This phrase has kept cropping up for me this week - in various different settings and with various different people. And I think it is something I have been experiencing and learning too. At the beginning of this week, I finally decided to email my Director of Studies (who organises my academic stuff here at Uni) to tell him that, though I had emailed my supervisor twice, I hadn't managed to gain a reply about starting supervisions for this term. Within a couple of days he found the same thing and got in touch with a few other people to find someone else who would be more than capable to supervise me for this paper. The new supervisor has now been in touch and we are ready to begin the work. Simultaneously, I had a supervision at the beginning of this week on the module I am writing 2 coursework essays for. I had worked a lot over the Christmas vacation and in these first 2 weeks of term to get the first draft of this done. The supervision lasted all of 16 minutes, because after telling me I just needed to start again, there wasn't really much more my supervisor could say! In that moment, this was definitely one of those times when you just feel disappointed with yourself and like a fool. I felt like pretty much the only work I had really achieved anything on this whole term, up to that point, had been a waste. All my precious time, just gone. Now that's not entirely true - I have also been doing other work this term, and have been learning things even if not producing essays on them. But in the moment, you never remember those things - just the feeling of lack, of waste and of failure. But now, I have gained perspective! If I'd have emailed my Director of Studies in Week 1, after getting no reply, he might have been able to contact that supervisor and we could have started earlier - or at least found that I needed a different supervisor earlier. And if I'd have asked for a preliminary supervision before the Christmas vacation, my coursework supervisor would have definitely given me one, and we could have discussed what direction my essay would take and I would have known what path I needed to follow, rather than grasping the wrong end of the stick firmly in my hands and hitting my laptop with it until enough words came out! I have also been looking at things I want to be doing next year, after finishing here. And I look at all the things required, and I think "How?!" 'I can't do all that! God, I don't know how to do what I think you want me to...' And I feel God saying back, "No. But that's why I've put people who do know around you." People with more experience than me; people with contacts and knowledge and wisdom. Through the not particularly nice experiences of earlier this week - God has reminded me that I am not alone. And I follow him with both his strength and the strength of those he has placed around me. NOTHING is wasted. "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" ~ Romans 8.28
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Today at church we had the Covenant Service. Every year in the Methodist Church we hold a covenant service where we reaffirm the covenant we make with God - and we use the above prayer to do so. It is a very powerful, strong, and often difficult prayer in which we commit our whole selves over to God.
Before we got to this part of the service though, my minister gave a brief sermon on the gospel reading - John 15.1-8; "I am the true vine...". And she talked about how it is easy to be scared off by this prayer; this commitment. And we all, often, have times when we're scared that we're too bad, too rubbish at living out the Christian values we profess to have, too much like the part of the branch that is fit only for the chop; that somehow God's pruning would prune us all away. But Jesus says, "You are already clean - you are already pruned - because of me" (v.3). And so it is through him, that I have the power to say, "God, put me to what you will. Full, empty, with all things or with nothing... - take everything I am - I give it to you freely and wholeheartedly. You are mine and I am yours. SO BE IT." The other reason I give myself to God, is because in doing so I find life. In God is love and hope and peace and joy; and in God is abundance. Also this morning, before going to my usual church, I also went to the college Chapel and the ex-Archbishop of Canterbury (the Master at my college) was preaching, predominantly focusing on the gospel reading which was John 2.1-11; Jesus turning water into wine for the wedding in Cana. And he talked about how this is the beginning of John showing us the glory of Christ. They ended up with between 540 and 780 litres of wine - that's between 720 and 1040 bottles today's size!!! No party needs that much wine! But Jesus gives in abundance as God gives us grace in abundance too. The other thing mentioned in the sermon this morning was that Jesus took the water used for the purification rituals; something people thought they had to do in order to keep right with God. And he takes that and turns it into something that brings joy and sociability. Obviously, wine has it's limits and often too much leads to the opposite, but thankfully, God's grace and love does not. Yes, in committing myself to God I try to act in a way that exemplifies that, but I don't do this by setting endless rules for myself and being so scared to break them that I can no longer experience the abundance of joy and love that God has for me. Instead, I do this by growing ever-closer to God. The more time you spend with someone, the more their habits rub off on you too - you coin their phrases, or wash-up the way they do it. And the same is true for God. So my commitment to God begins with simply making time to be with him and grow closer to him. That is what making this covenant is about for me; becoming more "Godly" - more like God - by giving him my time and my thoughts and my heart. Today is also my birthday. The big 21! ;-D And so as I venture into this next year of my life, into "real adulthood" (!), and quite possibly into life beyond university; I pray that my life will be God's and that I will grow closer and closer to him, that he may put me to what he will and that his love and grace and pure abundance may be extended to those around me through my actions. SO BE IT. I was preaching last Sunday, and the following is an adapted (and shortened!) version of the sermon I preached:
Christmas. As you will know, my advent series on my blog has meant that I had been very consciously waiting for it, and then it finally came - it happened, with all its promised excitement and joy, and then it finished. But can that really be it? All done and dusted? Christmas "over-and-out" for another year? Christmas day to me means waking up and getting excited - realising that there is something special about this day; it means exchanging gifts that bring joy and show that someone cares for you and you for them - using giving as a means of loving; and them it means going to church, being in God's family, where the gift is his love, shown through his people and poured out through their hearts. Christmas is all about that love. There is no way that God could show his love for us more than by making himself a powerless and vulnerable baby boy who would have a true experience of human lie and would die a terrible experience of human death. Death that would give us life, even though we definitely didn't deserve it. And that story lasts so much longer than one day, just for Christmas! That story has lasted over 2000 years and it's still going strong! And it's still very much needed too. In Colossians 3.14-15 Paul says, "Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which you were indeed called in the one body." Paul lists many virtues in the preceding verses; compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forgiveness... but then says that they are all bound together in love. And he follows that with this statement on PEACE. Peace is so desperately needed in our world. The terrors we have seen in recent months; countries against countries, groups of people against other groups of people, religions against religions; and so many people - so many lives - caught up in the middle of it. But we are called to let the peace of Christ lead us; guide us; decide what we choose to do in relation to other people. Of course, living in peace doesn't mean that the differences which often end up causing conflicts immediately disappear. But what it does mean is that, as Christians, we should love others and work together with them , despite their differences to us. Such love is not a feeling, but a decision to meet others' needs. If God loves us so much that he would come down to earth for us, even though compared to him, we were vile, that should give us the power and the confidence to love others too, though they may be different to us as well. Clothing ourselves in the love of God leads to peace between people, because it shows us that love is more important than the differences. Love is bigger. When we look around us at all the things going on in this world; the many conflicts I alluded to above; the flooding, here in our own country, as well as other natural disasters around the world, climate change becoming evermore prevalent; people dying from curable diseases that their countries can't afford to make available to them; and poverty preventing so many families from the security and safety of a home, food to eat, heat to keep warm by. I don't know about you, but when I think about it all, I cannot come up with a way to solve the problems. It's like this; as you know, I went paint-balling for the first time with some friends of mine recently, and I loved it! But I remember this one moment, just before I got shot in the leg 3 times. And I was standing behind a tree, looking forward, where what I was aiming for was behind a little house-style wall. But there was someone crouching in the window, firing at me too. And then someone else started firing at me from the right. And I couldn't be behind the tree in both directions, but there was nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. And I wasn't scared of being hit; that had happened many times already - there was a little sting but it didn't hurt that much! And yet my heart was beating with adrenaline because I couldn't work out a way to get out of this situation. I couldn't think of any way to change what was going to happen. I had no control. And when I look at the world sometimes, I get that feeling but so much stronger. I want to change it. I want to stop the conflicts, and the poverty, and the injustice, and the hatred, and the pain and the suffering. And I look up to God and I say, "HOW?! How do I change the world?" Because I can't think of anything. And I sink down as if I'm behind that tree, my heart pounding, scared that I'll never work it out; that I can't change anything. But I do not need to be afraid. Because God is a loving God, and God is a surprising God. The God who gave himself to die for me, is the God who will save the world again. The God who chose to interact with the world through all the people we remembered through Advent, will go on interacting through the people who follow him in this world. And the God of all hope and joy and peace and love will not abandon the world he came and died to save. People have often talked about the real meaning of Christmas, but this is the real application of Christmas. If we believe that God came down to earth because of his great love for us, then we must become carriers of that love to this hurting world. Christmas means that there is hope. That even if we feel pinned behind a tree, with nowhere to go and nothing to do but wait for the inevitable, God is beside us, as if from nowhere and, surprising us as always, he finds a way to bring love and peace and joy to that situation too. It often seems hopeless, but so did that stable-cave with nowhere clean to lay the baby. So did the search for a child, in a city (Luke 2.41-52). So did Jesus, dying on a cross, blood dripping from the thorns in his head and a spear thrust in his side. But God was born, and God was found, and God rose again. All because of his love. So we are to bring that love into the hurt and horrors of the world - because his love changes hopeless situations and his love will change the world. So Christmas day may have been and gone for another year. But it does not end there; the Christmas story goes on and on; as long as there are people with God's love in their hearts, there will come peace, there will come joy, no matter how hopeless is may seem now. For love is more important. Love is bigger. Love binds all things together. |
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AuthorI'm a recent Cambridge Theology graduate now studying for a Masters in Biblical Studies and blogging about all sorts of things! I'm interested in faith, Church, theology, social action, the great outdoors and being creative, and all of those things - along with many more - come through in my posts!
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