bad man

is it stupid to dread emails that will never come? sometimes i wonder if subconsciously i want them to come. the emails im thinking of are the kind where an explosion of hate and unhappiness occurs between someone and you, where previously you thought things were absolutely fine, if not dormant.

its almost as if i dont expect the world to be.....ok. sometimes i expect the world to throw me an angry email. or a raised fist - or a concealed dagger.

to write love on her arms

merry christmas everybody!!
the parents are sleeping and its only quarter to 4pm - in keeping with the tradition they set themselves last year without knowing it!!

seeing as ill likely forget, i must remember, when i put some money into the account that lets me buy these kind of things, to get this.


















'To write love on her arms' is something that ive heard about for a while and i think its a great idea. ive often thought that if there was any way to help people with depression and suicidal tendencies, then i'd like to be able to do it. Theres a guy i live with who is working with the samaritans who has just trained to be able to do that. in all likelihoods, i probably couldn't, because i'd put my foot in it and make things worse for those people (a la the picture)...

saying that, i count myself lucky - when i was a teen i did have low seasons where, had there been no intervention from God, i would have stayed in a bad place with no peace for the rest of my life. unfortunately, 'getting God' isn't a tangible enough voice for those who just dont want to hear God, yet are in these problems - but if we can show all that he stands for and see the results of that (like the aim of TWLOHA), then thats a way of helping people towards something that stands for peace, whether theyd want to admit the source of it or not. at the time id only admit it because God was the only thing that got me out of a depressed apathetic unemployed state - and nothing else but him worked! But more and more you come to appreciate that he is a rescuer, and more than that, you can respect him, and find him to be like a father, knowing that with him you are given a new status and a new identity. not worthless, but in Christ.

Funny though, that wasnt the first thing I thought I was going to write down! Thought I'd mention how this t-shirt's line is a lyric from the song "everything starts where it ends" by a band called lovedrug (sadly theyre unspotifyable!!) - I didnt realise theyd done this t-shirt, and I bloooooooooomin love this band. But the blog went on a rather jesusy twang instead, ahhhh well - its Christmas after all :)


Happy birthday j!

smells

i forgot how much of an urhghghghh-fest it is to replenish a cat litter tray, especially if it hasnt been done for ages. but, actually, i have a massive amount of respect for my cat for ever venturing to go in there. why? think of it in this way.

cats have approximately twice the sense of smell as humans. i consider cat litter to be one of the most extreme smells that a human nose is ever going to encounter - and cats, especially one as old and housebound as my chessie, would venture in and get the double the pungent dose, pretty much every day.

i often wonder the coincidence is tantamount to torture, that the things that involve cats smell so flipping much (cat food as well) and yet they have to bear with it more than i do.

in true south park moral-of-the-story style, "i think i learned something today."

what though?

"poo smells."

infinity

"All men are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of the Lord stands forever."

i am Such a finite being. i chase after the finite, wishing that it were infinite. sometimes, under guilt of this, i underdefine the finite - thinking that it is nothing. but, we are not nothing - not in god's sight.
jesus did amazing things, taking the form of man under the judgement of sin that was not his - and gave meaning to finite existence. he gives the opportunity for people to follow him, to know a life dead to sin and resurrected to infinity. "life to the full" - what a phrase.

the lord knows mankind strive to live forever. isaac newton bent most of his thought on it - so much so, that the major discoveries that we associate with him now, gravity, calculus, optics, are mere side-projects, peripheral (in his eyes) to his quest in seeking successful alchemy. he never attained this dream.

and, he was a christian.

how straightforward is it to see the finite as our saviour, in comparison to being asked to trust in something we cannot grasp as our lasting hope,

but how glorious are the results now, let alone in heaven, in opting for the image of the invisible god.

"Guard my life and rescue me;
let me not be put to shame,
for I take refuge in you"

sometimes you have to close your eyes to see,

sometimes to walk you have to get down on your knees.

fighting for independence against one who can claim authorship of each language and its lexicon is probably a bad idea. its likely that they are the ones who can truly say they give independence meaning. it's their invention, out of nothing. not exempting even the word nothing.

or, in forum terms, they got there

FIRST!

and knew that only He is capable of living in that way.

stats

i might explode with puns!

stats - its more significant, its unbiased, the odds are in its favour, i expect great things from it, likelihood is it is more practical than maths, looks like a model, theres always potential for a relationship, it is sufficient, theres a degree of freedom to it, and my null hypothesis is that theres plenty of puns to be had at the 5% level.

loyalties

my life should not revolve around something that revolves around an axis - for in this sense even my idols revolve around that which is invisible.

today

hail to the thief reclaims its title again as my favourite radiohead album.

transparency and, food

i notice within myself and others that sometimes there is a wish that jesus never said anything about the great comission; "go and make disciples of all nations" - this bears the unfortunate coincidence of us needing to be transparent, and being willing to share your faith. "please lord, send someone else"! is the cry..

the reason it comes as a challenge for me sometimes is that i do not want people to look too close at me and scrutinise the things i do - sometimes i would mimic the advice dad would give me, and implore people "not to do what i did!". i am being challenged by the god's word to live a life that represents Christ, i know that i won't always, and even if i always did live the life, people will often see only what they want to see.

but this fortress of negativity can be trumpeted down to the ground, when we realise that what we have been asked to share is, not inherently ourselves, but Jesus. God didnt think that it would be cool if people knew about Me especially, that thered be a humdrum of people that would follow "jethro's way", but he did think it cool that people would know about the spirit of christ in me.

in other thoughts,



lately i have been thinking of the good news of jesus christ and his incredible love as a bit like a dinner that is monstrous in size - the kind that i like to make when i get very hungry, the "mount doom" of chilli or the bottomless pancake mix. just by yourself it seems a bit silly, because, in reality, you cannot physically eat all that much, its illogical to try and fit it all in. you can enjoy it, and get pretty bloated on its deliciousness. however, it makes much more sense to give some chilli to your housemate. then you get the magnified experience of someone else enjoying it, also, the dinner's goal has now reached out futher than just meeting my needs, the purpose of it becomes more well rounded. the significance of the meal increases, yet, theres some more left over..

tomorrow will be better

oh boyo.

in some ways i wish i hadnt gone to 'cloudy days in summer', the reading family church's day dedicated towards looking at mental illness biblically and practically.

before going, i had it in my mind that to give in to admitting depression meant a plethora of things - namely that you admit self-indulgence, and an elitism shared by other people with depression for the grounds to say the very annoying "you can never know what its like", and bearing an unfortunate glorification of being in this state - because when it seems like it's all you have, you cling to sadness with all your might. some talk of wanting to escape, but if people were free from depression, there is always the idea that you can sorely miss it. preaches and books often ask us to look deep into ourselves and be honest about knowing your personal idols. what if you identify your idols to be "sadness, despair and isolation"? all this talk of 'i cant help it', what if you 'can help it'??

however, this isnt the biblical approach to mental illness, and certainly 'cloudy days in summer' was out to destroy these ideas. it turns out depression is not a sinful state, no more than being human is a sinful state. the problem with that, in my mind though, is that you can then allow it, and justify it, when it wants to appear on the scene again. i had safeguards to make sure that i never fell back, feeling guilty about feeling guilty worked pretty well to quash any signs of it. but it turns out this safeguard was never the way that god wished me to approach the idea. its very very clear to me that i need a safeguard. but if i let a false one down, is there not the danger of leaving your mind "like an empty house" for demons and all their friends to come invite themselves in. in a way, this is the price you pay for letting yourself be transformed by the renewing of the mind through scriptures. it sends you back to the throne of God, back to mere faith in Him that He wont let it happen.

blessings, woes

today was interesting. i was able to do what i love doing quite a lot (ie, hit stuff as an excuse for music in the name of god). i also ate some lovely food that i didnae have to pay for - and in good company.
it was nice to speak to wantage hall dude andy, who i haven't the chance to speak much with before, so i am grateful for each opportunity as it passes. seeing as the talk at church this morning was on diversity, it was fitting that i met for the first time a brazilian named rodrigo today, who came to the student lunch. he says he prefers britain to america so far. i wonder if i would agree. next term he will be going to greece, and im pretty sure i prefer britain to greece - there's too much that would remind me of maths there - erg. i also found out that the maths assignments that i was worried about are not due in as soon as i had thought, so that brings a relief indeed.

So while those things were good (and i received a leftover swiss roll too) i did receive some bad news from dad about my family.
While we are not redeemed to live a life of comfort, we are not redeemed temporarily, as if to be caught and turned to slaves again. "life to the full" is being expressed in what is going on here and now, and all that it entails. sometimes it takes something terrible to show up how different god is to the terrible, like being a glaring contrast - and in doing so, we get a realisation of how great he is.

convinced, persuaded

so i thought itd be a nifty idea to do blogging again. as it happens, ive missed not being able to put thoughts down on a page. habitual checking might mean i actually learn something, instead of thinking things over once and then forgetting for the rest of a lifetime. even if the things themselves are... silly. aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah here goes