Wow. I somehow missed sharing that on Sunday Geoff and I headed up to Ranges Community Church. Our friends Scott and Christina are the pastors up there and Geoff was invited to speak.
It was really good to visit a little, fairly new church to see how things played out there (I really liked it) and Geoff did a fantastic job talking about Nathan and ‘speaking the hard word’ and being responsive in a David like way. I am unsure if they recorded it but will link there if it appears.
I discourteously did Onno Knuvers the dishonor of not linking to his website (Due to my use of an image of his in the previous post). So I must do that now.
He is – from my reading – a Dutchy (a very good start!) turned New Zealander. And by a further glance he has some very cute and clever little illustrations. Not meaning to suck-up to nullify my ‘crime’, but I did really rather appreciate this one. (And I can hear Geoff saying in my head, ‘No you’re not sucking up at all!’, in his amused/sarcastic way – scary that!)
So there’s the first New Zealander – at my online front door.
The second lot are at my actual front door. In fact they’ve been living in our rather minute lounge room the past two nights. My lovely housemate’s doing (Who, quite realistically and honestly is a much nicer person than I am). Our lounge room, as tight as it is, is a fraction more comfortable than this couple’s car.
Isobelle (housemate) met them at the free meal my church puts on a couple of weeks in a row. Very nice couple. They’ve fairly recently moved across and yesterday fantastically both managed to score full-time jobs which was fairly important. They are now living in a tent in our front-yard.
Why am I sharing this some what more personal-to-them thing? A couple of reasons.
a) So I can ridiculously claim I’ve got New Zealanders at both my online and offline front doors and that collates into a nice easy blog title.
but more seriously,
b) So that I can remind myself of the crap that’s been sifting through my head and some less than perfect attitudes I have towards these kinds of things.
Conversations of late at: Vocare, Young Adults and with those around me etc. have been quite centered around money. This situation in it’s own way has allowed it to hit home.
I have so much freaking stuff.
Our Wednesday night homegroup has been and gone and clearly a lot of people put more effort into it than I did because it turned out to be quite a fascinating evening that procured some depth of thought and a wealth of openness.
Here’s what we were initially presented with: Come next week with something, (Music was identified, but not mandatory) that describes either: where you are currently at with God, an understanding of God, or anything else remotely relevant.
That’s when I Schubert’ed it up and took the lazy option of ‘explaining later’.
Now is later.
Why Schubert? To be honest I know absolute zip about Schubert. I grew learning in detail about Vivaldi, Beethoven, Mozart and Bach but somehow missed this guy. Bit of a pity. A very quick wiki search has informed me that he requested to be buried next to Beethoven when he died and seemingly got his way. It’s not very relevant, but there you go – some musical trivia to amaze your friends – the ones interested in that kind of stuff…
Now, heres where you have to go listen to the piece or things mightn’t make sense.
Undercurrents.
The past month and a half for me have been insanely busy. Not just a little busy, but more the – I think I’ve had a night home by myself maybe twice in the past month. The days are filled with homework… I could go on and whinge, but I won’t.
There’s this thing in being a Christian where you get this funny old sense of obligation. I’m slowly learning to let it go because I don’t think that God allows us to be bound by laws and constraints. Some of which I’m sure are totally self imposed.
Read your Bible, pray every day, pray every day, pray every day, read your Bible pray every day and you’ll grow, grow, grow.
The short 5 minutes of justification prayer and reading before bed don’t quite cut it, it doesn’t meet the desire that is there but not often strong enough to enforce itself over the other busy and sometimes needless time fillers.
In this busyness it seems that God has put a few hmmm, lets call them safe guards – or helpful things in place.
Vocare has assisted in asserting some kind of ‘you must sit down and do this’. Take that time.
I know this Christian thing isn’t all about prayer and Bible but it is about being in tune with God. This is an easy thing to let slip.
How does this work with Schubert.
I love the constancy of God, the reminders of his reality and his hand in things. I love watching him ‘pull strings’ so to speak. I love that every time I sit down to be intentional that he shows up in some kind of way – even if it’s just a way that I get, due to some obscure wiring.
There’s this lovely undercurrent of God that runs through my life. Not because of anything I do and I sometimes forget to look for it but he reminds me.
I learnt a few new things tonight.
The first being that there is this little suburb near Richmond called Cremone. Killer location. I like Richmond.
This evening Geoff and I went to visit our friends Andy and Ros who used to be at our church until they moved. We went to join-in for the evening with their very new homegroup (currently mostly made up of housemates).
It was beautifully refreshing. I dislike the word refreshing, but it needs to be used.
We had dinner together, made faces at their cats, one of who had a strange fascination with candles hence singed whiskers, competed with a car alarm, had a really real worship (music) time and dug deep into Romans 2:1-16.
God’s judgement. Not so light stuff.
What resulted was a very interesting conversation around conscience, God’s impartiality ie. no favourites, moral obligation, faith and works, works and faith, consequences, ‘being in sin’, the law and grace in a new dimension.
There’s a lot of worth to be found in thrashing out something a bit familiar – or not so familiar – with a few heads, particularly when you’ve got the variety of a caterer, accountant, historian, database administrator and communication designer (In various stages of expertise). This kind of stuff thrills me to bits and it’s something I find quite difficult to do on my own.
Do bother taking a bit of extra time now and then to truly consider context, other parts of the Bible and what the heck God is on about with our lives.
It made me think hard about how I judge others, replacement theories and the evidence of grace in my own life, establishing and enforcing that I really can do nothing off my own bat.
“You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?” – Romans 2:1-4