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.
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