Writing Course Assignment: Apathy

I wandered past a homeless man
lying in the street,
I wandered past this homeless man
as he stared at my feet.

I trod the same route every day,
a firmness in my step,
not to care that on such streets
such desperation slept.

Until one day I met the cross
where apathy is nailed,
and felt compassion in my chest
and felt how we have failed.

I wandered past a homeless man
but today I saw it all:
injustice, like a leaden shot.
Today I saw a soul.

Living

It's been such a long while since I've done anything. I always have an excuse; 'I'm revising' 'It's exam period' 'I'm on holiday' 'I'm working on my UCAS' 'I'm waiting for results' 'I just got my results' 'PERSONAL STATEMENT!'


It's silly really. 
I just need to live.
It's one of my greatest fears, being lost in the mundane. That each day drags into the same, until you lose that sense of awe at how vast the sky you live under is, at how fresh the morning feels, at simple things like bare feet on over-hot tarmac and the messiness of finger-painting. I get so lost in what must be done that I forget to enjoy.


I went on holiday, wandered the beach at night, and read my bible, and this verse got stamped all over my heart..
"For when I tried to keep the law, it condemned me. So I died to the law—I stopped trying to meet all its requirements—so that I might live for God." - Galatians 2:19


And I realised, that I'd gotten so caught up in what must be done that I'd forgotten to just live for God. My actions were boxes that needed to be ticked 
- Read bible daily
- Pray for others
- Stop being so judgemental
- Work on the pride thing


Don't get me wrong, all these things needed to, and still need to be done, but I'd forgotten why I was doing them, how I could do them, how if I just took Jesus literally when he said "Love God, Love Others", everything else falls into place. I realised that every inch of me had been screaming out 'just let me live for God' but I hadn't been letting myself, I'd been hampering my freedom in Christ; because the freedom we're given is grace, the room to make mistakes, say sorry and ask for the Spirit's help to change. Nobody ever changed themselves through following the rules, only through experience, growth, acknowledging our faults and allowing ourselves to be shaped by God can we become even a little bit more like Jesus. There is a great joy that comes from knowing Christ, having him live in us and guide us, and I don't want to miss that because I'm too busy ticking off my 'how to live like a Christian' checklist.

So even though this blog post isn't perfect, neither am I. I could polish it and polish to make it look like how I want to be presented to the outside world. Or I can just stick it up here. It has the capacity to be wrong, but so do I. Just got to live life anyway.

Food For Thought

About so much more than hell. Just hearing Francis Chan's humility in this video is an inspiration.

May Showers

Which person was it
who first fouled the rain
with his melancholy moods?
I feel no such sorrow
at the cascading drops.
A jumper soaked; a chill cold caught,
Anger cries "Rain is for naught!"
Such inconvenience is the price of life.
I'm glad my God, my Lord,
in his kind wisdom poured,
fresh water upon our land.
For now, it's smells of fresh-drenched dirt,
crisp and clean; alive.
For next, it's full, round fruit finding
all's turned ripe one Summer Day.
No inconvenience then: just joy.

The Word

One of the most amazing descriptions of the Bible that I've ever read.
From the Spring Harvest website:

"It’s time we stopped seeing the Bible as a book. It’s 66 volumes by more than three-dozen authors to make a little library. It’s a repository of reference; a Treasure-chest of truth; a library of lives. 
The Bible holds together with remarkable consistency and strength. Core themes run like rivers through the texts. Questions asked in ages past are answered in dreams of the future. Promises made in times of need are fulfilled in times of grace."

And why it's so important to read:

"Biblical direction for the road we travel, will equip you to better understand the Bible, to better apply its teachings and to better live out the powerful call of the Spirit who broods and breathes within its pages."

So true! And so inspiring! (Normally, I would not consider myself an exclamation mark user, however 'the Spirirt who broods and breathes within its pages' is so ridiculously exciting!)

I love my bible.
This video on 'Why the bible?' also sums things up really well, as to why we should trust it.

Ravi Zacharias- if you haven't heard of this guy, look him up. His wisdom is phenomenal. 

 p.s. (skip to 2:24, the stuff before that is about philosophy and can be confusing) 

Oh. Wow.

Redefining Righteousness

Proverbs 24:16 says, “The righteous man falls down seven times, but seven times, he rises again.”
That’s not what comes to our minds when most of us think of a righteous person. We think they’re someone who never or rarely falls. But that’s because our idea of righteousness is rooted in self-righteousness. The real righteous person is the one who has been made righteous by Jesus and then can let Jesus pick him back up when up when he falls.   

This extract is taken from the blog of Steven Furtick, and was, to me, like a giant slap in the face. Although that image of punishment completely negates what this is saying. Perhaps it would be better to say it was a great dousing of grace, because my notion of righteousness is all wrong.
Being righteous, it's all about who can get to the point where they make the least mistakes, right? I can't believe I was believing that. A subconscious trick was telling me these lies.

The truth: a righteous person is a person whose righteousness comes from Christ.
Sounds basic, but it redefines our images of what it means to be righteous and holy. The world says this is a holy person:

Look how clean and shiny he is. But God isn't concerned with what the world labels as holy. I could never drink, attend church every sunday, tithe my money, spend my time volunteering, and the world might think I was 'righteous'. But God looks at the heart. And his definition of righteous is the one who trusts in God for their righteousness. Who has the humility to ask time and time again for his grace to be able to get back on their feet. It's so simple, and so beautiful. It's so much easier than trying to please the world, and live up to their expectation of 'righteousness'.

And what is even more astounding, is that when we lift our eyes off ourselves and concern for our own holiness, and fix them upon Jesus, the perfect example of righteousness, when we kneel before him, dwell in his love and search for him in his Word, he does it all for us anyway. The light of God shapes us inside first, then outside next, the way it's supposed to be.

It's time to stop the striving, and to stop believing the lies. 

You have not loved (and cannot love) your neighbor enough to please God, therefore, in order to stand righteous before God, you must trust in and glorify the Righteous One who loves his neighbor perfectly.

Various things stolen from:  http://www.stevenfurtick.com/ and http://dangitbill.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/who-may-stand-before-god/ 

Because I love Jesus.

I just wanted to write about him.
I just want to shout about him.
He is truth and life and everything to me.
He is my foundation and my solid rock, my hiding place and my shield, my strength, my comforter, my sustainer.
Even when I'm less than faithful, he's right beside me. When I'm not good enough, he loves me limitlessly. When I mess up, he brings me back to him every time.
He makes me stop looking at myself and turn to fix my eyes upon Him.

It hurts so much that you might not know him, that you might not know his love. You assume we preach at you because we think we're better at you, we want to impose upon you, we're making you be like us. WRONG WRONG WRONG. We fight for you, for your soul, for your very life, because we care for you. Because our Lord loves you so much he died for you and you don't even know it. And he has changed our hearts so we can see you through his eyes, as someone he wants to redeem, to restore, to love. Please understand this: God loves you.

Trust him. His plans are working towards the most amazing future:

"I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever."- Revelation 21:3-4

Sometimes writing has a purpose, and sometimes it's just an outpouring of the heart.
Today my heart says praise to God.

Update

Hello people who read my blog! Most days it continues to surprise me that you exist, so thank you for reading.

You may have noticed a recent spurt of poetry has appeared. I've been enjoying experimenting with poems, and stuck them up here because I decided it's better to put them out there than to hug them to myself secretly and hope they're mildly decent. Plus, they don't take half as much effort as a coherent full-length post.

At the moment, I'm in the middle of writing a blog post which I'm very excited about. I said writing, I meant planning. Haven't quite gotten to the writing bit yet. 

However, I probably won't finish it for another few days due to my life being the manic whirl of college, sleep, homework, tea, bible, French films, nights out and book reading that it is.

In the meantime, here is a brilliant quote from Galileo:

 "The Bible tells us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go."

Bis Bald!

Hope

Squatting in a squalid place,
He spends his days in dreaming,
Of dawns and dusks all spent aloft
-through streaky sunsets soaring.

Which Tyrant beat this fragile form?
Who clipped such splendid wings?
He may not fly, yet he defies,
As night by night he sings.

Nameless

For a gust of wind I would give
that which was never mine.
I promise to you the endless stars,
the boundless sea for a soft sweet breeze.
Life is not Life behind the glass,
with nose pressed up flat,
with desire burning inwards,
and outwards,
and upwards,
longing to breathe.