Please have a read of Meet by Matte Downey
Category: <span>General</span>
Today meant to consist of a simple trip to check out my friend’s ‘Curves’ gym (ie. womens gym/exercise in 30mins and it’s really corny) and then to bum around at home, clean the house a bit. But no, I locked my keys in the car, in the ignition. My friend’s dad who is also my mechanic came by and tried to open it up for me but no luck. So I borrowed my friend’s phone (yes I haven’t got one yet) train’ed into the city to get Geoff’s key (1hr)- because I couldn’t even get into the house.
Then while I was in the city, I decided to visit the outlet place to find some shoes for my sister-in-law’s upcoming wedding and went to pay and my bank card was declined. Woops. That’s never happened before. What a disgrace.
It was a very unproductive day all round. Laura kindly picked me up from the station and took me back to the car that mercifully didn’t have a parking ticket.
Now I am home, having cooked dinner for my whole family (+ little sister’s boy) and am watching them play Mario Kart on the Wii. It is rather amusing. I’m still in shock that my mum is enjoying herself.
Mammoth shopping trip today. You consumerist you – Rebecca.
I drove into Ikea – a fair hike from home and bought this rug – along with some other bits and pieces that you tend to pick up when you’re there. Ikea is dangerous. Much more pleasant on a Wednesday than a weekend though. The dastardly cafe didn’t have loganberry juice AGAIN. I swear I would drive to Richmond if only for that + lemonade mix – it’s rather fantastic.
Anyway, the rug is a ditch attempt at rescuing our rental house carpet. The lounge room is high traffic area and being quite narrow, also serves as the only way to go through to the kitchen, to date I think we’ve spilt wine/juice and who knows what else on it. Carpet cleaner only does so much. It’s all very well that one day we’ll steam clean it, but It was time to do something, especially since we should have a new couch in the next few weeks, whenever we get our act together. We’re not very good at getting our act together.
The rug was a good price, but the bargain of the day would have to be the $2.50 David Crowder book I got a Koorong. I hate Christian bookshops more and more, they’re increasingly depressing and so full of crap but it is an endless source of amusement to see how badly they misprice things. I got an RK Cd for $15 when others around it (The SAME ones) were priced $40 and $20. They do it all the time. Pays to look.
Ahh and the winter/fall Jon Foreman cd has also made it to Australia and into my hands.
Nuff spent, nuff said.
The busy front must recognise the homework, the housework, the social inevitables, the tedious hunt for a new couch. The heart must recognise the crappy situations going on in Burma and China. The fingers must recognise a lack of touch to keys a small apology and the brain is simply flying around like a ninny making sense of frustrations I should have in someway long gotten over and in others, adhere to for sanity, reality and sensibility’s sake
I met a girl on the train the other day, she was terribly intentional about starting up a conversation. It was soon established that she came from (and I wont name it) a rather large and what I’d describe as hypey church in the city. Hypey from experience. We kept talking. I turns out she works there etc. etc. Her conversation (Once she’d established I was a Christian) was loaded with Christianese and she presented the appearance of quite a settled, ‘Everything is great when you have Jesus’ life, except that it was more, ‘Everything is great when you have church’. It disturbed me
One of the reasons I’ve delayed writing this post is that I have a good old fat tendancy to be rather rude and harsh and I’m not very good at being tactful. Look I’m trying assume the best that she had a particular extroverted personality that simply expressed itself in that way. But it did progress some thoughts.
Then last night I had the chance to hear Erwin McManus speak at CityLife – a huge church (He was great btw). I struggle incredibly in going to large, very polished churches, something feels really out of whack. I’m not dissing CityLife here, they had some ripper decent theology in their songs. But big and flashy always brings the thought home.
Christianity wasn’t ever meant to be a show, and I understand that it gels with some, perhaps even fits a particular culture but to me it presents a face that feels really fraudulent and it actually scares the pants off me.
Living authentically is difficult. Talking about Jesus is difficult. I wish for my life if anything, to be brutally honest.
What happens when that doesn’t happen in our communities? When they themselves become our world. Our work, our friendships, our lives.
I know that God will probably drag me nicely across the floor in terms of being far less judgmental when it comes to alternate expressions, and I know I have much to learn from the courage and the enthusiasm of others but it’s rather complicated at the moment, because the walls fly up and render me pretty well incapable of even participating when dumped in any situation of the like. I have a terribly jaded, critical beast in me that hates what I see (badly) and hurts for the people I know who have been repelled from this institution we call church.
I want for my life to be tied to His and not simply to a beurocracy, an idea or a specific community. So much good can easily go wrong. We do need community, but it cannot become God.