Advent

When most people think of advent they think of calendars, chocolates, Christmas, candles. A quick google search for advent and I had to go to page 3 to find anything real about advent (save for good ol wikipedia!)

Advent comes from the latin adventus which means 'coming' so in essence advent is about waiting for something that is coming

Queuing, Traffic, Doctor's surgeries, packages, are all examples of times we have to wait, and they are all things we associate with frustration. Waiting is something we are not very good at. It's not very attractive and it's not a very popular discipline in this western culture where we want everything 'Now', we don't like to wait.

Advent however is all about waiting for the coming of the saviour, the coming of the one who will set the captives free. It's about making straight the path for the coming of the Lord as John the baptist said.

The scriptures have several references to waiting: -

Ps 27: Wait for the Lord, be strong and let your heart take courage

Ps 37: Those who wait on the Lord will inherit the Land

Is 40:31 "But those who wait upon God get fresh strength, they spread their wings and soar like eagles, they run and don't get tired, they walk and don't lag behind."

So what is involved in waiting? Waiting involves reflecting, repenting, resting, longing, hoping, expecting, trusting in His timing.

'Waiting on the Lord' seems somewhat of a lost art in our culture, even in our prayer lives, for myself anyway I find it hard to spend time just waiting for God to speak. But there is something to be said for waiting on Him. Isaiah 35 promises of a desert is bloom as we wait for the saviour. Waiting builds

• Strength
• relationship with the King
• disclipine (- early adveters in the 5th century used to go on 6 week fasts!)
• waiting enables us for the future
• It brings discernment for when to act..

..and that is the key - knowing when to move into action. I think we have an itchy feet syndrome where we feel like we must make something happen, something we are taught from youth that if you want something you have to go get it. But sometimes I think God is just asking us to wait for His prompting, because when we try to do things in our own strength we only end up messing it up!

more unexpected beauty

Refering back to this I just wanted to give a wee update. I found out that man who wrote that, his name is Dave, and it turns out that he is wonderfully creative. It seems obvious but this is a pattern I have come to see more and more with homeless people.

I have found amazing talent, great faith, and brilliant banter with these brothers & sisters, that as the title suggests was rather unexpected. The thing is now, it seems ridiculous that I have thought any differently, I mean why wouldn't these people be all those things, after all they are made in the image of God.

The hard thing is getting past that first barrier of awkwardness; that vaguely patronising attitude that we 'the Christians' carry when we go trying to live out the great commission. As soon as we realise that the guys we meet are real people, with real stories and colourful lives, real bonds of kinship can be formed.

I speak of this because of a few people I have met on the streets. They are amazing singers, story tellers, comedians, graceful and great carers for each other. I say graceful for one particular ugly incident where a friend of mine was refused entry into church, but was willing to forgive and give me a second chance to try and bring the Fathers grace into his situation. He has faith, so pray that God will be so very close to him, that he would be able to find a house, and that we would be able to help him as he seeks rehabilitation from the things that hold him back.

sowing a seed

Some of you may recognise the picture that has been my bebo picture for as long as I remember (see below), well something the minister said in church this morning got me thinking about this.


Luke 8: 5 ~ "A farmer went out to sow his seed. Some of it fell on the road; it was tramped down and the birds ate it. Other seed fell in the gravel; it sprouted, but withered because it didn't have good roots. Other seed fell in the weeds; the weeds grew with it and strangled it. Other seed fell in rich earth and produced a bumper crop"

For the majority of my Christian life I have felt that I am one of those lucky people whose seed fell on 'good ground', and that God was going to use my life to produce a hundredfold crop. However with every passing day, with the many times that I mess up, I am beginning to realise that there is weeds in my garden that need to be rooted out. Sometimes I fear that the seeds never fell on good soil in the first place. So my prayer is that God would plant new seeds in my life that fall on good ground, and produce a bumper harvest for His Kingdom and glory.

As I pondered some more, I began thinking that this problem is deeper than I first imagined, much deeper than just the weeds surrounding my own life. We live in a western culture that has thorns and vultures everywhere. We have abused our lands so far that there is barely any good soil left to plant in. Financial security, comfort in our churches, distant acts of kindness, image & media, and much more are choking the life out of the seeds God has planted in our lives. I believe we need to 'root' this things out of our lives if we are ever see our seeds grow into the full fruition that God has for our lives.

And this is were the hypocrisy begins, the challenge for me and others is to actually start living out these words, and stop talking about them.

fantasy tennis

Well I can't believe it's that time again, the tennis season has come to a close. Most women I know are relieved when the football season is over, but I doubt most people even know when the tennis season is. Well I'll tell you, it runs from January to October with a big end of season tournament in November.

Speaking of said tournament, that was played this week where the worlds best 8 players from the season come head to head for one final showdown. It involved the like of Roger Federer, new world no.1 Rafael Nadal, and for the first time Britain's Andy Murray. The eventual winner was Novak Djokovic in an unexpected final with my least favourite player Nikolay Davydenko. Murray had a descent run too, winning all of 3 his group games (including Federer), only to go out in the next round.

This season, since March I have been playing a fantasy tennis game kind of like what you get with fantasy football. The idea was to choose who you thought would win each of the first round matches for all of the masters series events, and then guess who would progress through the draw based on those predictions. The further your 'picks' got in the tournament, the higher the points were on offer. I had some really good tournaments and some not so good, but I was very almost rewarded for my conistant picking. After 8 tournaments, I finished 12th from 23,033 players, and had Roger Federer not pulled out injured in the Semi-finals of the last tournament, there was a pretty good chance I could have won the whole thing (The grand prize being £1000 and an all expenses paid trip for 2 to any tournament of my choice!).

I was livid having been so close, but still pretty proud of my efforts! So hopefully when I make a tennis prediction now it carries some sort of credibility, and next year I'm gonna predict the following. Andy Murray has a lot of points to gain in the first half of next season, with poor efforts in the aus open, early masters series and clay court season this year. He is ranked 4th in the world, which will mean being seeded to make at least semi finals in big tournaments which should make it easier for him to progress through the draw, instead of having to face the likes of Nadal in the 4th round! I expect more of the same from rafa, dominating on clay, and trying to be more competitive on hard court. I think Djokovic will always be a danger, but I think he lacks the legend factor that Nadal and Federer clearly have. Speaking of Roger - I wouldn't write him off just yet, he will not be pleased with how things have went this season, and he will want to prove everyone wrong, and get back to no.1, and I think he certainly could do it. Lastly my one to look out for next season - well there are a few. Jo-Wilfred Tsonga and David Nalbandian (if he ever shrugs off that false dawn syndrome!).

The picture below is evidence for my efforts in the fantasy tennis league (I am antykz, click to enlarge). To play next season log on to http://challenge.atptennis.com

learning from our mistakes

I am not an advocate of war of any kind, but I would just like to remember the millions of people that died to protect freedom in the many wars that have past, and also the atrocity of the jewish holocaust. The numbers of deaths and suffering seem meaningless to us, they are just numbers, but these were real human beings who bled and died.

So we should remember them, and learn from our mistakes. The problem is, despite centuries of war, killing and suffering, we still haven't learned from those tragedies past to stop. You think especially after 2 world wars, we would get the point. It's almost like allowing those who died before us die in vain. I believe in a God of peace, and my prayer is that one day we would seek peace, love and joy over death and suffering.

mr president elect

Well just about everyone seems to have an opinion on this, so I guess I'll share mine too. Listening in to some of the UTV news items, I can't understand why Northern Ireland has such an interest in American politics, like it really is going to have a massive influence here. I'm pretty sure this small little island isn't too high on the agenda of a new President who has been left to pick up the pieces of a global recession with $11 trillion debt and 2 tragic wars that have only incited racial hate to a new extreme. However electing a first ever African American president speaks volumes for a country who now finally seems to put to bed it's own deep ingrained inner racism, which God willing will have an effect on the rest of the world (including N.Ireland's sectarian culture).

The election itself has proven to a bit of a landslide with Mr President Elect Obama taking more than twice the amount of electoral college votes than that of his competitor John McCain (349-162). The democrats now hold quite significant majorities in both the house and the senate (254-173 & 54-40 respectively). So this means any agenda that Mr Obama may have will be quite easy to put through the American 'parliament' so to speak. This creates the ability to run a small dictatorship with not enough power coming from the opposition. So with such great power comes great responsibility and it is our duty as Christians to be praying for the new President elect, that the Holy Spirit will guide his decisions, and the he will pursue peace, mercy and love rather than the ways of his predecessor ("Blessed are the peacemakers ~ Matt 5:9). Consitutionally speaking of course the President elect has no power until his inaugaration in January.

As Mr Obama himself so often mentioned it is indeed time for a change. The American public are tired of the bush/republican rule, in the same way we here in the UK are tired of the Blair/Brown/Labour government. No dount the tories will get back in soon, and like Obama will be left to pick up the pieces of a crippled economy. They will have to make some tough unpopular decisions to get their respectibe countries back on their feet, which could prove their downfalls in 4 to 8 years time. But that is inevitable as people will eventually get tired and want a change, and so the cycle continues.

See Dave's blog for something pretty funny about pre-election. Also see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7708238.stm for an interesting article on what all this means for the future.

prison

I am not one who particularly knows much about prison (never having done any time myself!) or even had a particular heart for prison work (another being international students but thats for another time), and if I was being entirely honest I still struggle with developing a passion for it, but what I do know is that God wants us to have a compassion for the people who are on the inside (and friendships with the int. students!)

Firstly, in the bible it was seen as a good thing to have been thown in prison for your faith. But the men and women in prison need to know about the love of the saviour, and the grace of the creator, and it is our responsibility to bring it to them, and what a witness it could be!

There was a recent debate about the prisoner/victim recovery schemes, and that there was an issue in that there seemed to be more emphasis on rehabilitating convicts rather than helping victims. I think there should be a balance, and that it is important that both have the opportunity to receive grace equally, as none of us deserve our second chances. Wasn't it Jesus who told a criminal on the cross that today we would be in paradise with him.

It also got me to thinking that we treat our prisoners really well. Shelter, daily food, clothes, bed, activity, education. That's all far more effort that what we do for our homeless law abiding citizens, and there is definitely an injustice there. It would almost be profittable for a homeless person to commit a crime and be put in prison (except maybe that freedom is more important)! It made me think about my own efforts with the homeless. For example when we bring them food, we might bring them some and bread. But as one homeless person rightly corrected me, we would feed bread to the pidgeons, how much more should we be doing for a brothers and sisters on the street and in poor countries.

So it's time to pray for the prisoner, the homeless, the international student, those on the fringes of society for those are the people who Jesus says are Blessed (matt 5). And not only to pray, but to be the pray you ask for. Be the food giver, the clother, the one who introduces the life giver to the broken.