Wow. I don’t think I’ve EVER in my life drooled so much over a blog. Such designs!!! The badges, the mugs, the bags, the art! And I came across it by accident! I like. I like!
The real reason for the blog title is that I had an hour or two to kill at uni today and I spent a lot of it in the Library reading psychology books. I came across a book with the name, “A Brief History of the Smile”. Some titles are simply satisfying. It was begging to be used. So I’m using it.
To make it all slightly relevant. Something that I have great cause to smile about was that I was having had a bit of chat to God on the way to young adults and throwing something in about maybe it’d be nice to just be encouraged. I’m not sure why, I don’t feel that much of a need for it, things are pretty good. And…
We split into groups for the evening and spent time praying for eachother (and other stuff). So Dylan, James, Ana and I had a bit of chat about what’s going on in life as a heads up about what to pray for. My spiel was very very short with the whole, well things really are going pretty well at the moment – then we got sidetracked into other peoples stuff. I didn’t mind. I didn’t have much push to share anything at all really. So we’re praying and I realise I didn’t exactly give people ‘stuff’ to be specific about. Hmm okay, whatever we’ll just get the ‘general’ deal if at all.
Then James starts praying for me, and he’s talking about enjoying where I’m at, and knowing God as Father and ALL these other ‘key words’ for me at the moment. It was amazingly spot on. It’s not something I’d talked about, he’d have no way of knowing. It’s just been bits now and then for me from God but enough that I’ve been clued into it. I let him know about it later.
I love how God dropped this ‘answer’ to my offhand,”Hmm a bit of encouragement would be nice” thing, just right there. I couldn’t have conceptualised how encouragement during tonight would be – but it was pretty well perfect and pretty well where I needed it. Nice to know God’s definitely still around.
So. That’s what I have to smile about.
Good bloggers don’t keep track of how many people visit, but I’ve been watching one of my stat counters (the newer one) and it’s just tipped 3,000. Three cheers for All Said and Done. Which is fairly impressive and mabye probably a lot inaccurate. But it’s a big number, and I like big numbers…sometimes.
This time last year I posted the angry version of Shout to the Lord.
Which gives me a really good excuse to link through to Christina’s post on prayer because I like it lots and I’ve been meaning to mention it ever since it got caught in my bloglines.
The evil assignment is pretty much done. Except three diagrams. My budget section… well, I could’ve possibly done that better. It’s a royal pain being a perfectionist sometimes, you work so hard on the other bits (Even if you do leave them until the last day) to just get the wording right and if you can’t do that all the way through, you feel like you’ve let the rest of what you’ve done down. Budget bits are numbers I probably grossly underestimated, I have no idea how much things should cost…. :\ didn’t I just say I liked big number. What a prime example of just how it doesn’t work! Blah.
…and so what if the picutre shows some random cartoon man counting music, it looks like numbers!
I got to uni early (as per normal on Tuesdays) and I wound up on my own in a computer lab, stuffed around by going through bloglines and reading what others had to say and saving some pages for my uni blog. Then I opened Bible Gateway – because I couldn’t be bothered working on my assignment for just 15 or so minutes and I read through Romans 3-8. I have a slight obsession with Romans 8 sometimes but was pretty happy to get a bit of a different perspective on some things by looking at the Message version.
Romans 3:25-26
God sacrificed Jesus on the altar of the world to clear that world of sin. Having faith in him sets us in the clear. God decided on this course of action in full view of the public—to set the world in the clear with himself through the sacrifice of Jesus, finally taking care of the sins he had so patiently endured. This is not only clear, but it’s now—this is current history! God sets things right. He also makes it possible for us to live in his rightness.
I wasn’t thinking about it earlier but if I can steal a phrase (just because it jogged some more thoughts) but: “In full view of the public.”
We sure don’t opperate that way as Christians most of the time.
I had a very funny – it thrilled me to pieces actually, experience this afternoon as I was coming home. I was in Box Hill waiting for my train and this really short asian girl taps me on the sleeve. She was with two other girls. They ask if I’m a student and let me know they are Bible College Students from South Korea learning English in Australia and ‘teaching Bible’. I smiled and said I was a Christian which made Ruth (it was something like that anyway, she’s the extremely short one) quite excited and she was bouncing around and beaming and saying bless you… Sophia, was the most competent with English and I ended up sitting down with the three of them in the food court. So after Ruth had gotten a photo, Sophia pulled out her Bible which was an English/Korean parallel. And I think they were ‘having a practice’. We discussed the passover and communion and what Jesus had done and were reading bits and pieces together. I was beaming, it was gold! They were so happy and really just lovely. Communication was a bit hard. Ruth kept starting to explain things in English and getting carried away and slipping into Korean. It was beautiful!
I got the ‘evangelistic’ aspect of what they were doing despite not really needing it (they knew that) and just the excitement for me of seeing how God is working in them and through them and how willing they were to just be out there talking to people. The idea of ever doing something that freely freaks the living daylights out of me. They asked for my phone number, so I gave them my mobile (haha which will hopefully be okay) and had to head to get my train.
On the train, I ended up having a conversation with an older guy on a scooter and his wife. He was pretty intent on telling me about some big accident he’d been in and how his body was ‘riddled with’ cancer and how radio-therapy had cured his prostrate cancer but it had come back… he mentioned that he was in AA and wasn’t ashamed to admit it, and how life now was the best it had ever been (despite the cancer).
I was thinking about it later, why God would dump me in the two rather peculiar situations and I guess the common thread through the two is the fact that these people were so genuine and so open about who they were to me. This guy wasn’t ashamed to say he’d screwed up a lot of his life and was really just loving where he was now. Those girls were happy to speak up about what was important to a complete stranger.
If like that guy, ‘life is the best it has ever been’, when we have this free life in Jesus, why is it so hard to be open about being a Christian and to share about who we know God to be?
I came across this article this afternoon: What (Not All ) Women Want. About the ‘finicky femininity of Captivating’ by John and Stasi Eldredge. I was quite delighted with it to be honest. Sure there were bits of the book that were extremely helpful to me at the time I read it, much of it rang true but when I look back now – there was/is something a little bit missing.
I’m not exactly a very stereotypical female. If you know me, if you’ve read this blog for any decent time or read OOCQ where the ‘bagging out’ (I think it’s friendly) of my ‘half male’ brain, you might be able to put a finger or five on that.
Sentimentality doesn’t do a lot for me. I’m much more thrilled to have a brain engaging conversation than be told mass of ‘sweet nothings’ or compliments – however “nice. Again that’s generalising a lot. I am by no means the only female of the kind around -thank goodness. I like being complicated and I like who I am.
I probably don’t define submission quite the way it’s traditionally thought of. I probably don’t think I need to ever lose reason to love someone. I don’t like the infatuation concept. I like books over jewelery. I understand the clothes are usually very intentional in conveying a message or meeting a ‘warmth’/’fit-in/fashion’ need than just the ‘girly thing to obsess over’. I don’t really giggle or shriek, in fact I probably more often snort and roll my eyes. I don’t have any idea where this blog is going but I know I want to say something (maybe because I’m having fun). I don’t always know what to say but then I don’t always sit quiet to get it just right – for it to be sweet and perfect and nice. I’d rather be bluntly truthful than softly recommending. I’d rather sleep the extra 10 minutes than spend it on my hair. I’d rather watch a movie that makes me think than one that tells me the same old ‘boy meets girl, boy gets girl, all ends happily’ deal. I don’t as a general rule bother with make-up, oh look, I don’t think I even really own any. I don’t think cooking and cleaning and keeping a place looking nice is a very large part of my purpose. I don’t think I could manage if I ever hit a point where I wasn’t allowed or couldn’t learn.
I don’t know if the soft feminine side is an outdated concept that we still plug away at just because? Shards definitely remain in the minds of plenty of people although it’s probably not half as relevant an argument as it was years ago.
I don’t particularly like being called ‘unfemale’ – becuase I can assure you I very much am. I like being female! I’m probably a little fed up with the half-male brain comments, however funny. So you narrow-minded (in the nicest way possible) boys who keep pulling them out: *cough John/Paul/Jas/Tony…* . If you could do me a favor and define femininity for me in short essay form (or post size, I don’t think you could get it down to one sentence) post it as a comment or send it too me in an email – this being femininity and not just ‘Bec style’. I would be grateful.
I’m not cranky, I’m just interested.
What is femininity really?
And a slight shift…
Boys will be… wait, where’d they all go? references an article on men in church. Although that I think that the point does need to be put across, that perhaps the ‘everyone fall in love with Jesus/Jesus is your boyfriend’ business is definitely offputting to males, it’d be nice to acknowledge that it isn’t the worlds most thrilling idea to a lot of females.
It is true that females are supposedly wired ‘more relationally’ and I am not trying to equate the genders but we are all relational beings. I can’t help but wondering if church is how it is, then maybe it’s almost more a byproduct of a culture that really wants experience and is lacking significantly relationally – having appropriate relationships. We then over-concentrate this good (best) relationship that’s on offer and shroud it and drown it in sentimental ‘femininity’ to try keep our hold on it. The predominant view of relationships on offer through television, music and movies (which sadly seem to be the primary forms of communication around) is just that – I see you, I like what I see, I am infatuated, I will do anything for you… and more blahish crap. Frankly I think we just misunderstand and misconvey a lot of what Jesus is on about.
“Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” – Deut 6:5
Is that really all that soft?
When I look at God’s love for his people in the Bible, I don’t see a cushy sentimental love. I see a hard love, a true love, a good love.
Male or female. As part of the church, as an insider I think I can make the observation that perhaps we’ve really gotten a lot of how we do things simply wrong.
Does anyone really relate to the short lived emotional highs that might come with the appeal that intends to ‘tug the heart’ to gain a response. We experience it as an experience only.
Something else,
“Murrow suggests that men value being/feeling competent (we don’t stop and ask for directions cos we want to be competent navigators) and we don’t feel that competent in a church environment which values qualities of expressing feelings, understanding emotions and singing songs.” (10 male fears about church)
If men so like to drive the compass/steer the ship, why did it slant toward the ‘very female’ angled way we do church in the first place? Is it just the physical extrapolation of misunderstanding around what is love and loving God and church structure and non-structure? I’m also curious, the advocation for ‘song’, for music is definitely not just a female thing. Music isn’t at all gender specific, you hardly need to look very far at all to see that.
Finally,
“I’m a man and I really value church but I find myself agreeing that I am not very engaged by it. The most engaging thing about church this morning for me was arranging to go out on friday to drink Guinness and talk theology with another man.” (10 male fears about church)
well,
I am a woman and I really value church, but I find myself agreeing that I am often not very engaged by it. The most engaging thing about church for me is to know I have Wednesday night to drink coffee and talk theology and life with those around me.
So, what about that emotional/relational pit that we’re inaccurately trying to fill at church? Because it is there. It’s glaring from every corner and written all over the faces of those that show up where there are others, even if they ‘don’t particularly like how things are done’. That’s something extends well beyond just church on Sunday.
No one wants the temporary. The love lust that’s so transient it makes a memory that we are ready to replace as soon as the next option comes along. We want the real deal. The thing that shows us up, that meets us face to face regardless of whether we are male or female.
That’s Jesus right?
So what should church look like?