I've just been away for a 5-day European Youth Congress in Valencia, Spain. It's been AMAZING! For a start, it was my first time in Spain, which did not disappoint! It's been beautifully sunny most days, and wonderfully cloudy on others, cutting out just a little of that heat! Valencia has a beautiful town centre, and a stunning beach where I witnessed crazy people doing beach aerobics and volley ball in close to 40 degrees heat!!! 😯 And where I stayed in the sea until well after sunset because it was still so nice and warm! Wouldn't dare to do that in England! But the real reason why it's been amazing is that I came into this week feeling like a mess. I'm unsure exactly what my future will hold, and I guess I was - a little bit - doubting that even God knew it anymore. Which, of course, I didn't really think when I thought about it, but you know how you can know things but not feel them sometimes - well it was like that. But I am going home so confident that my God is a good God, who loves me and does not leave me. And though I can't see that far into the journey ahead, I know that God is Lord of that entire journey, and journeys with me in love and grace. There has just been such an atmosphere of joy here this week. True joy; unhindered and unceasing! Joy in worshipping an amazing and, actually, beautiful God. I think I call God beautiful a lot, without really thinking about it, but the way God loves and is interested in me, and made all that is around me, is actually beautiful. And so I come out of this week excited, more than anything else. Excited about what God has in store for me, and where he might lead me! Because I'm convinced it will be good. I have faith in an amazing, wonderful, inspiring, loving, challenging, exciting, beautiful God! "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." (Heb 11.1)
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I've been having a go at some design-work, and I wanted to share the above design.
This design was inspired from a photo taken by somebody working with a different team, but in some of the same communities I was working in last summer in the Dominican Republic (and will be flying out to work with again in just 1 week!!!). The photo depicted the hands of a young boy, maybe about 6, washing the paint off of the hands of an older guy, around 20, in a bucket of painty water. The older guy had been helping the mission team paint one of the buildings in his village, but the young boy hadn't been allowed - but he wanted to help. So, when the others finished painting, he positioned himself next to the bucket of water, and when people came to wash their hands, he stooped down and rubbed the water into their skin to get rid of the paint. If only we could all be like this; willing and eager to help and work together, with whatever skills and abilities we have, with whatever we can do! I then went through my favourite photos from the 3 months I spent working in those communities and drew all the hands from them that I could (and which made sense, minus their bodies!). When I look at it, I see all the relationships that were built there - the child's arm around my neck; the new friend's hand on my shoulder; a boy climbing a palm tree; a girl playing with my hair; and so on. Usually, when we think about hands, we think about doing. But these hands show the people who I got to just do life with. The people I got to meet and know; the relationships that got to bloom and flourish; the reaching out from one life to another demonstrating the love that Jesus showed in reaching out from heaven to live alongside US! I am SOOO EXCITED to be going back! To BE with all these people again! And I pray that I would be quick to reach out my hands in love; quick to share my life with those I meet, so willing to share theirs with me. At the start of this term (the term of my final university exams), I was directed to this verse by a Bible-reading plan entitled, 'The Lies of Busyness'. Psalm 39.6a says this, "We are merely moving shadows, and all our busy rushing ends in nothing" (NLT). How did the writer of this Psalm, all those thousands and thousands of yeas ago, know so clearly what life would be like today?! I think this is one of my biggest fears when I think about the future: that all my busyness achieves nothing; that I don't make a difference to anyone; that I don't change or do anything. It's easy to think when each day is taken up with writing essay after essay on obscure topic after obscure topic! And to be honest, a lot of my busyness IS pointless! When I busy myself making more lists of what I need to do, or busy myself in procrastination, even when I busy myself so much with work that I neglect the people around me.
Busyness in and of itself is not a bad thing. I would hate it if I spent day after day doing nothing; I could always find something to busy myself with! "But busyness requires intention," as the Bible-reading plan so adequately put it. ... And then, after I'd painted on my shadows rushing around, and the busy dashes heading in every direction, ending in nothing, my eyes were drawn to the end of verse 7. "My hope is in you." (ESV). Sometimes I can't see what my busyness is headed for, but my hope and my intention is in God and therefore I will follow where he leads me and do what he challenges me to do. So I painted on a red dashed line. One which umm-ed and ahh-ed in curves and points, U-turns and spirals, but one which was drawn inexplicably along by the hope and light that comes only from God. MY PRAYER: Lord, amidst the busyness of this exam term, may my hope and the intention of all my actions be found in you. Guard me from pointless busyness and challenge me to live busy with a purpose; YOUR purpose. My hope IS in you. AMEN. 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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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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