Maybe some of what we should remember...

I have carried on pondering these thoughts of remembering and it has struck me that we do need to remember so many things but one is that we live in a free country where it is safe to protest.
My daughter was on the student protest in London on Weds (10th Nov 2010) and she has some photos of some of the demonstrators who got into the Millibank building. She did also get glass in her eye when they knocked the windows out which a kindly policeman sorted out for her and she is fine. Just a boosted ego!!
But what has struck me, especially as we are doing about apartheid in Cultural Studies is how free were are in the country to protest and how people are seen, on the whole as individuals. Oh people will cry Police brutality at some things. I wonder if we expect are Police to be more than human at times.
But when Tabi was hut she was seen as something separate to what was going on, and was treated accordingly. In many other countries she could have been beaten and arrested just because of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even these anarchists will not be beaten until they confess, will not be placed in a dank prison where they may never get out of.
Ok we might say that the government will not take any notice of these protest, which is what has led to a lot of apathy over recent years on protesting but at least we are free and safe to do it.
Let us maybe remember what we could've been.

Remembrance Day

A day to remember.
But to remember what?
The origins of Remembrance Day were so that Europe would remember what happened in The Great War.
That was the 1st World War to us now.
So many wars have happened since then.
So many young men have died.
What are we remembering?
I find it all very confusing, especially as I spent years as a Peace protester - an interesting oxymoron!
I forgot again to remember the 2 minutes silence at 11 o'clock as did my young companions. But what could I have told them if I had remembered.
In Bath at 8.45 Monday morning a group of soldiers were putting poppies in the a lovely stone cross on the ground outside the abbey and seemed to be doing the 11th November service which seemed a bit strange.
Now these soldiers they know what they are remembering. I'm sure many have lost comrades.
My son is still talking of joining the army and still keeps going to the selection dates and being deferred for one reason or another but still the journey there continues. I pray that war will be over by the time they let him in but Jesus seemed to promise that there would be wars and rumours of wars till He returned so unless He comes back before the Army or whoever take Ben then the wars will continue.
As I've been writing this I think what I shall remember is Jesus who fought the ultimate war with the evil one for our sakes so that we could be reconciled with God. Jesus took on Himself all those things that cause wars; jealousy, fear, greed, control. And because of Him we can find peace and freedom in this world in our hearts, and in the next totally.
So often too the world does the same to Jesus as they do for the soldiers that have died; they don't understand and so they just ignore it.
Please help me, Lord, to remember those mortal men who died so that I live in a free country, so that we can go an protest like the students did yesterday, but also help me to remember You, dear Jesus, who died for me so that I can be totally free.

Course!

Oh and forgot to say in update - I've sent off my university application to do History and Creative Writing in Bath Spa, and 2nd choice of History in either Bath or Bristol. My tutor was full supportive. My personal statement came together really quickly and easily. Interesting how that is so often the case when we do what we should be doing. So now it is just waiting for the whole UCAS process to happen and to get accepted in one of these.
Please pray its Bath Spa as it would just be so much easier to get to and I'd love to do the joint honors of History and Creative Writing.

Witnessing

I have realized when I decide to let God in on stuff just how much I want to talk about Him.
Since starting college life has been a bit up and down, a struggle to put it mildly. I have had a long chat with God after being told I needed more inner healing, after a throwaway remark I made, and not having the time to be able to spare to fit it in. Interesting one of the things I'm stressed with is finding time to do everything and yet here was someone suggesting how to fill more of my time!! Duh!!
Anyway long chat which seemed to help, but one of the things I did ask Him was, silly though it may seem, what book I should do for my book review. We had to do something fictional and I just love reading so it was hard to choose which one to pick. The one I was reading at the time didn't seem right. Anyway I picked a Francine Rivers one, Atonement Child, which is about a Christian girl who gets raped and people's reaction to the whole thing of whether she should abort the baby or not. In my talk I managed to link it in with Mary, the mother of Jesus, and of how maybe she'd had it suggested that she have an abortion, and maybe that was why she went off to stay with Elizabeth until she was too far pregnant. I managed to weave in God being a God of love and grace who we can trust not a God of rules.
But the most interesting thing to come out of this, even before I got to do my talk, is that I have had so many opportunities to talk about God; from my testimony, to explaining about love and grace and so much more.
It is like I was willing to make my self vulnerable in doing this book talk, which actually was only 2-3 minutes with no questions after, and God has just opened doors for my willing heart to just speak out. It is all very exciting.
Also for me it is all much more real than going to do Healing on The Streets or other forms of street evangelism or witnessing. I have always preferred the sitting around chatting to friends and telling my story. And what has amazed me is just how accepting people are of me.
Maybe its because this time together is going to be short but maybe too its because having been challenged on hurts inside me I have opened up my relationship to God again and let Him in to do the healing - not a course or program!!

Medicines

Another chance for a quick blog before starting back to college on Monday!!

This time I've been thinking about how we in the West view healing and medicines. I have seen how the British health service has taken my father-in-law and step father and treated each of their ailments as individual ailments but never as holistic. And yet as Christians we are happy to send someone to the local hospital after we've prayed for healing for them if nothing happens. But to suggest sending someone to a herbalist, who deals in holistic medicine and how may or may not be a Christian is seen as wrong. We seem to put our trust in the trained professionals whether doctors or preachers. Again I find that if I, in certain places, were to stand up and preach, prophecy, whatever, I would be asked where I got my training from and if I said just from God I could be looked as askance.
I am not saying that we go to untrained herbalists or acupuncturists or other types of alternative healers, but I am also saying that not all doctors are Christians and so maybe we should not put so much trust in them as we do.
Perhaps again we need to go back to trusting God and asking Him what His plan is for our healing!!

Best Laid Plans.....

I was planning to blog every day because of it being half term but there has been family and friends to catch up with and assignments to get sorted and God on the move.

There seemed to be a plan at one point at to what I was doing but now things have shifted. I think I am being led down a path I'm not sure about which will not have the same clout and recognition I had been hoping and then this morning I read in "Reconciliation and Justice as a Way of Life" in an article from John S Holden called "A Witness and a Testimony" (oh this is where college seems to be kicking in - everything is referenced!!) that I am very slowly working through, 'You want for instance to do some great service and to fill some great sphere. but Christ's answer to your longing is to set you down to face the difficulties of a small work in a place where there is little recognition'.
I have had to put together a personal statement in my university application process and have found it very hard. It is very much about honouring oneself which is just so hard anyway. But I had planned to do Social Policy on a number of accounts; it makes going to university at my age worth it as it will be doing something worthwhile, and also I have had this prophecy about how I have the keys for industry, agriculture, the arts, education, government, and so much more that I believed going into something Social Policy related would be the way God would fulfill that.
Well after a trying week trying to do a Sociology assignment and get this personal statement to be on the Social Policy angle I gave it up to God. Oh why didn't I do that in the first place. And then started on a Cultural Studies/History assignment which I was really enjoying.
Well what seems to have come out of it, and from this sentence from this article and other types of confirmation is that it looks like I'll be doing History and Creative Writing. I've always wanted to do Creative Writing but have been put off as it seems so popular at the moment. I just love to write. And also I have always loved History and in fact said not so long back that I wish I'd been encouraged to do History when I was 18.
I have a friend at the moment who is struggling with his life but he says he wont pray about it because God may not give him the answer he wants. I know God isn't obtuse but sometimes if we are willing to say, and mean, 'Jesus, You are Lord of my life' then sometimes He does what we don't expect. Or what I feel in my case, is pushing me where I wanted to go but didn't think it was 'good enough'.
Thank goodness we have a loving Father who's on our side. Shame we don't trust Him more :-)

Jesus Christ Superstar

I've been meaning to blog the thought on going to this for about 3 weeks now but the busyness of college and family life is taking its toil, so some of my first impressions will not be there but here goes -

Firstly it was great to see an amazing rock opera done with such skill and style by an amateur dramatic group. And with the director being an acquaintance of ours that made it even more fun.
From what I remember neither Andrew Lloyd Webber or Tim Rice were Christians when they wrote this and I know this director isn't which actually makes it an interesting piece to wonder at why they did it. But to me, in that last week of Jesus' earthly life so often in Church we forget that He was fully human as well as full divine. Here was a real man, with feelings, knowing He was going to His death, a death that He had witness probably hundreds of times and so knew how horrid, how painful it could be, and by this point would know what His human body could endure. He knew what the total humiliation was going to be and I do wonder if He feared He would let everyone down, that His humanness would totally take over.
I'm not sure about others, but for me very much the fact that Jesus could go through all that fully human and still obey God, that He did have fears and concerns, that He did wonder what the whole point to it was, why after all His time on earth there were still beggars, cripples, people who needed healing, people who still didn't recognize who He really was, what was really inside of Him, and yet inspite of all that He was still willing to obey God, still willing to go to the cross and die in the hope that He and His Father had got things sorted, that He was doing the right thing.
Sometimes I get upset that people don't know who I am, that they don't see what is inside of me and because of who they are hear things that I say in a different way to what I mean, and yet God knows and actually I am just to be open and to obey God. And if Jesus truly was fully human, as well as fully divine, if Jesus also felt insecure in His mission, and had real human feelings and yet still obeyed then I know I can do it too.
I wonder why so often though we do not want to see the humanness of Jesus. I wonder if that would mean that if we did then we would know that His live and His obedience to God are obtainable, whereas if we accentuate His divinity over and above His humanity then we can keep telling ourselves that we will never attain to what Jesus did!!!
I do remember someone once teaching that if we could get our heads round the fact that Jesus' divinity in His humanness came from the same Holy Spirit that lives in us then we would be so so different.