If this is art, then call me uncultured

I read today about a college student in the US who has been artificially inseminating herself, and then taking abortifacients in order to suffer miscarriage. She has been using video footage of herself having the miscarriages and the bloody remains of her murdered children, as ART.

If you think I am joking you can read all about it at http://yaledailynews.com/articles/view/24513

This behaviour is entirely evil and abhorent. My response? Disbelief and heartbreak...

Come Lord Jesus. We so desperately need you. Our world is a mess. We are such depraved sinners. Lord, we need you. Please come and bring justice, peace and love. Please bring an end to all the suffering and the evil. Please come soon! Lord please have mercy on this girl. Please save her, and bring her into your Kingdom. I don't ask this because she deserves your love and grace, but because like the rest of us, she is a sinner deeply and profoundly in need of a Saviour. Only you can save us, Lord Jesus, please work in her what is pleasing to you.

In Jesus' name. Amen.

Facing suffering and grief during divorce

There's an interesting post on the Stuff Christian's Like blog today about "Painfully named divorce ministries". I was going to post a comment there, but I got too long-winded so here tis:

I think calling divorce ministries something honest about where people are actually at is providing a service. Our society is so blaise about divorce and so ignorant about how to deal with suffering. We are taught to run from it, ignore it, put on a happy face and repeatedly say "I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine" until we believe it. So sugarcoating divorce recovery with a nice title isn't really going to heal/help anyone if they are in the denial/avoidance mindset. I would argue naming ministries something like "Divorce Sucks" or "ARRGGGHH! Jesus please rapture me now!!" would be most appropriate.

My experience is you need to embrace the grief to move through it. It can seem like an endless ocean and you feel that there cannot possibly ever be an end to it. You feel that if you step into those deep waters of grief that you will be dragged along in a current forever, and that's if you don't drown. You can't see how you will ever be 'ok' ever again. Your heart feels like an onion, where the layers have been peeled away betrayal by betrayal. And you can't be sure what hurts the most, the other person betraying you, or your own failure and complicity in the failure of the marriage, or the complete sense of hopelessness you have because you don't have complete control over the circumstances and so cannot "fix it", and you don't understand why God isn't doing "more" when He so clearly states in Malachi 2:16 that "I hate divorce".

The only way to deal with it, so that you don't keep carrying it for the rest of your life, is to honestly face it. To dive right into the grief, to embrace it and face it honesty. You let Christ be the lifesaver that dives in with you and pulls you across to the other shore, remembering that "He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering..." (Is. 53:3) and so He deeply, deeply identifies with our pain. More than that, He "...carried our sorrows... he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed." (Is. 53:4-5) So we can leave all of it beneath the cross. All of our sense of failure. All of our anger and hurt towards our former spouse. ALL OF IT. This healing doesn't come if you aren't honest about it all, because if you aren't honest about it all then you cannot leave it all under the cross.

Some of the comments on the the Stuff Christian's Like post belittled people expressing their pain during divorce. This seems to me to indicate an underlying fear that the people don't really know what to do when others are really suffering in this way, they don't know how to respond, and they really really do not want to have to deal with it. They do not want their nice little world invaded by genuine hurt and suffering. This is in stark contrast to Jesus' attitude as portrayed in Luke 4 where He quotes Isaiah 61:1-2, declaring His "mission statement". This mission statement included two key phrases, "to bind up the brokenhearted" and "to comfort all who mourn". This was part of Jesus' mission, it should also be part of each Christian's mission. Divorcees are brokenhearted and mourning, and they need the love of Christ, and they need the support of the Church.

God bless,
Bec

Stuff Bec Likes...

It's pretty rare that I find something on the internet that is worth going back to again and again, that consistently produces edifying, amusing and/or engaging material.

I thought I was onto a winner with the podcast from Mars Hill, such rich teaching. (Although they need to rethink their stance on women in ministry, and their understanding of the subordination of women -- they really fail to understand the scriptures in historical context on this issue. Otherwise I really love their teaching as it is so Christocentric and also deals with the real issues that people face.)

Another goodie is the "I appreciate Christian pickup lines" group on Facebook. If you haven't joined it, it is quite simply THE BEST group on Facebook. Some highlights...

• "If you were a leper I'd still hold your hand, even if it wasn't attached"
• "You are a Galatians 5 fruit salad"
• "How many times do I have to walk around you to make you fall for me?"
• "I have familiarised myself with all 5 love languages, in fact, I invented 4 of them."
• "Hi, I'm Calvin. You were meant to choose me."

But in the past few weeks the top spot has been taken out by the "Stuff Christians Like" blog. It is priceless, a real gift to the body of Christ. It's a bit prophetic in nature I think, in that it draws attention to some things that we do/think that are a bit silly. Helps us to take ourselves a bit less seriously. At the end of a hard day, it really puts a smile on my face.

God bless,
Bec

Giving God the credit for small things

I read a quote from somebody a while ago who's name I don't remember that went something along the lines of 'Sainthood consists in ascribing to God even the smallest of things'.

Well I've had one of those weird 'smallest of things' things this week.

About nine months ago at last year's Hillsong conference in Sydney I lost my mobile phone. It was only about three months old at this point and not only was it quite new it was a iMate JASJAM. Not cheap. Not only not cheap but it was very firmly installed in my pantheon of household gods. :-( I really loved it. Partly because I'm a geek and love gadgets, but also because I had eSword installed on it and could look stuff up in the Greek on a whim. It was nerdy-geek-biblical-scholar heaven.

Quite apart from the fact that I really loved that phone much much more than I should have it was incredibly frustrating to lose it on the second day of the five day conference amongst 30000 other Christians, and try to be able to find various people in amongst that crowd without a phone was, well, difficult and annoying.

Needless to say I haunted the lost and found stand. But to no avail. It was not handed in. So after returning to Melbourne on the Saturday, I went down my local Tel$tra store and forked out for a new (cheap) phone.

On Tuesday night this week my lovely boyfriend received a call while we were out for Mexican from a lady in Sydney who had found my phone. NINE months later!! She mailed it out to me and it arrived today with a note explaining what had happened.

A month after Hillsong a Jehovah's Witness conference was held at the Acer arena and it was found and handed in. So this is 4 weeks after it was lost! And by a JEHOVAH'S WITNESS. I tell you what, next time they come to the door I think I will be a bit nicer rather than just whacking them with the bible! ;-)

Acer Arena's policy is to hold onto things for a period of time before throwing them out. So a lady there went to all the trouble of finding someone else with the same phone so she could borrow their charger to charge it up to find out who it belonged to. She found James' number and called.

I'm blown away. First of all, that God would return to me what was previously an idol in my life. Secondly, that He would move the heart of a JW to hand it in. Thirdly, that the lovely Maria went to all that trouble to find a charger so it wouldn't get thrown out, so she could return it to me.

In and of itself, it's a bit of a small thing. But I'm just amazed that God and the JW and Maria would go to all that trouble for me. And it's come at a time that it's really encouraging, and a reminder that God does love me, and isn't ignoring my struggles and difficulties at the moment. Its a little thing, but it makes me feel loved that He'd care about a little thing like that.


God bless,
Bec

Oedipal Athiests

There is a fascinating post on the Age's Religious Write blog today:
http://blogs.theage.com.au/thereligiouswrite/archives/2008/04/oedipal_atheist.html

Well worth a read.


God bless,
Bec

Sin cost-benefit analysis

In business whenever a new project is conceived it goes through cost-benefit analysis to determine whether it will produce benefits that are suitable for the cost involved. If there is not going to be more benefit gained than cost outlaid it typically doesn't go ahead.

I was thinking today about sin in the light of cost-benefit analysis. I think one of the things we do when we decide to sin is we ignore the 'cost' side of the situation. We only tend to see the 'benefit' that it will bring us in the immediate, and ignore the costs associated. We particularly tend to ignore the costs to other people for our sin. Costs we later have to deal with ourselves are FAR more motivating towards good behaviour.

One example would be the twerp who stole the badge off the back of my car yesterday in the church car-park. It's a hunk of plastic with some silver paint on it. Albeit it's a french hunk of plastic with silver paint, but nonetheless, still it's not a particularly practical item. So I would really question the value of having stolen it. I mean WHAT are they going to do with it?? (I can tell you what I'd like to do with it... fasten the thing to their foreheads with superglue given that they love it so much... grr mumble mumble) So benefit = negligible. However the cost to me is (a) a whole bucket load of annoyance, (b) $50 to replace it from my local friendly (read extortionate) Citroen dealer, (c) potentially have the car off the road for a few hours while it's fitted as the half broken bits and old glue will need to be cleaned up before the new one can be fitted. So cost to me is greater than the amount of benefit they could hope to get out of it. Stealing the whole car would have made MUCH MORE SENSE.

So maybe when we are tempted, we should do a bit of a cost-benefit analysis. And not just the cost to us, but the cost to others too. Is it really worth satisfying our desires when the costs are so high???


God bless,
Bec

Thoughts from Bloesch - Hope

“A truly just society is dependent not on experiments in social engineering, not on the cultivation of a global consciousness, not on an amalgamation of the world religions, but on a universal acknowledgement of the reality of the holy and living God of the Scriptures and acceptance of the message that he has acted decisively and irrevocably for the salvation of the human race through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The hope of humanity rests on the kingdom of God, which is now at work in our midst, and on its consummation through the coming of Jesus Christ in power and glory when his universal lordship will be revealed for all to see and the fruits of his redemption will be assured to all who repent and believe.”
Bloesch, p249.