“I’ll be there as soon as I can, but I’m busy mending broken pieces of the life I had before.”
But the other day I listened to it not long after reading the end of Chapter 5 of Luke’s Gospel, where Jesus is quoted as saying the following about life when we’re transformed by God so that we live to enjoy Him, rather than the old life of following man-made rules:
“No one tears a piece from a new garment and puts it on an old garment. If he does, he will tear the new, and the piece from the new will not match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed. But new wine must be put into fresh wineskins.”
… and I realised how little I want to mend the broken pieces of the life I had before.
My new life is much better, as Sho Baraka explains:
So, Steve, how do you feel about having to leave Bath CU soon?
I’d say the song Prague (preferably the Muse version found below) gives a reasonable idea of my thoughts on that prospect.
Ok maybe it’s not quite like that, it’s more that I just like the song more every time I listen to it
However, while I do sometimes struggle to feel properly united, the CU is still easily my favourite part of my uni life, and I am gonna miss it a lot.
[[Warning: This post could possibly be described as a bit 'feelings-y'. It's pretty much just me thinking out loud (or on a keyboard) about where my life is going, which is probably not very interesting to read.]]
I assumed when I started uni that 5 years would be long enough to work out what to do afterwards, but apparently not. In fact, while I’ve progressed at the same rate as my course mates, I’ve got to know new freshers in the CU each year. And particularly this year, this has meant that despite my own first year being a distant memory, I still kind of feel like I’m just getting started, when actually, in a couple of months it’ll all be over.
In some ways it’s ok, even quite exciting, that I don’t know what’s next, because God knows… but I would still like to have some idea. Until now, my route through education has pretty much come about without me having to think about it. I now need to go out and find something to do next, but don’t know what I want, or what God wants. At the moment it kind of feels like my life is being cleared out, and I’m intrigued to see what’s going to replace the things that are being taken away.
It’s not exactly making me more pleased to leave the CU that people have recently been thanking me for being so helpful and encouraging. These comments, ranging from the somewhat believeable “just the fact you’re at pretty much every event is really encouraging”, to the plain ridiculous “you’re an amazing man of God”, remind me of something Joel Beeke said at the Aber conference last year:
Joel’s son wrote about his dad for a school report, saying that, while he has flaws, “he loves Jesus more than anyone I know”. Joel admitted that when he read this, he “wept like a baby”, because he feels like he loves the Lord so little.
It’s encouraging to hear that people can see things like that, even if we can’t see it in ourselves, and it’s nice to find that people are encouraged by me even though I feel like I’m doing very little that’s useful.
So in conclusion, to quote the Foo Fighters: “I wish you only knew how good it is to CU.”
…ok, so the actual words are “See You”, but this is how I hear it
I thought it might be interesting to document my music taste at the start of 2010 and see how different it is by the end. (I did say might be interesting… it might not)
So, 1 song for every letter of the alphabet to represent my musical taste at the start of 2010 (to make it easier, the letter could be the first letter of the song title, artist, or album title)…
That’s a fair amount of time I probably should have spent revising, and if you’ve got this far, the same probably goes for you… unless you don’t have exams coming up. You probably still could have spent your time better though.
That’s right, it’s time for the Raps Then Jives Top 5 Christmas Songs.
No. 1: Rage Against The Machine – Killing in the Name… just kidding…
In no particular order:
This is a great singalong (once the song starts, at around 2:36) that says it’s ok to get still excited about Christmas, even if it is “too commercial these days” (and it is, but that’s so clichéd it was painful to type, get over it):
This is random, but I love it:
Ok, you might get some presents that don’t fill you with joy and surprise, but don’t feign that you despise Christmas, you know you love it really.
Not sure why, but I think this song’s pretty cool too:
Finally, much as I don’t want to like a Mariah Carey song, this is an undeniably great Christmas anthem:
To be honest, I like pretty much any Christmas song, as long as it’s not Slade’s hideous Merry Xmas Everybody.
While we’re on Top 5′s, here’s my Top 5 2009 albums; I only bought 8, so maybe not saying a whole lot, but here we go anyway. (Clicking on the album covers will take you somewhere you can listen to them for free.)
Again in no particular order, except this is well out in front, and I think it’s quite popular among you lot too. Only Michelle Dessler is a more popular search term for this blog:
The 4 runners up:
In case you hadn’t noticed (and you probably hadn’t, especially if you’re reading this via facebook), the cover of John Frusciante’s The Empyrean is the image that appears at the top of my blog page.
I’m thinking that rather than write a trilogy on this subject I should have just cut the material down to one decent post with an actual point in mind. When I started part 1 I did have some sort of plan in my head for what each part of the trilogy would be about, but that’s got lost amongst other useless information acquired since then. Oh well. If you visit this blog often you may have seen my interpretation of the lyrics in Snow ((Hey Oh)), by Red Hot Chili Peppers, this is kind of a similar idea, based on Muse’s Uprising. You might say I’m redeeming the lyrics for my own ends.
I’m currently borrowing 365 days with Spurgeon, Volume 2 from my brother, which contains an extract from a sermon with a relevant passage from the Bible for each day of a year. Monday began with the words “Christians are soldiers.” He then goes on to ask what use would our soldiers be if they dreaded going into battle?
“Christians are runners too.” Would we not laugh at an athlete who could only compete when no one’s watching? We should defy all onlookers. It doesn’t matter who’s watching, a Christian is looking to Jesus.
However, it’s a much more comfortable life to go along with the crowd, and the majority of people, at least in this country, are heading in the opposite direction to Christians.
So, although I’m pretty sure Uprising is actually about a political uprising, I like to think of it as a call to battle for Christians.
They’ll try to push drugs that keep us all dumbed-down,
and hope that we will never see the truth aroused.
Another promise, another seed,
another packaged lie to keep us trapped in greed.
but
…we should never be afraid to die.
…their time’s coming to an end.
We have to unify and watch our flag ascend.
They will not force us.
They will stop degrading us.
They can not control us.
We will be victorious.
You could read religion into more lyrics than I have written about here, but I’m probably taking this a bit far as it is.
Guiding Light
I’m lost, crushed, cold and confused with no guiding light left inside.
“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” – Jesus
you’re losing life’s wonder
Ignoring the reason life was created is bound to lead to problems, and the results can be seen in the number of abortions that take place. Between 1967 and 2007, 6.7 million babies were killed. 0.4% were due to risk to the mother’s life. 1.3% were due to foetal handicap. 1 in 5 pregnancies in England and Wales ends in abortion.
Unnatural Selection
No religion or mind virus, is there a hope that the facts will ever find us?
So religion is compared to a “mind virus”. I’m glad he doesn’t just lump all religion together though. In an interview with Q magazine he says: “I want to decipher the motive and the beneficiary behind things. Like Catholicism. Is it about God? No. It strikes me as more likely being about power, money and child abuse.”
Bringing up child abuse is probably crossing a line, but he has a point, if religions are false (and they can’t all be right), then the power they have over people is quite scary.
I think science has limits to what it can tell us, so if that’s all you’re relying on, then I don’t think all the facts will find you. “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” – Albert Einstein
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