Lent.

Posted on February 6, 2008 by Kath

Today marks the start of Lent. Which depending on your background might leave you feeling guilty that you haven’t even managed to give up chocolate for today let alone 40 days, for others it’s a general shrug of the shoulder at those Pharisaical Anglicans. At somepoint in the history of the church (if I cared more I’d look it up and tell you) it was deemed a Good Idea to create a Christian Calender to mark important occasions down each year so we’d remember Jesus a whole lot more than we do. Thus Easter, Christmas, Lent, Advent and a whole host of other days that are too numerous to put here.

Lent is one of those occasions in which the real meaning has been taken over others. Either by self help gurus to help us improve ourselves by being thinner (who decided thin was good and fat was bad in the moral code of life anyway?). Or it’s one of those things that smug people like to deride in a I’m so free I don’t need to be disciplined for 40 days kind of a way. Both approaches have little merit. Feel free to ignore Lent by all means, but try not to be smug about it. And feel free to observe Lent but please do more than give up chocolate. At least find a good reason for giving up chocolate. Maggi Dawn explains all this far more eloquently than I ever could.

“Lent is not about giving up luxuries, not about losing weight or gaining other benefits, not about food per se, not about de-cluttering or Feng Shui or about ay other kind of feel-good, de-toxifying exercise. In the end, it’s about denying yourself some of the essentials of everday life in order to focus on the reality that we depend upon God for life itself; about re-aligning ourselves with God and his purposes in our world; about reminding ourselves that all we have is a gift from God in any case.

And neither is Lent about achievement. We cannot earn God’s love, nor save ourselves. If our Lenten Fast is understood well, it will relieve us of the need to try harder, achieve more, feel worthy. It will ground us in the firm and unshakeable knowledge that we are human – we are but dust, and to dust we shall return – but that to be human is enough, under the loving gaze of God.”

So, if you give up chocolate do it because Jesus is sweeter and we need him in our lives. Find it hard and feel your need of God. But here’s 5 things that might be better than giving up chocolate this Lent and feeling fairly smug about it.

1. Turn off the TV for half an hour a day. Read through the gospels in that time.

2. Feast on chocolate each weekend and remember the Good Provider of it all.

3. Use your time in a different way, do something nobody sees or notices that really helps someone. Don’t tell anyone about it.

4. Actually fast for one day a week. Let it remind you of how much we need God.

5. Wake up each morning and remember that you are a dearly loved child of God. Enjoy that for a bit. Smile. Tell someone else who they are.

Really, do anything that reminds you that you are a creature in the hands of a quite brilliant creator.

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The first one down.

Posted on February 3, 2008 by Kath

This year I have no weddings to go to so far. It seems like most of my friends have moved on and are starting the next generation of people. What is happening this year is the constant 30th birthday parties that I shall have to attend. I would like to shout along with Joey “Why God WHY? What are you doing to us.” Instead I shall accept the passing of years with dignity and grace, or maybe just enjoy all the cool parties I get to go to. Last nights was the lovely Sarah’s. We dressed up well.

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Hmm.

Posted on January 29, 2008 by Kath

This week is Sussex CU’s mission week. For the uninitiated, that’s a week of events attempting to explain why it is that lots of people choose to follow this bloke called Jesus, how it is that we’ve stumbled across the answer to the question and whose earth we happen to be living on. There’s a whole load of good reasons why we do this and a whole load of reasons why it’s true Truth for all. Go here if you want to know them. It’s a good week, it’s a fun week, and it’s flipping hard week. Mainly because the scoffers come scoffing, as Peter points out they will. Today they did in force. It’s hard to convince anyone that this world was made by someone else. That He runs it and gets to make the rules. It’s hard to explain that the Makers ways are like waking up after a bad dream, like the brightness after a rainy day. I wonder if I believed that more it would be easier to explain. I want to sit down with people, explain that it’s different to what they think, I want to take all those people that scoffed today and help them get at what we are really saying, and not just what they think we are saying. But at the end of the day they still might laugh in my face and tell me I’m crazy.

I’m told that’s what to expect. But that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with. Believing something that the majority of people in the same culture and country as you don’t believe is hard. Living it out with integrity is harder. Noah must have had it so bad. But at the end of today I still believe. I’m stuck with the one who has the words of eternal life and I really believe that everyone needs to come to Jesus for real life. He is the author of reality and the only way to real knowledge. I’m starting to see why Jesus sighed a lot whilst he was down here in peoples faces and still facing unbelief. I’m starting to feel the heartbreak of the words of John. “Though he came to his own they didn’t know him”. At least there is hope for all that do come to the fountain of living water, we can drink and live.

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Kath’s strange dreamland pt1

Posted on January 27, 2008 by Kath

So, I’m in a giant room, somewhere it has become obvious that my brother and his wife have had two sets of twins. All boys. The eldest two both look like my brothers early baby photos.  I’m helping them look after them. Until I decide it’s time to see a Korean dictator who happens to be in a small side room. I go into this room and see the dictator (he didn’t give his name) before me, a translator is sitting to one side. I say “Hi, how are you?” (well what else do you say to an evil dictator?). We chat through his translator and I ask some questions and we have a generally pleasant time (Kath, able to get on with anyone…). Eventually they decide I have asked too many questions and have to stay the night in Prison.

By this point Mark and Roz are asking where I have gone and calling out for help with their many babies (they have a cool pram with about 4 places to put all the babies). Some of my other friends with babies have also turned up with crying children. I explain that I have to spend the night in jail because I have asked too many questions of the Korean dictator and then am shown to some stairs going down and given a fluffy blue towel to take with me for my night in jail.

Anyone fancy interpreting that?

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I *heart* weekends.

Posted on January 27, 2008 by Kath

Here’s what we got up to this fine Sunday afternoon. The sun made us smile today and so it was only right that we had some time playing in it. Fortunately this coincided with the arrival of several tons of wood on Hove beach. Read to see the slightly unfortunate tale of how it ended up there. We particularly enjoyed the creativity of others:

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I like that whenever faced with a large amount of building material our natural instinct is to create something with it. So, inspired by the model Brighton pier we decided to build a fort.

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Pretty cool eh? Sunny Sunday afternoons really are the best.

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