Small people.

So it looks like our flight is still on for tomorrow from Bremen to Liverpool. However, so many flights have been cancelled and airports been shut due to bad weather that anything could happen over the next 24 hours! Naturally my brother and I would love to be able to get home for christmas and I'm pretty sure my parents and Gran would love that too. But it's a good time to remember that we have a sovereign God who actually does have the weather in His hands and that quite frankly times like these make us remember just how powerless we are. We scheme and make plans for the future as if they're certain to come off. How foolish we are! And yet how often we succomb to this little, yet highly persuasive, lie. I am determined, no matter what happens over the next 24 hours, by the grace of God to surrender all to Him in prayer and remain firm in the knowledge that He does all things for the good of those who love Him.

It's really quite strange to think that in less than two weeks I shall be touching down on British soil again. I really can't wait to see my parents and my Gran, as well as catching up with friends. My brother is coming to visit me from 18th and we'll fly back to the UK together on 23rd. A friend from university is also staying over during this time from 19th-21st before she goes back to Japan so it'll hopefully be a fun-filled time. Seriously, any who may house even the slightest idea that my brother is coming to visit me have so got the wrong idea. He's only coming because he wants to savour the delights of a half meter long bratwurst at the christmas market and spend all of his sister's money in the process... :P Well, who could blame him eh?

I have to say I'm praying quite a bit about the flight back home as knowing my own country and it's often utter incompetence in dealing with 'difficult' weather, I certainly would not like to spend christmas in Bremen airport -sorry, but living in Germany has made me so much more unsympathetic towards the british transport system, which seems to find any excuse to stop running!

On Saturday I went to listen to the Weihnachtsoratorium (christmas oratory?) by J.S. Bach at one of the lutheran churches in Göttingen with my housemate. It was only parts 1 to 3 but it was nevertheless very long. Good mostly, but long! For those of you who have no clue what I'm talking about (and probably rightly so), click here.
It's a mixture of sung Bible verses on the birth of Jesus and words Bach wrote himself as praise to God. It really did my heart good to be able to read the words as they were being sung too as there was just so much wonderful truth in them!

Sunday, I was at church in the morning and then at my house groups' christmas party in the evening. I haven't laughed so much in a long time! After food and general chit-chat we ended up playing some silly games -Globe cafe worthy I must say- before we reinacted the christmas account FeG style... So, we each were called to go out of the room one by one and were told which person we'd be playing (at first we had no idea we'd be doing the nativity) and acquired an object to help describe our character. I played Mary -yes, jumper up t-shirt to mimick pregnancy included- a role I haven't played since I was about 5! Anyway, so the narrator told the story and each time we heard our names we had to say something or make a noise...you can imagine the hysterics at the end when we were all gathered around an oversized, spectacled, baby Jesus who was sprawled on the floor more like a fly on his back, legs flailing in the air, than a child sleeping serenely in a manger!

All things school-wise are pretty good. I'm finishing off a christmas quiz on what the Brits do at christmas and about our quirky traditions. At some point this week I desperately need to finish off my christmas shopping!! It's not the mooching and window-gazing I dislike, it's just that shopping is far more difficult when 1. You don't know what to get someone. 2. All the shops are crammed full of people and 3. There's just too much choice! I am not the best woman for making decisions. Ah well, I'm not a Scrooge really, I just hate disappointing people.

I've been listening to a bit of Rufus Wainwright too recently and never quite realised what a good poet he is. Listen to this.

The Word became flesh

'The Christmas story has something to say to those of us who crave to be great. There is One who is gloriously greater than anything in heaven and on earth. He became cursedly low, so that we would become greater in Christ than we could ever imagine. We don’t need to sinfully desire love and adoration, for we have been so adored by God, whose love would satisfy us more than the admiration of those impressed with us. Herein is love: Though we rebelliously sought to be like God, God humbled himself and became like us.'

Read the rest here.

La Carnaval des Animaux

Disney used this piece of music (The Aquarium) from Le Carnaval des Animaux by the french romantic composer, Camille Saint-Saens, for Beauty and the Beast. Ok, so I do listen to classic fm (where I heard this piece) and Radio 4 -yes, by rights I ought to be a well-spoken, southern, privately educated, tweed-jacketed, slightly eccentric university professor to be listening to such things...?

It made me think back to my childhood; of the times when Disney cartoons were only to be found on video; when my Dad had significantly more hair and I wore red Harry Potter-like glasses -because red was cool!!

Another one I like from the same suite is Fossils and, of course, the Swan. Both pretty famous and just wonderful in their own right.

Blessings in Disguise

I want to share a few things that have really blessed me over the last few days:

1. Starting to read Helen Roseveare's 'He gave us a valley'. I actually couldn't sleep after reading the first four chapters (could not put it down) because I was so convicted to think and pray.

2. Talking to my Dad and hearing how, after a candidate for the pastorship was unable to preach because he was snowed in, he was so convicted in his heart to actually preach himself on 'seeking the man of God's choice', that he did just that (believe me, I know my Dad and this is strange-he tried to get another preacher but clearly the Lord had other plans). And that not only was it well received (never a sure sign of blessing) but that afterwards a few came over to tell him that it deeply convicted them to take the issue seriously and corrected some wrong thinking. He said that it was truly humbling to be lead by the Spirit and used in such a way.

3. Chatting to my brother and hearing answers to my prayers. Hearing how he is a blessing to the CU from my friends, as well as once again realising just how much of an example he is to me to be godly.

4. Reading a friend's prayer letter and finding out that although his brother recently died after a long battle with cancer, just days before he left this world he prayed with my friend for forgiveness and received Christ. Amen! What great comfort and even joy in what is still heart-rending.

5. For the blessing of forgetting my own conscious self in the midst of a prayer meeting and just praying without fear or embarrassment, knowing that God hears the requests of my heart and chooses to bless others through it.

6. Gazing out of the window and biking to work and just being captivated by the sheer beauty of a white, crisp landscape.

7. Experienced such answer to prayer in my lessons today. Both went extremely well despite being a bit unsure as to how they were going to turn out and despite also being pretty tired from not sleeping well or very much at all lately. Also, experiencing renewed joy in my work.

Praise God for them all!

Cheer up, it's Friday!

Friday has never been a productive day for me. I get hopelessly distracted by the tiniest of things and simply end up draining the time away doing seemingly pointless and unfulfilling meanderings, pretty much just whatever takes my fancy. Oh and then I feel really guilty afterwards and hurriedly try to make up for lost time on a saturday- to little or no avail. But I reckon today's an exception!

There really is some satisfaction from doing the cleaning, or at least the satisfaction of getting an unavoidable and not always pleasant task out of the way. I have respect for housewives and cleaners. Anyway, cleaning is soooo much better with Einaudi's Nightbook played LOUD! It takes me back to good times at university and the time I went to see/hear Einaudi and his ensemble play 'Nightbook' at Warwick Arts Centre with Jasmine and Camilla.

I just always think it's incredible how particular tunes, smells, textures, colours remind me of certain people or places. There are quite frankly some pieces of music I just can't listen to without blubbing and others I'll quite happily leap around the room to like a crazed dancer -no joke, but another friend of mine dreamed one night that I was in front of our CU at uni in a sparkly leotard teaching the whole CU to dance... Not sure what's worse, that I wore nothing but a sparkly leotard or that she dreamed it at all!

Apologies, my Friday tendency to wander is kicking in again. So, this morning I listened to a talk by Don Carson which, I have to say, although was meant to be for new christians or interested non-believers, was nice and meaty. The series is 'The God Who is There'. I've also been going through Matthew in my quiet times recently and started Mark this morning. Honestly, I can't get over how refreshing it is to read the gospel accounts again. I feel it's made the humanity of Christ so much more tangible to me as I know I have a dreadful tendency to make God out simply to be a demanding Ruler, my mistake being that I sometimes find it very difficult to believe that God loves me and often miss out that all of His Laws are perfect and right and are for my good. That old sin, rebellion, stakes it's claims on my heart again. Often, I stupidly think that I can't always come to God with some of my shame, indeed because I myself am so ashamed of my sin that it can be difficult to grasp that His grace is unending and so deep that I could never reach the bottom of it even with all of the time eternity provides.

What is difficult at the moment and often unnerving, however, is how I have come to realise just how much of who I thought I was rested upon other people's opinions, or at least upon how they viewed me- or more accurately, how I perceived they viewed me. Such an identity is illusiary. If I'm honest, that kind of identity isn't really any identity at all simply because it is inconstant, it fluctuates from person to person so that you could theoretically be multiple identities at the same time. Man sees the outside and chooses what he wants to see. His perception is skewed and if a person tries to model him or herself upon such an unsteady, perceived image then he or she will be left bankrupt, robbed in fact of any personality whatsoever.

Thank God He's showing me this now. If having to speak another language and living in a foreign country has had to be the means for showing me this, then I am grateful. However, it does make me wonder what I am really like. Desperately sinful and ashamed for one, undeserving of any good gift, fit to be tossed aside, discarded and destroyed. I am without wisdom, intelligence, wit, honesty, love, patience, understanding, am prone to anger, heartlessness, cowardice, and harmful gossip.

But understading the gospel means that I am, yes, all of the above but God has so loved me even before the foundation of the world that He became flesh and lived exactly the way I could not, and died to scrape away the scum in my life. It is only understanding that who I am is actually a healed and new creation in Jesus Christ that there is true freedom. I have a far better identity in the One who was pierced and in whose righteousness I now stand than in any make-shift, skizophrenic, temporary identity I could ever create. Realising this daily is of course the hard part. It's easy to pander to human will and get swept along with the crowd. I was encouraged however skipping to 2 Corinthians this morning:

'For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.' 2 Cor 5:15.

Last night I went to house group and afterwards Lord's Supper at church, both were actually quite encouraging. I had forgotten just how great it is to pray with other christians and to share communion with believers. Praying in a foreign language is so much easier when you just pray! Just having something on your heart to pray about really means that you actually pray and stop worrying what complicated word order you're going to have to demonstrate where all three verbs appear at the end of the sentence...

Oh how I love german! It's mind-boggling most of the time yet shows another wonderful, complex part of God's creation. Language is so fascinating. Speaking of language, despite my love of all things german I simply couldn't face having to listen to a ridiculously squeaky and not-so-evil sounding Voldemort german dub and so must shamefully admit that I'll be watching the original version of Harry Potter at the cinema tonight. You just can't beat a bit of Ralph Fiennes.

Anyway, in random Friday fashion, check out Sara Groves. I just love her songs. She is so painfully honest in her lyrics, combines this with, I think, enchanting composition and solid Bible truth: Sara Groves – What Do I Know, and another I quite like is Sara Groves – The Word.

Fig Leaves.

...But shame and concealment don't stop with food. They're in the empty bottles, stashed in the wardrobe or the car boot. The rows of outfits with the price tags still attached. The maxed-out credit card. The shaking fingers, the sleeping tablets. The frenetic cleaning. The altar of work. The holidays, the schools, the job, the grades. These things act as storm breakers against the tides of criticism and self-contempt. But the shelter they offer is as illusiory as the identity they shore up.

And, despite the rebranding, they're not new strategies either. These bone-wearying, soul-destroying, life-denying attempts to cover our shame are simply fig leaves by another name. And just as effective. No, just as Adam and Eve learnt - to deal with sin and to deal with our shame takes more than our efforts. It takes sacrifice. Blood. But not mine - no-matter how deep I cut. Another died to clothe them in the garments they didn't deserve (Gen 3:21).

Read the rest here.

Sad News

We never know how long we'll have on this earth-something that was reinforced to me yesterday after hearing that one of my neighbours from home had suddenly died. It has quite shocked our little Close where the neighbours are good friends with one another. Tragically, my neighbour's daughter, who I also went to school with, celebrated her 21st a few days ago and now less than a week later has to bury her father. I can't quite get over just how shocking it is. It's like a smack in the face that quite rightly has brought me back to see life as it really is.

Talking to my parents yesterday it became quite clear to me just how as christians we are never left wondering what has happened to someone. In many ways, it makes the death of an unsaved friend or family member more unbearable because if we believe God's Word to be true on the matter, then there is only one of two places a person will go. What wasted opportunities. My neighbour will never have the chance to hear the gospel again. Yet, God is sovereign. Lest we get carried away by guilt and all of the 'shoulds' or 'coulds' that may torment us, we must always understand that He is in control and that He is the God of all comfort.

If you are reading this and can spare a moment to pray, please remember the Raines family and pray for my parents, that they'd be able to support their neighbours during this difficult time.