For some reason tonight after too much Alias, I was thinking of well God and why he even bothers with humans. I guess this ties in a bit with the unconditional love stuff that’s been on my mind. I mean, what’s the point, why are we here?

I was having the is God real (yes, but why us and blah blah) talk – which happens occasionally. Which I don’t like but have to have. So I wasn’t much in the mood for ha, “reverent praying”, so I wandered on to thinking about Jesus and the ‘sacrifice’ and how I don’t really get it sometimes – a lot of the time to be honest. I was annoyed at some too religious blubber I’d just read in picking up the purpose driven life book again. So, Jesus and what did it cost?

And something sort of clicked. I really don’t know how to explain it and these are still just rambling thoughts that I’ve decided to word to see if I can make more clear. The chapter – however annoying, and however much I did skim it, was on about the relationship of the trinity.

I think sometimes I disengage the Jesus that was sacrificed as ‘God’s son’ as – not God. This probably sounds entirely heretical, but we are moulded to look at it as this ‘other person’ and forget the fact of the trinity in a lot of when we talk about the cruxifiction.

Yes it was God as a man. A man completely – God completely. But doesn’t that heighten the enormity of the sacrifice? That was God. That almost seems as if it were that God let something disrupt the trinity for us. That is huge!

I prayed during and now for this that I’m not talking utter crap and lies and all that and please do not take this as anything, I am only thinking out loud. I just haven’t thought of it that way before.

I have been thinking about how we too often treat love like a comodity. Love is money to us, exchangable, refundable we give to get more often than not, however much we can deny it in our minds.

Friendship is the curious combination of love for love, aceptance for trust, trust for acceptance. I give, you give. I take, you take. It’s a harsh way to see it like that yes but relatively true. I have not had the privailage that many have to have that one close individual. That best friend. I still think that this kind of relationship can easily cross the bounds of loving the other for who they are to loving them because of who they are for you.

I am Miss. Invincible when I stand beside you, because of what you bring to me… I like being near you because I feel xyz. You are cool, and so if I associate me with you I will also be cool.

How true are we really? I love you because of who you are. Nothing else. No conditions, no trade-offs, nothing that you could offer me in return.

I’d hope that it’s not as rare as raw honesty claims, because I don’t think we as the human race really do understand very well what love like that is.

I’m not denying that we can love people like that. No doubt we try, we try our hardest and we probably succeed a lot of the time.

There is the difference of walking into a room, not noticing that person you love is there until you turn around and you find your face smiling of it’s own accord, and the you that comes into the room wondering what others will think despite them being your freinds, your close friends. That niggling feeling at the back of your mind that maybe they might just want to be else where and, “What do I have to do to keep them there?” – to have them want to be there? Then, that’s sidetracking a bit to about loving yourself…

I know they talk about love being a choice. I believe that it is. I do also think that love does happen a lot of its own accord. We can’t choose who we are attracted to initially, we don’t know why we just seem to click with some people better than others. Sure, depending on what circumstance you’ve come from it might be far easier to love than it might be for someone else.

The choice really comes into play when that other person has absolutely nothing to offer us. If that is unconditional love – true love rather than just love like money, then shouldn’t we love like that all the time?

So, you meet person A, your ‘love choice’ is to immediately recognise that this person has got absolutely nothing to offer you (even if they might and most people do have something). It all seems rather difficult.

Subconciously or not, I think the kinds of questions that run through our mind when we do chance across this whole freindship thing is, what is the value of loving this person? What’s the point?

It is hard to love the way we should. It’s something I guess as Christians we should desperately want as we have been given that kind of love (and that still brings to my finite mind of how reciporical it all is). We fail constantly. We can try though. Those rare moments when love stands on its own feet and the other person is the best in the world are worth it. It’s like transcending selfishness for a moment which is some great achievement that is clearly not possible on our own.

The LORD loves righteousness and justice;
the earth is full of his unfailing love.
-Pslam 33:5

There is hope yet.

We were commanded to love (John 15). We have examples of love. The greatest example of love even.

And it is interestingly mentioned as a ‘debt’,

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
– Romans 13:8-10

Human love cannot match the love of God. But in as much as we are falible, I think our love needs to be sincere or it is not really love at all.

**edit.
I was just listening to the Coldplay song Fix You
There is a line that says, “When you love someone but it goes to waste.”
Now I understand the context of the song, but can love ever go to waste?

If real love is unconditional and has no correlation metaphorically to money then by carrying that idea one step further, love cannot ever be wasted. That is a good thing to know. Whether you are the giver, where the reciever pulls away, or the reciever where the giver will not or cannot any longer provide that love.

So, mid conversation last night a friend challenged me to spend the day smiling more, laughing more – exuberant I think was the word that began it all. We were talking about what it takes to make me and them excited or some might say ‘pumped’.

I know I have mentioned joy before somewhere back in the archives of this blog, less mentioned is the difficulty I have with having fun. It takes a lot to get Rebecca excited about something. Things will facinate me, amuse me, make me smile, laugh and I can be happy with out a huge amount of difficulty, sure this is dependant upon all manner of things, but getting excited about something takes an awful lot of I don’t know what.

I don’t know how well I suceeded with the whole ‘get excited about something’ deal, but being intentional about smiling more, laughing more, being more silly etc… was interesting, a heck of a lot of fun and maybe a little exciting.

I spent the morning with Jess VW and Laura, we went to see “Mrs. Henderson Presents” (Judi Dench). A film that has attracted an audience almost exclusively of old people.

It was brilliant! Despite the rather large amount of nudity (context of course :P) which is really the kind of humor that does not appeal to me in the slightest – it was funny, clever, unpredictable and delightfully deep. I don’t usually expect to come out of a comedy with anything much to think about, but it dug up a heap of potential thought matter around ethics and what you should allow under certain circumstances.

The only thing uncomfortable about the movie was the fact that I had a prime example of Bec the klutz right before it all started, and spilt my drink right where you don’t want to spill it. So I spent the movie in wet jeans, with paper towel, sitting on a complimentary The Age and the hope that I’d be half decent before the lights came back on – I was. Hurrah.

So I laughed at the movie. I found the drink spilling amusing as I was in a good mood. I found no particular reason at all to smile while going through the shopping centre after (but did anyway) – oh, maybe the fact that I was having what some females might call a ‘pretty day’ which basically at the moment constitutes not walking around in a grandma, tent like dymocks shirt in public.

If you start smiling for no reason it doesn’t take much to remember/realise something you should be smiling about. Test the theory.

Lets see, what else… teased Laura (with Jess’s help) good naturedly rather a lot. Was in a make joking comments mood blah blah blah. and so was cheerful, slightly more alert and generally felt better.

Went back to Jess’s via Word bookstore, where I got an absolute bargain of a book, one that I’ve had my eyes on for months: Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller $8!!!! We got chicken satay pizza with pineapple and watched several episodes of Alias. I am far too hooked on that show.

I just then, went to Amazon to read some reviews on Blue Like Jazz, there is a mixed bag despite the overall 4 star rating. I doubt it would appeal to everyone. Face someone my age with it though, in comparison to say – well something written with a modern slant (as a lot of Christian books are) and it wins by miles, or should I say kilometres. Conversational, story filled, engaging. I like it. I should never go read bad reviews or it’ll spoil the book. Hmph.

So yes. The challenge of a smile. Thank you immensely to the challenger I shall have to do it more often, it proved for a far more enjoyable day than might have been otherwise.

I smiled one or two for you.

On the 28th of December my passport expired.

I’m stranded on this island with no paperwork!

The word “indeed” appears 64 times in the Bible and the word “splendid” only 3. I am impressed!

Hum. Anyway, there’s some trivia for the few who know what I’m on about.

I was intending to sit down and think about something I read last night but got massively tired and so could not be bothered. I was doing the whole random flick thing and I ended up in Lamentations of all places. I might have a shot a resurrecting what I was thinking about but I don’t know how well that will happen.

So, Lamenations 3 if you go through it slowly, you work out what an absoultely shocking place Jeremiah (I think) was in – then you hit verse 19 or something and realise it’s him recounting what has happened. I guess what I was thinking was somewhere along the lines of, what cause have we to complain?

So the first 18 verses or so tell pretty much how one person has gone through everything from,
captivity, darkness, shame, mockery, peace deprivation, physical mutilation, being shot at by arrows (which mentally I assume you would know that this utter pain would be coming and you have been given the glorious interviening time to thereby think about and anticpate the feeling).
I do not know how metaphorical it is meant to be, but whether the lot is entirely literal or half-half it is pretty much as bad as you can prossibly get. Death is staring you in the face but the pain and torture beforehand quite possibly outweighs the ending of it all.

I well remember them,
and my soul is downcast within me.

Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.

-Lamentations 3:20-23

He still hopes. I did not know this passage came from Lamenations. I’ve heard the, “They are new every morning, great is your faithfulness” a lot before. Contextualising it adds half a wow factor.

The next bit grabbed my attention as I was half thinking about patience within a certain arena. The, “It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young.” (3:27) is quite strange. I immediately asked the question ‘Why?’.

The whole of chapter three speaks volumes about God’s will, and in someway how pathetically naive we are to understand the whys. You can disagree with my interpretation if you like.

We have nothing before God. No reason why he should listen to us complaining however huge the problem is. And he still does.

The only reason why I can see how this contridiction works, “Though he brings grief, he will show compassion… For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men” (3:32-33) is that he has to bring grief in order to get our attention about something, to make us teachable.

And there I go trying to philosophise reasons as to why ‘bad things happen’ – regardless of how much we understand, pretend to understand or most honestly just don’t know, it leaves us with only one good choice. To continue to hope. To continue to look for Him in the muck of whatever issue is at hand. To demand justice and so credit the righteousness of God.