There it goes again...

Well I've done it again.

I've signed up for the Great North Run in a bid to raise some cash for Christian Aid, beat the 2 hour mark and hopefully use the Christian Aid angle of 'Life before Death' to talk about my faith a bit more.

Every time I've  signed up for a big run in the past something had gone wrong with my leg, and this year is no exception. Last week, just as I was feeling good in my running after a 50 minute 10k in Aldridge, I did something to my knee performing my good deed for the day rescuing a shopping trolley from the wilderness. Not sure what's up; it doesn't feel too bad as I managed to first 2 miles back from church quite well before copping out and hopping on a bus this weekend. I'm hoping some ice and ibuprofen will help, as well as last year's proven regime of prayer...

The same thing happened last year, you see. Throughout the year I was regularly up at the front of church after the service praying for healing. I got very frustrated with God, because there was no miraculous overnight healing, but as the months wore on I noticed that I was running further and faster all the time, despite being regularly humbled by my knee. It turned out to be a rich faith experience, constantly having to return to the Lord and lean on him for just enough strength for the next run. So this year, despite picking up the obligatory knee pain just as i signed up, I rest easy (well, fairly easy) in the knowledge that I run for and with God and he and I will get me to Newcastle in just good enough shape to get the race finished in less than 2 hours.

On a different note, I have a new phone, and one of those fancy android smartphones. It does all sorts of trick and lets me play games and organise my life better, but the best bit by far is the bible app. Nt only do I now have about 20 different translations of the bible in my pocket all the time, it also prompts me evry day to read a bit. I've signed up to an online read-the-bible-in-a-year plan and have consequently read my bible evry day for over 3 weeks! I have now read more than 3% on the word of the Lord! Hoorah for gadgets that impact on spiritual life. Who knew google would be helping me get closer to God?

Watch this space for running updates, or sponsor me at my justgiving page : http://original.justgiving.com/greatnorthrob2010

BUT MOSTLY, JUST PRAY FOR MY BLINKING KNEE

I'll keep you all posted.

Lust- the second look

One of our vicars ( I know, lucky us, we have a selection) has been banging on about accountability again. He's got this idea, and it seems like a good one to me, that by keeping ourselves accountable to one person, by searching ourselves and our journey with God periodically, we help ourselves stay on the right track. It makes sense to me. I guess this blog is partly my own interpretation of that; that by living bits of my life 'out loud' I'll keep myself honest. I'm keen to investigate this in-depth one-to-one relationship accountability too, because I don't think all the minutiae of day-to-day sinning are best explored in public all of the time (applications for potential confessors will be most gratefully received ;-) ).

Anyway, this week's thrust comes from the format of how he does his accountability. He writes a monthly email to his mate and unpacks his life in sections, broken down by the seven deadly sins.

This struck me as a good idea. When I'm confessing, I can easily overlook lots of the stuff I get wrong. I tend to ignore pride, gluttony passes me by and envy gets off scott free. Lust is something I rarely think about. After all, most of my lust is for my beautiful wife, and that's to be encouraged, surely?

Now, I don't want to seem like I'm beating myself up, because I'm not. I have no more of an issue with lust than most people. It doesn't burden me or generally cause me to stumble. I'm not wracked with guilt and I feel in balance and in control with the whole area, but one of the vicar's comments made me sit up and pay attention. He talked about the second look; you know the one where, after you have noticed that someone of your preferred gender is fearfully and wonderfully created, with curves/muscles in all the right places, you turn back to admire them some more. Sometimes it's 'Well done on that one, Lord!' and sometimes it's a little less holy.

Now, right from the start the vicar said that he wasn't saying this constitutes lust, just that it was where he had decided to draw his line and he tries not to cross it.

I know it's something that I do. At this time of year it's hard not to, when short skirts and tiny tops come out of hibernation to appear all over the city. It can even make driving an issue as my attention is easily distracted from the road! So, I am making it a goal to avoid the second look whenever I notice I'm doing it. I will no longer follow bronzed beauties around supermarkets, gazing in wonderment at perfect legs. It might not be helpful, and besides, the legs that cycle home to me every night (that's them there, attached to my glorious wife) are more than worth a second look. I'll keep you posted on how I do. So far, I'm winning more than I'm losing.

Anyway, until next time, be well and run straight! This week, no bible as away traveling without it. Speeding: a little, and motorways only. Plan for today includes both a bit of bible time and a decent run.

Self-Discipline is a joined up thing

I run.

Not always very well, and at best only as a reasonable amateur, but I run. I don't always like it, but I know that I enjoy it more when I'm better at it, so I have to force myself out the door at the start of the season. After a long, fat lazy winter I'm just starting to get back into my sporadic stride.

So, this week, I didn't manage to run until Friday. Things were more important on any given evening, excuses and procrastination abounded. Each time I put running back until tomorrow I felt completely justified, but when I put it off again on Thursday I felt I'd let myself down. Friday came and out I went, lacking energy but pounding the pavement anyway.

The thing I noticed was the correlation with my spiritual race. In the same week that I failed to run, even though a part of me really wanted to, I also barely cracked open my bible. Very little time indeed was devoted to the Jesus I intend to pursue. It wasn't a horrible week, don't get me wrong. I wasn't out there murdering kittens or beating my wives. I just took my eye off the ball and suddenly, it was Friday and I coasted through my week making no progress in either of my races.

Oh well, no great shakes perhaps. I'll just have to do better next week.

How are you all doing out there with you're races?

Voting

Is there a right way to vote as a Christian? If Jesus were here (which I know he is) and on the electoral roll (which I know he isn't) how would he cast his solitary vote? Here is the dual nature of Christ for all to see: down here, it'd be just one man, one vote. Up there, as The Word, it's much less democratic. There is only one man, and what he says goes. Still, assuming that he put aside his omnipotence and was happy to cast a single ballot, what would it be? Would he vote? As a civic minded chap I'd like to think he would, but who knows.
I used to think I knew. For a long time I was a socialist, because that political philosophy came closest to the idea of looking after everybody. Anyone more right wing than me clearly didn't want to look after people and was therefore evil. Yup, I thought all Tories were sinful, selfish and wrong. How Christianity in the USA ever came to be most strongly associated with the Republican party baffled me, but I wrote that off as Americans not being smart enough to see what I could.

This persisted until I was 20 when I lost my faith. Then Tories lost the sinful badge and became simply selfish and wrong.

Jonathan Aitkin brought tings into focus when I saw him speak at Church. This man was clearly now walking his life with Jesus. The question I wanted to ask him but never got the chance was "Are you still a Tory now you're a Christian." I now thought it was possible for Tories to be saved, but did their salvation have to include a change in political leaning?

These days I'm much more open-minded. I've met Christians who vote Tory, scumbags who vote Labour and good folk of sound moral character who don't vote at all. I still think it's right to vote, and hope my friends will do so, but I believe it's perfectly possible for well-thought Christians to vote for almost any party, and I'm even making progress on not judging them too much. The older I get, the more aware I am of how unlikely I am to be right about everything, or even anything.

How would Jesus vote? That's probably the question we should all ask ourselves as we make our mark. As for me, like Gordon said; I agree with Nick.

Psalms read this week; about half of what I was aiming for. Speeding this week; some slight. I'm off to crack my bible now.

Just a little one

Tionight I am not drinking. Perhaps this should happed more often and be less of a big deal when it does. Hmmm. Not sure how convicted I feel about that.

Also, through lent I 'gave up' speeding. I tried to be conscious of my speed and never deliberately went above the posted limit. Now Lent is over, why I am I happy doing 80 on the motorway. Should we all, as Christians, religiously obey the speeding laws? I suspect Jesus would if he was here, but for some reason, even though this would be an easy area to do the right thing, i persist in breaking the law, just a little bit, most days. What do you all think?

Still, I did just catch up with a psalm on our new Vicar's blog at http://godsipod.wordpress.com and it felt good. Even if this one was about leaning on God when the bottom falls out of your world and at the moment my world feels quite solidly bottomed.

Anyhoo, God Bless. Be happy. Let me know what you think of my speeding.

Rob

Theology vs reality

A friend of mine is having a tough time at the moment. Her friends' son died last weekend. He was 18 months old. He went to sleep one night with a regular looking case of chicken-pox and just never woke up. Turns out he had some kind of streptococcal infection as well. This poor family are still reeling from this, as well as coping with the long term illness of their other child. In all of this, my friend called me, just to vent, to weep, to talk to someone. I listened, I told her I'd pray. I had o real comfort for her in the immediacy of her pain.

I've been reading a lot about suffering lately. I led a small group session on 'why there is suffering in the world' so I had to bone up. I read St Thomas Aquinas, C S Lewis and various other great thinkers. I have, currently, at my mental fingertips, more of the answers on this topic than I have ever had. I could have said that our concept of evil and unjustness points to an objective standard of goodness and justice; that a world without suffering would not allow us to learn courage, humility, grace and other virtues; I could have said that it will all be OK if you just take the long view, the eternal perspective. I could have said this, and yet, and yet...

None of it would have helped.

Now, I cannot begin to fathom the agony of this family. I feel for them, for their grief and turmoil must dwarf anything I have ever gone through, and I hesitate to even begin to compare my troubles to theirs, but here's what I've found in my limited experience. In the middle of pain, theology hasn't helped me. My friends help a little, my church helps a lot, but my God, the Jesus who loves me, the Holy Spirit who fills me with peace, calm, strength and joy gets me though the toughest of times that I have had to face. The theology, all that study stuff in between the tough times, maybe that lays good foundations for the tough times, but when the storm rages nothing reaches the parts others don't like the Almighty Himself.

Even more so, it helps just knowing he's been through so much more than I can fathom; the pain of crucifixion and the agony of separation from the Father's love that had always surrounded him. He's been there, he gets it. It gives him a the validity to get inside my pain with me. I can only hope this helps when I have to deal with something as agonising as losing a child. I guess that's what faith is

For those keeping me accountable, this week I managed to dig my bible out twice. I'll keep trying. How are you all doing out there? Please, comment and follow if you can.

Much love,

Rob

...and so it begins

So, blog 1.
I'm still not entirely sure how this will work, what I'll write about and not write about, who might be reading etc. I suppose we'll figure that out as we go along.

Today, guilt and my bible.
Mostly that's what I get from my bible, guilt that I'm not reading it. My motivation for finding time for it waxes and wanes, but I know I should read it, and generally it's worth doing. No surprise there, It's been a pretty popular book for thousands of years so it must have some validity.

Anyway, today the knowledge that I was about to blog spurred me on. I hope living my faith out here in the blogosphere will keep me accountable and make me do the things I know I should.
So, before I indulged myself with toast and lemon curd and a cup of Earl Grey with a good chunk of Sci-Fi I found time to crack open Romans (we've got a sermon series coming up at church so it seemed as good a place as any). One of the verses jumped out at me: "I am not ashamed of the gospel." I thought "yeah, that''s me" but realised perhaps I am a little. In day to day life my faith doesn't get the press it ought to when I talk to my friends and colleagues who don't believe. Maybe this is a step in the right direction, maybe not, but it seemed serendipitous that that particular verse popped out today.

Anyway, enough blogging, my lovely wife wants me back, all to herself.