One word I happen to very much like is the word forever.

Some time during the middle of last year Kerryn gave me a whole page of verses which she picked and wrote out in her imaculate handwritting just for me. We had this strange bounce encouragement off eachother thing happening all year despite being polar opposites. I keep the page in my Bible and refer to it more often than I’ll admit.

I’m not sure why she picked the verses she did, but one of the verses is from the end of Psalm 48.

“For this God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide even to the end.” (v.14)

Why is forever important? Constancy is something I value tremendously. I’ve been through the wars of grappling with change, hating it and loving it but there is something about someone/something that stays perfectly steadfast that surpasses the difficulties and benefits of change. That rock. That commitment. That forever.

Biblically forever comes up quite a bit and very often to do with covenants and best of all to do with God.

“This is our God forever and ever” Is such a beautiful statement.

“‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.'” Exodus 32:13

“He is the LORD our God; his judgments are in all the earth. He remembers his covenant forever, the word he commanded, for a thousand generations, the covenant he made with Abraham, the oath he swore to Isaac.” Ps. 105:7-9 and again in 1 Cor 16:15

Psalm 89 is particulary noteworthy

“but I will not take my love from him,
nor will I ever betray my faithfulness”

Forever in this context speaks of faithfulness, of promise, of greatness and then it concludes with the very suitable, Praise be to the Lord forever.

I really like how it ties the forever quality with God as it’s so loaded and so worthy.

David Crowder has this song: “Forever etc.” which speaks of ‘being God’s’ for eternity. Or so it implies. In a way it’s very much about us totally relinquishing who we are to God. We are not ‘forever’ if forever extends both ends of the time spectrum. We are however made in his image and we do get to experience this forever if we are his.

I just think it’s remarkable.

Forever is such an empty word if used from without the God context.

I’m sitting or swimming in this current of reading Christian Non-fiction lately, it’s like this leech that’s sucked on to me and I can’t get it off. The biggest problem here is that I am buying and consuming at such a rapid rate it doesn’t all have time to sink it. I started concerning myself by finding myself buying more books that are connected wildly or at least remotely with relationships. I think secretly the subject facinates me – but thats a secret so don’t share it. I’m starting to hit the point where I am reading nothing new.

Today I fell into the same trap of entering into a bookstore with my wallet on hand. I was heading out for afternoon tea with Sam and we happened to park in front of the Bible Society bookshop – as there was plenty of afternoon time left I said, “Why don’t we just go have a look, sometimes they have decent sales” – Rule #1. Don’t give into temptation – even if it is the daggiest shop on a street of pathetic but trying businesses. It’s financially dangerous.

The dagginess was mildly improved (scarcely) as they’d done some renovation but the place still stunk of ‘over boyfriending my Jesus’ etc, as sadly Christian Bookshops tend to do. I confess we spent the first few minutes scoffing at various book titles and gaging over ‘Daniel’s Diet’…. wonder why such things end up in the sale box?

My eye lit on some potential buying matter in the way shape and form of ‘Safe People’ which I borrowed off Alecia and found very insightful. $5 or so. Okay. Then I found: “If Singleness Is a Gift, What’s the Return Policy” picked it up, shoved it at Sam and asked her to tell me if it looked any good, “Yeah this looks okay, the cover’s really cool”. Rule #2. You’ve been told to never judge a book by it’s cover – so don’t! (The fact is I haven’t read it yet so I can’t properly confirm the validity of this rule, which renders the before probably quite useless – it’s still a good rule to hold. Despite all that I haven’t yet read the blurb so there’s $5 spent blind and some pointless advice) Rule #3 could be: never listen to your friends – but that’s shocking advice so please ignore it. I do trust you on this one Sam!

More scrounging, more mockery of badly worded book titles. Marriable. Mental backburner bells ring. I’ve heard of that before. That’s the problem when you read so many other books in the same genre – they sometimes start quoting eachother. Known authors, a skim of the blurb. Erm, okay lets (I mean I’ll) get this one too. (Yes I am subtley refering to a subject matter infatuation).

I buy the books. We walk up to the cafe. Closed. I remember another down the side street. Far shabbier and not in the chic way, but hey remember it’s a daggy street in a daggy town. The closed cafe and perhaps the ANZ bank are about as cool as you get. We walk in as the floor is being vaccumed, “How much longer are you open?”… plenty of time. I order a latte, Sam a spider (not the leggy variety).

Due to the subject matter of the books. We flick open the M one. Very cool, random things in the columns. My interest, which was already piqued, piques more (dumb word and I’ve probably used it incorrectly). Slamed the book shut and hid it from embarassing assumptions when the waitress arrived – okay maybe I made that up. I think I wanted the latte.

So our conversation wound around our week and friends and uni and ended up back on to the ‘subject matter of the books’. By this time others have come into the cafe. Two girls, early twenties are sitting behind us. Sam and I are chatting about relationships in general and throwing up some interesting theories. My peripheral hearing picks up something from behind Sam. I start grinning and motion for her to be quiet for a bit. I give her a look and we amuse ourselves quite a bit with the information that they are having an almost replicate conversation behind us, after which I had to rectify the situation by appologising for tuning out of her temporarily and into Rule #4. The eavesdrop. Not usually helpful but sometimes extremely interesting.

So I am home. I pick up Marriable and read it cover to cover – horrible habit that. And I laughed pretty much the whole way through due to some insanely random humor scattered in the columns. It was fairly good but I didn’t learn too much more than what I’ve already heard and it was a little curious in light of yesterday evening’s post about ‘online relationships’ as it was authored by a couple who coinciendly ‘met’ online.

So there you go. At least I got a laugh.

Rule #5 check out what Bec’s… I mean, I’ve been reading over at Read and Blue – then be horrified at how much non-fiction I’ve been feeding my face. It’s truly disturbing. More so that I’ve about six more, new, unread ones sitting on the shelf in line. It’s just about coming up to one year since I started keeping track of what I’ve read – interesting. That’s roughly 61 books. And I’ve probably missed a few.

This morning a guy came to look at Job (that’s my dog). Due to me being so eternally not at home during daylight hours to walk him we’ve had ‘free to good home’ notices up for quite a while now. There have been others come by wanting him, but all kinds of minor hitches like ‘no fences’, ‘moving house’ etc… Anyway, this one looks promising and I think he’d have a good home. So tomorrow might be a little hard because I really do love my dog (as much as you can love pets) and am not very happy to see him go – it is however much in Job’s interests and I guess therefore in mine.

Next time I should perhaps be a tad more resolute and get a small (minimal walking) dog – like I originally intended. I’ve rather too big a weakness for dogs that look like ^ (see photo). That or a cat. I think it’s time for another cat.