Last night’s T.I.D.E. was all about the scripture. While I didn’t agree with absolutely everything that was said, one thing that did strike me was when the speaker said that she never reads the Bible without her notebook open beside her. She was once told “Why do you expect the Almighty God to speak to you if you’re not even prepared to write it down.”

This I found quite a challenge on a number of fronts – do I really expect God to speak everytime I open the bible? Do I always read scripture in such a way that I am listening in case God wants to speak. Do I ever read scripture like this (in my own personal time with God, rather than when preparing a sermon or whatever)?

So this morning I decided to slow down my reading during Morning Prayer, and really concentrate on the words, just to see if there was any little nugget I might find, or indeed if God might speak.

I can’t say I had any great revelation, but two things struck me about the Psalm, which was 139 – “Oh God you have search me and know me”. This is an extremely familiar psalm, much of which I know by heart (thanks to Andy Piercy’s song) – but the first part of v2 really struck me in a way I’m not sure it ever has before:

You mark out my journeys and my resting place

and are acquainted with all my ways.

It’s easy to think God marks out our journeys – when we’re out there doing stuff, especially stuff for God. But He also marks out our resting places. That is when we’re not doing anything, and life is in a holding pattern, God is still very much there in the middle of it.

The second thing that struck is that for the first time I understood something of what vv 19 and 22 are about:

¹⁹O that you would slay the wicked, O God,

  that the bloodthirsty might depart from me!

²²I hate them with a perfect hatred;

  they have become my own enemies also.

In the past this has always jarred, compared with the beautiful and gentle preceding verses, but I think having taken the whole Pslam really slowly, and come into the presence of this awesome God, I felt for the first time some of the anger the Psalmist expresses at those people who hurt, reject, and despise this amazing loving God. I might not got so far as to say “I hate them with a perfect hatred”, but I am just starting to get a glimpse of what might be going on. CS Lewis’s Reflection on the Psalms talk about this quite a lot, and it’s a book I’ve found very helpful, incidentally.

In our house group at the moment we’re watching a video of the TIDE course (Training In Discipleship and Evangelism) that is really really good. We’re only the second session, but already we feel that God has spoken to us and challenged us through it.

In particulary, session 2 was about holiness, and transparency, and I felt God saying that He wants us to have a “zero tolerance” approach to our own sin. It’s easy to adopt lots of little compromises, or think that historical sins can just be forgotten – but God rather wants his people to be absolutely pure, no skeletons in our closets!

Of course, we can’t go back and change the past, but what we can do is first and foremost confess it to God (and we know this only has to be done once – after that it’s dealt with and forgotten by God!), but we also, I believe, should make amends if possible. This might mean seeking out a person we’ve wronged and apologising, returning an item we borrowed but never returned. Rather awkwardly, it probably needs to be confessed to another person (be that the wronged party, or someone you know and trust).

In one sense none of this is new – but I think the thing that really struck me was that everything matters to God, even the stuff that seems really trivial. The three that the Holy Spirit brought to my mind were apparantly very small things from 16, 11, and 3 years ago respectively, but which never-the-less God had prompted me about many times, but I’d either waved away as silly, or delibrately ignored as I didn’t want to face the consequences.

And you know what – I’m deeply ashamed to say that it’s taken a serious illness of someone close to me that really stop and think about my priorities, and the holiness God is calling us, as Christians too. I think that zero sin is an inattainable goal for this life, but zero tolerance of sin needs to be taken on-board by everyone who would follow the Holy One.

Incidently, the TIDE course is produced by an organisation called Firelighters – find out more at www.firelighters.org.uk

To be honest, not all that. I’d be the first to concede this might be in part due to the watching conditions, which weren’t very good – but I failed to be absorbed. It’s hard to put my finger on why. So much of the book had been left out or changed (which I suppose was inevitable) – having read the book was pretty much a pre-requisite for understanding anything of what was happening. Several major characters essentially reduced to bit-parts (Sirius, Dumbledore, Snape, Hagrid, Malfoy), and very confusing messages about various ‘ships. The books, I think, suggest Ron and Hermione as partners, while the films use Ron and Hermione as comic relief, and paint Harry and Hermoine as soul-mates with what you’d expect to develop into a mature, loving, relationship. Mind you, I’ve always disliked the films’ portrails of Ron.

I was also very disappointed that so much of the film was so different from how I’d pictured it in my head. Perhaps it’s just un-nerving because Daniel Radcliffe et al are actually growing up, and it’s very hard to picture Harry as a 15/16 year old from the books (in the same timeless way as the Famous Five never grew up) – quite another to see Harry looking, well old.

Emma Watson too has lost the childhood innocence and beauty, although I wonder if that was delibrately down-played in order to make her transformation at the ball more surprising. But so much of the book’s subtely and humour was lost – to the extent that this has now slipped off my “DVDs to buy” list. Of yes, and what was with Victor Krum’s eyes when he was imperioed??? If it was that obvious, it would hardly cause a problem to the ministry now, would it?

On the plus side, the staging and special effects were really good – very easy to suspend disbelief for magic, Hogwarts, and dragons. Plus it felt more like the length of Men-in-black than Lord of the Rings – no hint of a numb bottom despite it’s 3 hours of screen time. While not a outright miss, definitely not a sure-fire hit either.

Sometimes it is the differences between people that are more interesting then what they’ve got in common. For instance, when I listen to music, I like to be utterly absorbed in it. I love turning it up to maximum so I can’t even hear myself singing along, and just rocking. I don’t do this most of the because (a) it’s usually antisocial, and (b) it damages my hearing. I remember when I was involved in student radio, which was ideal because you got shut in a soundproof box with broadcast quality equipment and monitors that went really loud. You had to be a little bit careful playing vinyl though, as it was very easy to cause the record to skip from the pounding bass… and once or twice I got feedback from the needle!

But I digress. The point is that this philosophy of mine extends to listening to things on headphones. I don’t want to be able to hear the outside world, but rather be completely enveloped and surrounded by the sound. Come to think of it this is probably why I like surround sound. I like to be able to hear every nuance of the production without outside distraction. My dream is to have a soundproof basement when I can crank up the surround-sound without fear of annoying neighbours or waking children.

A. on the other hand is completely the opposite. To the extent that she doesn’t actually like wearing headphones when she listens to the radio, as it blocks out too much of the “real world.” This is fair enough when you’re driving, and need to be able to hear sirens, horns, etc (and don’t want to be distracted from the road), but when you’re listening to the radio as your sole activity…

I did actually splash out on some in-ear headphones, by Shure, which I mainly brought to be used as an in-ear foldback system when I play at church, but actually I’ve grown to love using as a matter of course at work (plus I don’t really seem to play at church anymore). They block out nearly all the ambient sound even before any music is piped through, which means the volume level can be much lower (indeed, anything above about 75% on my computer is uncomfortable!), and, being Shure, the fidelity is awesome. I’m looking forward to using them on the flight to Utah in June! Although my work-mates take great delight in walking up to me and giving me a heart attack by tapping me on the shoulder when I can’t hear them coming.

… but all this does beg the question about why we have these preferences? Is it just a gender thing – men are generally disposed towards one task at a time, so I like my music listening to be my sole focus of attention, whereas women are generally disposed to multi-tasking, so A doesn’t like not being able to hear what else is going on? Or is it situational? I work in an open-plan office that’s very noisy, especially lots of white-noise and colleagues coughing or chatting, so I try and shut it all out.. Whereas A is typically at home which is (a) very quiet, and (b) any noise is likely to be in need of investigating (e.g. Ben chuntering). Or is it just down to personality – I want to be absorbed utterly in the music, she doesn’t.

I’m a huge one for organisation, particularly when it comes to filing. I like my in-tray to be empty, and my inbox on the computer to be empty. Of course, this is not always possible, but I like to only have items in my intray/box that I need to process in some way – otherwise it belongs in another folder. People actually seem cleanly divided in this at work; they either have less than a dozen e-mails in their inbox, or several hundreds or even thousands.

My filing strategy is really so I can quickly find things, for example all the e-mails about conferences go straight into a e-mail folder called “conferences”, where I can refer back to them if need be. My physical filing system is the same – each bit of paper gets put into an appropriate file. This is actually quite a tricky process, as it’s fairly rare for a piece of paper or an e-mail to fall squarely into an existing category – for instance do my payslips go into my “Work” folder, or into my “2005/6 tax stuff” folder?

What started off this line of thought was that I also file away all the personal e-mails I receive according to how I know the sender – so I folders for “Family”, “Norfolk”, “Imperial”, “Leeds”, “School”, etc… These are a bit fuzzy, as several people who go into school I didn’t know from school, but rather met while I was at school, or through school friends. ANYWAY, the point is I made a friend while I was working at HTB – fine, all e-mails go into the HTB folder. Trouble is, I lost touch with her about 5 years ago, but now it turns out that she’s a really good friend of someone who I met at Trinity Bristol when I went down for an interview. E-mails from him are easy; straight into “Bristol” folder; but what about from her? Is she still an “HTB” contact, or is she now a “Bristol” contact?

Actually, it’s the same problem as on my PDA, where each contact is stored in a category (same as my e-mail categories).

The upshot of this – apart from to hugely embarrass myself by admitting such nerdiness – is that life is inherently messy. We like to categorize things, and put them in their little boxes, but life insists on throwing a swerve ball. It was one of things that came out of my selection panel: I like a neat and elegant solution, but that’s not also possible… or even desirable. The Cross is neither neat nor elegant, after all. And God cannot be put in a box.

There was an interview with Harrison Ford in the Metro this week, and one thing really jumped out at me. In response to the question “You also have a reputation for being a perfectionist. Is that justified?“, he replied:

I’d say so. I used to have this old Russian lady architect who built one of my houses. I came in one day after everything had been planned down to the gnat’s ass and said: ‘I’m sorry, but last night I had this idea and I want to do this.’ She said [does Russian accent]: ‘No limit for better.’ That’s what I think is important: keep working on it, keep pushing to do the best you can.

Isn’t that a wonderful phrase – no limit for better (I think it probably does have to be in a Russian accent for full impact!) Apart from being a commendable (and very Christian) attitude, it’s so pithy but forward looking. I had a friend when I worked in London who used to respond “Praise the Lord” to whatever life threw at her, good or bad, and somehow it’s a similar thing.

I think I shall try and say it at least once this week at work. 🙂

Tomorrow is a bit mad for me – I’m speaking at the 9am service, then (probably) doing the creche at the 10.45am, and then (probably) drumming at the 7pm. It’s difficult to think of three more varied activities within a worship service!

The speaking has needed several hours preparation, much thought, research, etc. On the day it’ll be over in about 10 or 15 minutes. The creche needs zero preparation, involves very little overtly spiritual activity, and takes slightly less long than the time of the service. The drumming means turning up an hour early for rehersal, staying a bit at the end to pack away, and a significant portion of the service helping people worship!

I know there is plenty of opportunity for spiritual activity during the creche (and the Sunday Club at our church – which is for kids 3 and over – is very good) – and there’s a case for saying the provision of the creche is enabling the carers to take part in the service – and I think the long term plan is to try and bring a bit more structure into the creche. But as it stands it’s a really a baby-sitting facility for the duration of the service.

Although I wouldn’t be happy doing this much every week (at least until it’s my job!), it is healthy for Christians, and especially Christian leaders, to be involved in a variety of expressions of ministry, some (most?) of which are very practical and “behind the scenes”.

That said, I’m only doing the creche because I’m standing in for A. who’s still a bit poorly. 🙂

Ever such a quickie – John Stott was writing in this month’s Christianity all about preaching, and he had an interesting comment to make about feeding people. I haven’t got it to hand, so I’ll have to paraphrase.

Basically, he was considering Jesus’ (re)commissioning of Peter – “Feed my sheep”. If we limit this temporarily to spiritual feeding – but consider the analogy in more depth, how does a shepherd feed his or her flock? They get taken to a lush grass field, and left there to eat it themselves. They’re not fed from a bottle, or even hand-fed bunches of grass pulled up by the shepherd – no, they’re taken to the field, but they have to feed themselves!

I guess the point is that the aim of a preacher is not to give everything to his or her congregation, but to lead them to lush fields they can eat themselves.

It’s not very often that a trailer puts me off a film I had previously wanted to see, but the trailers for War of the Worlds managed it for me. “Another Tom Cruise film”, thought I, “that’s taken a perfectly good storyline and twisted into brainless hollywood fare.”
Actually, that summary isn’t too bad – this film is all about Tom Cruise’s character (Ray), who has custody of his kids the very weekend the Martians choose to invade. Except that it was never clear they came from Mars. And they utterly trashed the previously chilling opening paragraph. But I digress.
So Ray, an almost entirely odious man, decides the answer is to travel to Boston, where his ex is visiting her parents, and the film is basically him and his kids narrowly escaping death for 90 minutes of screen-time – usually by shafting someone else who’s got in the way. I suppose all due respect to TC for playing someone so unlikeable.

Sure sure – the special effects were pretty well seemless. Yeah yeah, Tom Cruise does “man on the edge” without breaking a sweat – but the ending is hugely anti-climatic: what sort of film suddenly (literally in 1 minute of screen time) from “absolutely no hope – it’s the end of world” to “oh hang on – actually we’ve beaten the rotters after all”, and has to explain the ending with a voice-over as the credits roll?

So while it paints a pretty realistic doomsday scenario, and doesn’t pull too many punches in terms of dispatching people, I’m afraid it just didn’t hit the spot for me.

This was a surprisingly good film, actually. The basic premise follows a young lad – Stanley – who is found guilty of theft, and is sent off to “Camp Greenlake” to dig holes in order to “build his character”.

An interesting back-story of him and his family emerges, and we follow his trials and tribulations on this correctional facility with its oddball warden and guards. Of course all is not what it seems at Camp Greenlake, and as the story emerges the true reason for the digging comes out – and could the c4-generational urse on Stanley’s family finally be broken?

Squarely aimed at its 12 rating audience, this film never the less covers issues of love, justice, bullying, honour, truth, respect, and loyalty. Wow – that makes it sound heavy.. perhaps it would help to point out that “Mean Girls” covers similar ground?

The only downside, as with the film mentioned above, is that the adults are all very wooden, and there as caricature; it’s the children who have real personalities. Nevertheless it is an engaging film, who’s storyline is never entirely predictable. It is also fairly amusing.