A Simple Prayer
Search me O God
Search me and find
Any way in me that does not
reflect Your purity
Refine me O God
In the fire of Your gaze
That I might be holy in all of my ways
Take me deeper Lord
Draw me closer Lord…
Give me a heart
after Your own heart
Give me a mind
that is pure and pleasing to You
Fill me with love
With Your power
and Your joy
That this world
might see You in me.
Words of Vicky Beeching, echoed in my heart.
My Voiced Thoughts
I was pointed to an interesting website that scans blogs and creates a word cloud of the most common words used in that particular blog. This piqued my interest considerably – I’m keen to see what the thoughts I voice are. So here is my word cloud…
It seems that I think about
the bigges words most often… interesting. Christian, church, God, Jesus, love, one, peace, people, prayer, truth and worship. I think this is a pretty good representation of the things I think about not just online, but in private, too. (Obviously things are less specific online because I think about things in relation to the people in my life – I don’t think of things just for the sake of it, most of the time.
Love is Bittersweet
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
than never to have loved at all.
There is, I believe, a little bit of doubt as to the author of the above maxim; some attribute the adage to Saint Augustine, others point to Alfred Lord Tennyson (English poet, 1809-1892) In Memoriam, 1850, line 27, stanza 4. Regardless of who it was that wrote it, I don’t believe they had the slightest idea what they were talking about.
Never to have loved is by far the better position. Obviously to be in a loving relationship with a partner who loves you in return is the ideal position – that is a given – but when faced with the choice between love lost or no love, I would side with never having loved as the better.
I can’t argue a case for my choice except that I know what love lost means… I know what love lost feels like. I have in the past loved someone who was in love with me but who then fell out of love with me. It hurts. Love, if it is real love, is all about compromise, honesty, openness, sharing, trust. And in each and all of those there is risk. (If there is no risk in the relationship, there is no love.) To try and mitigate the risk would be to stifle and suffocate the love.
When two people are in love with one another it is amazing. Your thoughts are captivated by the other person. Your heart beats faster when you’re around them. You worry about them, are concerned for them, want the best for them, would probably do just about anything for them. You hurt when they hurt. You are happiest when they are happy. Each kiss, though in time lasts but a moment, on the lips lasts forever. Each gaze into one another’s eyes, though in time is fleeting, in the soul an age passes.
But, when the relationship goes pear-shaped and love is lost. It is agonising.
Though, that’s not the only type of love. One need not be in a relationship to love someone else. By far the most cruel relationship I have been in and that perhaps man can conceive is that of unrequited love – that is, love that is not returned in kind. Where one loves another, but the other either has no idea or loves not in return. I have been in both those situations, too. It hurts more than I can adequately articulate. It’s like being desperate for a glass of water in the desert, but not because it’s so much more. It’s like crying out when your blind and lost and cold with no one answering, but not because it’s so much more. To be honest, it’s like nothing else… unrequited love is pure hell.
To have loved and lost that love sucks. To experience unrequited love is hell.
How must Jesus have felt when He displayed His love for us on the cross? Well, He experienced hell… literally [Apostle's Creed].
Starting Fresh
We’re currently in the middle of Lent. Lent goes way back in the history of the church, to well before the split of the eastern and Roman church. In tradition, the first Monday of Lent would have been spent by gathering together all the fat, milk, meat, etc. that wouldn’t keep for the duration of the fourty-day fast. These foodstuffs wouldn’t be wasted; rather, a big feast would be had on the Tuesday, Mardi Gras (tr. “Fat Tuesday”). (This is why the first Tuesday in Lent has come to be known as Pancake Tuesday – other than the meat, all of the fat, milk, etc. make up the incredients of pancakes. Also, in the Orthodox church, the meat would be used up in the preceding Barbeque/Smokey Thursday.) The first Tuesday is also called Shrove Tuesday, which comes from the tradition of shriving. The penitent Christian would come before their priest (in both Roman and Orthodox traditions) and confess their sins. The priest would then absolve them of their sins.
Thus Lent begins with starting afresh, making sure we have a clean slate – both in house and in spirit.
When I think about Lent in that sense, it gives me a great desire to enter into it and to follow it through for fourty days. However, this year I broke Lent after about four days. I had chosen to go off something that I really like and I had decided to ensure I do something that I really don’t do often enough. I have not lived up to either resolution.
If a fruit of the Spirit is self-control [Galatians 5:23, NIV], and it is, then I’m worried. It means I am stifling the Spirit in some way, enforcing my own will, chasing after my own desires. (This is a discussion for expansion and which I will leave for another post.)
Lent is meant to last fourty days simply to remind us of Jesus’ fourty days of temptation in the desert [Matthew 4:1-11]. But there’s no reason why I can’t shorten Lent, is there? Try again, start afresh with a clean slate. I mean, that’s precisely what Lent is all about.
The Unused Weapon
I feel so guilty.
Tonight I have nothing to do. I had hoped to invite a few friends round to watch a Monty Python movie but time slipped by and I didn’t, and I have since been told that two of the potential invitees are at a meeting. So, I was left with nothing to do tonight.
After dinner I was thinking and I decided I should try something completely radical for me - spend a good part of the evening in prayer. I have plenty to pray for personally and many people who I want to intercede for.
Have I prayed yet? No.
In fact, as soon as I shut down my laptop after making the decision, all of a sudden I became really sleepy and got a sore head. So I lay on my bed and dozed off for fourty-five minutes. Now, I am sitting feeling sorry for myself and for some reason typing it up on here.
I hate that I find prayer so difficult. It is the best weapon I have against the powers of darkness, and I’m not even convinced I know how to use it properly – I’m a complete rookie. I want to pray, but when I sit down to actually do it… it’s just so hard.
God, grant me forgivness and give me strength.
Joy
The past few weeks in work have been pants – I’ve done nothing worthwhile. In fact, I’ve been bored stiff. I got so bored one day that I seriously (and I mean seriously) considered packing it all in and leaving.
I am a software engineer and write financial applications for a US-based worldwide insurance company. I find no joy in what I do. I have no passion to do it. I resent the fact that I write software for a multinational company whose purpose is simply to legally take money from people. I resent that that company is based in the US (I have an irrational “thing” against the US).
But, having said all that, I enjoy going into work. I enjoy the craic with my colleagues, I enjoy the discussions we get into, and I enjoy the fact that every day I’m there I laugh at least once an hour. (Of course, I also enjoy the money. Software engineers are well paid people, although I have no idea why… it’s easy these days, if you ever actually get a chance to write code.)
Where do I find joy then? Well, I find joy in knowing that there are more churches springing up in the UK than Starbucks coffee houses [source]. I find joy in my relationships with my friends. When they make me laugh, it’s more than mere fleeting happiness - if I were a poet I would write that when my friends make my mouth laugh, at the same time they are making my heart sing. (Or something more poetic than that.) I find joy in playing my guitar and in singing to my God. In fact, it was in doing just that that has prompted this post. I find joy in looking up to the sky on a clear night and getting lost in the stars. I find joy in watching one person help another person. I feel joy when I stop, when I am still and when I remind myself that God is right there with me.
I find joy wholly and solely in God, and in Him I know I will have everlasting joy. As morbid as it sounds, I cannot wait until I enter heaven… until I stand there (if I will even stand!) and see Him who suffered, died and rose again… see Him who has loved me always… until I worship Him perfectly in spirit and in truth.
I find joy in God, nothing and no one else.
I pray that I will look to no other person or thing to bring me joy for the rest of my life. Being a software engineer, I am paid better than most and I want to admit that there are times when I find myself struggling with the money I have. (If you, reader, are not a Christian then this sounds foolish to you, but bear in mind that I am not like you.) There are times I scare myself with what I think about what I can do with money: I can buy more clothes, I can buy a whack of crap at the local shop, I can entertain myself with almost anything. And, should I do that, while I sit there in my new clothes, eating sweets and playing on my new XBox 360 or sitting in the cinema or sipping my coffee at Starbucks, there are millions of people in poverty. Millions of people hungry and cold.
Damn our capitalistic, pluralistic and selfish culture to hell. It enrages me so much that I want to say things that I know I would be ashamed of.
I have no idea where I was going with this post… sorry.
