Yes.  It is so easy to moan and get bitter, have you noticed?  How is your bitterness scale?  Here is a way to test it.  Count the number of times today that you hear yourself moan about something, whether that is griping at another driver on the road (I am a vile offender), complaining about something, feeling edgy about being in a  queue, feeling irritated or dissatisfied etc.  Also, count the number of compliments and thanks that you give out.  How many thank you letters/notes you write, how many people you praise behind their back, how many people you extend grace towards, etc.   Which wins?  I hate to think what my answer to that question would be.

I must say, I do object to being forced into intimacy with complete strangers.  I stopped going to the dentist when they privatised it and instead of the comforting plastic ’school chairs’, a shabby brown 70’s carpet and some bad magazines and battered children’s books on a ’school table’, they installed a thick green pile carpet, 2 plush sofas that were a foul mustard yellow colour and boasted their entire knowledge of garden herbs (or something) and some plasma screen technology showing various disturbing documentation of tooth treatment…

As I stumbled in from the rain, I was forced to sit by a rather unfortunately goofy gentleman (hence the fact that he was at the dentist I suppose).  As I sat on the now damp and a little too warm (I could smell steam) sofa, we were tilted in towards each other until our cheeks (facial) were almost touching.  He tried to turn a page of the paper in an excuse to shuffle away and I tried a move that resembled a duck trying to take off from water in, well, sheer panic.  I picked up a Postman Pat annual in an attempt to shield myself from his disturbing features (the sort that are so intriguing that you just have to stare until Mary Poppins scolds you with “close your mouth Michael, we’re not goldfish”).

Realising what I was reading, I hurriedly cast it aside and stared intently at the plasma screen that was showing me a filling being rammed into someone’s teeth.  At this point I began to seriously twitch and was very relieved when the dentist-etta (the assistant lady who writes down intriguing tooth code such as “E24 partial”) called my name and I was able to lie down and stare up the dentist’s nostrils.

I spose I really ought to go back at some point….

Mmmmmm…. Try them!

Today, where the M&S shopping trolley was the other day, I saw this…

You can usually tell if a car is a Christian or not. It usually has a fish on the back. This car, however, decided to be a bit more explicit. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, R-men. Clearly from the ‘Shire.

I have just purchased an awesome album from iTunes by someone I know that my Dad used to teach called Tommy Scott.  Tommy is an awesome jazz pianist and his band Future Positive have just released an album called REMEDIES - it is superb.  For £5.33 on iTues (or £10.99 on Amazon if you want the CD) it is definitely worth a purchase.  Tommy is about my age, but if I had half the talent he has, I would feel like a hero!  Seriously, go and download it if you like real jazz.

I have been challenged recently in a number of areas:

*  about what I write on my blog

*  about stress

* about distraction

This is the vibe:  At Hungry for God the other night, which is a big prayer meeting at our church that happens once a month (2-300 odd people meeting to pray for the church and the community whilst worshiping God) a testimony (which means ‘a real-life story’) was shared about how someone with some big issues in their life found a Trinity blog and hence found Trinity Church and ended up re-committing his life to the Lord even though it meant that there would be huge lifestyle consequences.  Mark finished the story about this brave man and how the Lord had changed his life starting with a blog by saying (almost as a throwaway comment), “if you keep a blog then for goodness sake write about what really matters to you rather than what you had for breakfast”.

I was somewhat subdued…  I have always said that I don’t write solely about God on my blog because I want to show that God is integrated within all areas of my life and not separated into ‘blog’ vs. ‘facebook’ (translate: church on a Sunday vs. life in the rest of the week).  However, I was challenged by the fact that often God gets the blog back seat and that often I am all too ready to tell a story about a funny lamp post or some weird graffiti before I will tell anyone who cares to read this translation of thought-to-screen what matters to me more than anything else in life, which is simply that God loves them (YOU).  He says for free that if you accept that you don’t get everything right (and therefore need forgiveness) and that He died on the cross to take the blame for all that rubbish and believe in Him, then when  you die, you don’t have to perish, you can be with God for ever.

I mean, have you ever sat down to seriously wonder what happens to you when you die?  It is not the most cheery thought for a Tuesday night, I agree.  I always used to think that the idea of heaven was almost too weird to be real (although I have never not believed in it I don’t think).  However, have you ever thought about those similarly weird things like, ‘why are we actually alive?’  ‘Where does the Universe end and what is beyond it?’ ‘How does existence outside of time work?’  ‘What would life be like if I hadn’t been born?  Would ‘I’ be someone else?’ and all those kind of questions that make you feel as though you should take your brain out, rinse it under a cold tap and pop it back in again.   And yet these are issues that we can’t really deny, what IS beyond the Universe, apparently it is never ending, but in our human understanding it must ‘end’ somewhere.  So is it really so implausible to think that although we can’t quite get our heads around the idea, death is not the end of us?

This is not to mention life…  Life with God makes stuff click that didn’t click before.  It doesn’t mean that suddenly your bedroom becomes a chocolate palace (girls) and that you always get the perfect haircut.  For boys it doesn’t mean that your favourite team will always win in sport because you prayed for them, or that some hot girl will be totally mad for you.  God loves you.  He rejoices over you with singing, he delights in you, you are made in His image (all of these things are stated in the Bible).  This is pretty great really, when we are quite useless sometimes.

I could argue about proof of the existence of God, or I could spend hours squabbling over theology, but what really matters is that He loves you.  I wish all my friends could know that, I wish (pray) that they would be brave enough to try saying to God “show me that you’re real”, because I know He would, as long as they are looking.  I wish (pray) that this nation would be bold enough to reclaim its Christian heritage and reinstate Biblical morals within schools, councils, government etc.  Why are we scared?  “If God is for us then who can be against us?”

Er…PINGU?!?  Surely you can’t go wrong with that.

Deadlines are creeping up and I have a migraine…  This is not good.  I am sitting in bed attempting to design a duck’s bottom (yes, it’s true).  It is times such as these that you begin to wonder if you are, in fact, part of the Truman show and whether the whole world is actually laughing at you.