is the finger pressed upon our lips.
It puts an unwanted emphasis on how we should have lived.
Life is a gorgeous, broken gift.
Six billion+ pieces waiting to be fixed.
Love letters that were never signed, sent to where we live.

But the sweetest thing i've ever heard is that i don't have to have the answers,
just a little light to call my own.
Though it pales in comparison to the overarching shadows,
a speck of light can reignite the sun and swallow darkness whole."

-Sleeping at Last (predictably?) : Emphasis

Frosted glass.

So, everything's rather exciting at the moment. But consequently I'm pretty overwhelmed with things to do and directions my mind should be looking in. I wish really that I could just step out for a few hours, look down on it all from a very big height, and organise from up there. Someone once told me that to God, the world is so small that the highest mountain ranges, all jaggedy and loomy to us, look smooth- the earth is like a marble. I guess this is one reason that He should be the port of call when we're panicking.

if nothing else, we're given a little time
to change the heart in which we change our minds;
our hourglasses turn.

this year is a sealed envelope;
with apprehensive hope
we brace for anything.
i swear, i understand that nothing changes that,
the past will be the past,
but the future is brighter than any flashback.

well, we could let our guards down a little easier this time,
we could trust that when there's joy, there's nothing dark behind.
in spite of history,
hope is january white.

~January White, Sleeping at Last.

Dot to dot.

So, I'm pondering how much responsibility we have in decisions. I'm not talking simple right/wrong things, but more 'which path now?' types. When there's not a clear moral decision, where people won't get hurt as a result of one over another, where alarm bells don't ring in your conscience at the thought of one you know isn't the way.

I think when it comes to a lot of things, we know what's right. It depends on your world view, but I do think people know in general, barring actual conditions like psychopathy where there is literally no comprehension of moral implication. It may be from your conscience and an empathy, a knowledge of what effects will be beneficial to you or people around you. It may be based on laws or expectations placed by society. I think my conscience is informed by God's heart, and also knowledge of His laws and instructions in the Bible.

Regardless, all of these ways lead to a little voice that says 'no!' to some things, and 'yeah!' to others. And all of them can be ignored. As much as anyone may go get drunk and act in some obscene way that offends society in the street, I can and do choose on a daily basis to do something I know full well is wrong. In the same way, much of the time we abide by the laws of society, and sometimes I do what I know is right- I stop there, or have one less, or talk to that person.

So that's tricky- getting your body in line with your head in decisions in which you know the value of each option. What complicates matters even more is when there's no clear cut right or wrong, but just one or another.

Is it all up to us? Can we do whatever we want? Or is there a specific linear trajectory we're supposed to be heading on? Or is it like a playground, where we can play on whatever we want as long as it's within the boundaries?

I don't know. I sometimes think it's more up to us than we'd like to think.

Stress is not my forte. What happens here?

Ache.

This is where I want to be right now:

It's not a beautiful picture, but since my laptop was stolen I'm forced to resort to google images. I did pick one which isn't too sunny, so it matches my memories in that way. That's not meant to be gloomy in tone...more just informative that if you will holiday in Britain at October half term, it will constitute a childhood of drizzly beaches.

Anyway, this is Watergate Bay. I love it. Rocks to climb, long enough to walk down for an hour, rough waves with potential for being deemed unsafe on crazy days. I just want to be there. Wrapped in many layers perhaps, but it'd do nicely.

It costs £38.60 to get the over night train there...tempted.

Anyway.

This isn't really what I want to talk about.

Isaiah 30:21, 'Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it."'

Whether or not you listen is on your own back.

Both my hands are filled with guilt
(Be my absolution)
Both my eyes are blind with filth
(Be my absolution, absolution)

Hey, baptize my mind
Hey, baptize my eyes
Hey, baptize my mind
For these seeds to give birth to life
First they must die.

Absent.

'And with this Christmas wish is missed
The point I could convey
If only I could find the words to say to let You know how much You've touched my life
Because here is where You're finding me, in the exact same place as New Year's eve
And from a lack of my persistency
We're less than half as close as I want to be.'

~Relient K: I Celebrate the Day

One of my aboslute favourite songs of the season. Christmas and New Year always makes people intropesctive, makes them evaluate the year, make resolutions for the next. I tend to do this every other day regardless of the festive lights. Anyway, a few things recently have got me thinking.

Last night I sat talking to a good friend, discussing just how crazily busy life's gotten to be. I hate that my priorities haven't necessarily shown themselves in the wake of this. I mean, I'm involved in missional stuff, but that's not most important to me. No? Yes. I'm a full on believer in the idea that we focus on the vertical and God will take care of the horizontal. I'm not undermining the importance of evangelism, I adore it and I wouldn't be here without it and think it's absolutely what we're called to do. But first, above all all all I want to seek God and get closer to Him personally. And any seeds of life spread to people in association with my being are scattered as an overflow of how much I love Him and He loves me. Well, that's what my soul screams for...

The rub is, I don't feel like I'm seeking all that much. Well, I am, but not ever enough (will it ever be enough? probably not).

And an email I just read has made me feel like the hugest hypocrite ever.

See me kneeling

on my pedestal.

Rather than dwell, I guess this should just be corrected. Sort it out Hull.

"One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple." - Psalm 27:4

Please.

Just a brief thought that says a day without singing thanks and praise shouldn't be called a day at all.

Todo los dias.

"Thou canst not every day give me thy heart,
If thou canst give it, then thou never gavest it" - John Donne, Lover's Infinitenesse

Yes, I rip quotes out of all context and take advantage of them in a most vulgar way a lot of the time. I am sorry.

Regardless, this quote from John Donne (I used to think he was amazingly inspiring...now I think he's a little perverse and creepy), this quote I like. It's an accusatory line, directed at his lover. Every day she keeps giving him everything...or so she says. But what he recognises is that if she gave him everything, there'd be nothing left to give the next day.

It's a beautiful gesture, to give someone everything, all of you- but logically, it can only be done once. Otherwise, one of two conclusions can be obviously drawn. First, that the gesture was a lie, her words just words, that she professed to love him, said all of her was his...whilst in reality she kept herself for herself and never gave anything at all. Or, maybe, she gave herself to him, then reclaimed it, took it back ready to give again the next day. Either way, something's amiss, and he knows it.

The fact is that this is me. Christians have this cheesey exclusive terminology and way of wording things (let me learn again to pray prayers that include 'peng' and 'brap' please God). When someone asks for your 'testimony', you say, 'Well, when I was 14 I gave my life to Christ'. That was the turning point. I said that I belonged to Him and I was His, all His.

But, I've said it hundreds of times since. I'd like to say I say it every day, but I doubt it. How many times have I stood in church and sung, 'take my life, let it be, everything, all of me, here I am, use me for Your glory'...or 'Be my everything'...or 'I'll stand, my soul Lord to You surrendered, all I am is Yours'...the list is massive, they're all flooding through my head now (I quite like this). How many times have I resolved to change and cried out 'right! this time God just take me! I give up, I keep messing up when I go my way, I'm all Yours now...'?

Every time I give God my heart, it's a harsh light on the fact that I kept a little bit for myself last time I did it. That I never really gave it all. That I took some back. I give Him everything as often as I hold it back from Him.

Don't get me wrong, it's better, I think, to say you're His each day, every day. I don't think that my hypocrisy is a reason to stop trying. But, how amazing would it be to actually give Him everything? What would it look like?

Where are the naked prophets? Where are their harlot wives?

Yes please.

My prayer is that my prayers would be true. If I expect Him to honour them, maybe so should I...

Elephant mice.

All I know is that beautiful in me is You... beautiful in me is You.

(All... I... know...) Every good thing, every true thing, beautiful in me is You, beautiful in me is You.

I see a thousand young men, they're all marching in time with the war on their doorsteps and their lovers behind them, and all of their glory flows back to their master, but they care not for honor, for they wear His robes.

I'm tired of striving to be, who You already say that I am. I am Yours...

Take what You need to take, say what You need to say to make me who I am meant to be, You can have it all.

-- My Epic: Author.


God is pretty good to me. The past week or so has been huge testament to this. I am thankful for the following things: grace, healing, risks, foreign men dressed as death, Yorkshire tea and readybrek munchies after a night out (amazing), Text-a-Toastie, action songs at church, small children, bole hill, giggling fits, second chances (and third, fourth, fifth...)

-and there are more to come. Merci beaucoup mes aime.

Jehovah-nissi.

Sometimes I spend a day and a half in church and wind up feeling further from God than at the beginning.

--edit: 11.32am--

That statement isn't really accurate, on further pondering.

First is this- when I feel far away, it's usually because I'm facing the wrong direction. If I turned around, I'd be nose to nose because He's always right behind me waiting. This is a picture I'm getting a lot.

Second- the lovesick person (as a wonderful friend reminded me yesterday) is constantly in a state of both complete contentedness and completely insatiable longing. Sometimes I focus on one more than the other. I either get complacent, basking in my comfortable life of security in God, just floating, drifting, serenely and joyfully. Or I fix my eyes on what I don't have, what aspects of His character that I want to see more of, and I long, I covet, I search. There needs to be a balance more than 60% of the time. To be satisfied and secure, yet still ridiculously excited for new revelation.

Yes please.

Tennyson-

"O tell her, brief is life but love is long."