On a tall tall cliff

For those of you who don't know, presently 2 days a week I'm working as an assistant at a preschool. Childcare is full on work, but kids can be incredible to work with and can teach you tons and tons about anything and everything. My friend Georgie says that kids are just little people who haven't learnt to act as though they aren't selfish yet.

Plus how could anyone be unhappy while cutting squares of coloured papaer into tiny pieces?

But today I read a book called 'On a tall tall cliff' which trumped even that. The story is about two friends, Puffle and Busby who live on the edge of a tall tall cliff. One day Puffle approaches Busby and asks him if he can borrow some things out of his garden, actually the entirity of his garden, including the plants. The story continues as Puffle asks Busby to 'lend' him everything he owns, from each section of his house, until nothing is left. After each request an illusive but insistant Puffle pronounces 'I know it's a lot to ask, but it will REALLY help'.

Just after Busby has given his entire house over the edge of the cliff collapses and where his house stood falls into the sea below. Puffle turns around and says 'See Busby, I've been studying our cliff for some time now and I knew what would happen- you have really helped Busby, you've really helped me to help you.'

The message is profoundly simple, but it still took me completely by surprise the first time I read it. See God doesn't ask us for everything for himself- he asks it so that we might be saved and grow in him.

Everyday Miracles

My family

Recently I had a discussion with a friend about the nature of Christian family. I think there's something really beautiful about the body of Christ being referred to as a family- the source of our first ideas and habits, where unconciously we learn how to act and react to our world. For those who are blessed with loving parents, honest sibings and the odd family pet it can be a place of encouragement, expression and growth into the person God wants you to be- yourself.

Unfortunately though, even in Christian circles, this model of family is marred by sin now more then ever. Some of us have never had the opportunity to know our biological mother or father for one reason or another, and for more of us perhaps it would've been easier if indeed that had been the case. Feuds between parents, grandparents, extended family and the like can affect not only our perception of relationships in general but our relationship with God. I don't think that we should underestimate how a lack of trust, lack of support, lack of generousity or lack of attention in our earthly relationships can affect the way we approach trust, support, generousity or attention from God. One of the hardest leaps we are called to make is to give as GOD gives, love as GOD loves, re-write the unhelpful conditioning of the world and see relationship in light of the gospel, as God created it to be.

I think too a challenge lies in seeing our earthly friends, acquaintances, elderly church members, visiting foreign students, ministers, sunday school students, biblestudy leaders and uni group members as BROTHERS and SISTERS, and relating to them accordingly. I know for myself, the challenge is to let people in, to share with them as closely as I do my family, and not to expect that just because we're not biologically related they won't go out of their way to help me, because that's what family do. Some other people have a problem going out of their way for other people. Some people have a problem communicating with people on an entirely different wave length to them...and the list goes on. I think sometimes our view of family can be jaded by large evening church congregations, or uni faculty Christian groups where getting to know people is relatively easy because of the amount that we can have in common. We can be lured into a false sense of understanding by operating in environments which in essence are very similar to our 'original' family- where many character traits, interests and activities are mutual. The struggle is treating like a grandmother that eldery woman from the 8am service whom you've only met once and are sure suffers from memory loss- of which both the awkward nature of the relationship as well as the lack of common grounding are ample reason for us to keep a distance- "besides, surely she gains support from someone more like herself?"

If we really want to body of Christ to look like a family it's going to take work to get it that way. Nearly two years ago when I joined my current church, I mentioned to a friend that I felt the congregation was quite diseparate and that I didn't have anything in common with the other girls there. She responded that relationships were mostly work, not common interest, and that indeed relationships where you were required to work could be richer then those that came more naturally. I appreciated her approach, and found it to be true.

Another helpful comment I use often is one from my old saxophone teacher- Fake it 'till you make it. The muso's out there will understand what I mean, basically if you aren't to the point where you feel you can be family or ask people to be your family, pretend that it is that way, and you'll be surprised at how soon the pretence becomes genuine. It is very hard to feel indifference towards someone you are trying very hard to love.

And again and again we are reminded of how God, while we were in sin, loved us first and continues to hold onto us wherever we go.

In God's hands

I just watched a horrific youtube clip on child abuse.

For good measure I googled 'Australian abuse stats'.

This came from an article produced by the Australian Institute of Family studies- found at http://www.aifs.gov.au/nch/pubs/sheets/rs1/rs1.html

The most recent national figures from the AIHW indicate that in Australia, during 2007-08, there were 317,526 reports of suspected child abuse and neglect made to state and territory authorities.
While the number of notifications increased, the increase observed was not as great as that observed between previous reporting periods. In fact, the increase observed between 2006-07 and 2007-08 is the smallest national increase recorded for total notifications over the past 10 years...

A child may be the subject of more than one notification - in 2007-08, the 317,526 notifications recorded during the financial year concerned 194,937 children.

Some children who are found to have suffered abuse and neglect are removed from their homes by child protection authorities and placed in out-of-home care. Nationally, the number of children in out-of-home care has risen each year from 1998 to 2008. There were 31,166 children in out-of-home care on 30 June 2008. Almost one-third (31%) of children in out-of-home care were aged 10-14 years. A further 30% were aged 5-9 years, 25% were aged less than 5 years and 14% were aged 15-17 years.

At 30 June 2008, there were 9,074 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care. The national rate of Indigenous children in out-of-home care was almost 9 times the rate for other children

Traditionally, child protection data have been perceived as a conservative estimate of the occurrence of child maltreatment (Bromfield & Higgins, 2004).

The pattern for total substantiations in 2007-08 differed from the pattern observed for notifications and investigations. The total number of substantiations (of notifications received in 2007-08) across Australia was 55,120. This is an 8% decrease on the number of substantiations recorded in the previous financial year (60,230). The 55,120 notifications recorded during the financial year concerned 32,098 children.
The decrease in the total number of substantiations recorded in Australia was the first decrease recorded for total substantiations over the past 10 years. As can be seen from Figure 1, overall, the number of total substantiations increased between 1999-00 and 2007-08 (by approximately 123%). The decrease in substantiations was also not present in all jurisdictions - Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory all recorded increases in total substantiations recorded for 2007-08 (see Table 2). As the AIHW (2009) observed, further years' data are necessary to determine whether the decrease in 2007-08 will be a continuing pattern.

The end of the clip asked, who's going to fight for those who can't fight for themselves?

According to John...

I'm listening to John Mayer' s 'Gravity' at the moment. Unfortuantely his album Continuum was ruined for me by a short stint of work in a local CD shop while it was big...loop has never had a more literal meaning...

But I like the lyrics of this one...

Gravity is working against me,
and gravity wants to bring me down.
Oh I'll never know, what makes this man
with all the love that his heart can stand
Dream of ways to throw it all away

Gravity is working against me
and gravity wants to bring me down.
Oh twice as much ain't twice as good
and can't sustain like one half could
It's wanting more that's going to send me to my knees

...

Whoa gravity stay the hell away from me,
Whoa gravity has taken better men then me,
How can that be?

Just keep me where the light is
Just keep me where the light is
Just keep me where the light is...

I think the Christian outlook can be a little grim sometimes. We are told to expect suffering, and sometimes I feel unfortunate to have discovered this reality so young- just a lifetime of suffering to look forward to...
But a lifetime too of learning about and from God, and beyond this lifetime, another one to be in his eternal presence. I hope he'll keep me where the light is.

The Rock

I found a really cool verse in 1 Peter this morning...had to share.
1 Pet 3:17-22
17It is better, if it is God's will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. 18For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, 19through whom[a] also he went and preached to the spirits in prison 20who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, 21and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge(ESV has appeal)[b] of a good conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22who has gone into heaven and is at God's right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission (ESV has having been subjected) to him.

I'll leave you to think amoungst yourselves... :)

Just call me Theo

It's a pretty sweet name hey. If I ever get a dog, I think I'll call it Theo- can it be a girls name??

Haha this post is not on the millions of cool names out there though-Sorry Jen :) It's on a few discoveries I'm having in regards to theology at the moment.

The first is that knowing theology isn't knowing God. If you enjoy reading something meaty I'd highly recommend JI Packer's Knowing God it's an awesome book and really covers this idea in the first couple of chapters. Ironically it then goes on to discuss a whole lot of different dictrinal issues within the church at the moment, but the real crux of each of these issues is that for one reason or another we, as a church, have distanced ourselves from the wonders of the gospel message by learning it as theology, as a set of facts and ideas, removed from our own lives. It's reflected in our preaching, our biblestudies, our uni conferences, kids camps and sunday schools. We learn ABOUT God all the time-we just find it much harder to believe, because 'we weren't there' or 'the culture was different' or 'we can't see God's specific work today'.

This year's Engage Convention (held in the Blue Mountains by KCC) topic hits our weakness on the head- it was called A Faith that Works. Here's the description...

Faith in Jesus has to be real.It has to work on Monday.Connected. Integrated. Making sense.Actually doing something.
engage09 A faith that works.

Whoever thought of this is brilliant- I didn't end up going but wish I had've because it's exactly where we're up to- we know a lot ABOUT God, but it's not hitting our lives, because we still don't know GOD very well. Let me explain it another way, I think I know a lot ABOUT Kevin Rudd. I know he's the PM, he has a wife and some kids, I know where he lives, essentially his job role, I know he only sleeps 3 hrs a night, gets paid $340 000 a yr (for the time being), if I really wanted to I could probably google what his favourite colour is. But I wouldn't say that I know Kevin Rudd very well.

How would I get to know him better? Well if I spoke to him regularly, if we spent some time together, if he came to my family Christmas and met my mum and I took his dog for a walk every Thursday morning...if we looked after one another, confided in one another, prayed for one another- if we had some sort of RELATIONSHIP then I feel I would be able to say I knew him.
Isn't it similar to our standing with God? If we spent some time together, if we spoke regularly, if he supported me, and I prayed to him, wouldn't I understand him better? I don't need to be a walking concordance to know God (not to downplay the importance of reading His Word- that is after HE speaks to US after-all!) but I do need to build a relationship with Him.
I don't think we like this option as a culture. I don't think our culture deals in time anymore- in money, in information, in contacts sure, but time?? It's too inefficient-you can't achieve everything the world needs you to if you're generous with your time; it's is a commodity we permanently don't have which is why everyone's trying to get better at managing it. It's on restrictions more stringently governed then those set by the Sydney Water Board.

Yet, time is what God asks us to give.

We mightn't understand how things worked in Jesus' time as seamlessly as the first apostles. We mightn't be able to see God's every decision playing out today. Ironically I doubt the makings of the first church would've been as clear cut for Peter and John or Paul either- perhaps we like to believe that they were more in control of the situation then they actually were- but regardless of whether they were or not the difference is probably not what they knew ABOUT God but rather the relationship they were in with Him. They knew He was looking after them, they understood his provision and guidance. They prayed with ferverance, trusting in Him. Do we do the same?

I'll admit, I'm finding prayer painfully hard at the moment. I can't concentrate for 5 minutes with my eyes closed without my mind wandering off. I fidget and find it hard to pray alone. I'm praying each time I do come to Him that I would change. Graciously too he allows me to read things from His word that help me learn things of his character that make Him worthy of prayer. He inspires and encourages me to pray, and convicts me that serving at church, or singing to Him, or helping out a friend are all expressions of love towards Him INDIRECTLY but not directly. Directly my expression of love to Him is obedience, prayer, wholistic worship, peace and rejoicing in the knowledge of Him and reverent fear.

I need to work on the prayer, the more I discover the more important I'm realising it is.