Cousin Mary and the Emphatic future negative

This weekend, my cousin Mary died. She is actually my Grandfathers Cousin, but she is alot closer to my family than that particular title would suggest. With no children of her own- my Mum and her sisters have been very dear to her, and she has been part of Sandy and my life as long as I can remember. My first memory of her was while doing a school project on my family tree- and sitting for hours and hours with Mary as she shared the details of our carefully researched family history- one of the passions of her life.

It is a sad and happy time, because Mary was a devoted Christian. She was one of the most supportive of all our relatives of Tim and my decision to go into ministry- and her kind words of affirmation stired us on in that difficult process. It is great to know that she is with Jesus.

Today in Greek we were looking at a concept of the technically named Emphatic future negative. It is a method of expression in Greek to talk about something that will never happen in the future. But the expression "it will never happen" doesn't really capture the force of it. A better way is to say "It will definately not happen" or even better "It will never ever happen". It is a concret promise of what has no possibility of ever happening.

So, with dear cousin Mary in mind- how exciting it was today to read the words of Jesus in John- that use this emphatic future negative:

"...and anyone would comes to be I will never ever drive away" John 6:37

"The one who follows me will never ever walk in darkness, but have the light of life" John 8:12

Isn't that so cool! Mary has died, but she has the light of life, and will never ever walk in darkness!

Greek exam

Good news!
Greek went fairly well for me and Tim, praise God! The highlight was going out to a Greek restaurant afterwards and eating fried halomi- yum. But in all seriousness, as frustrating as Greek has been to study for- it is amazing to think of how much we have learnt and particularly how much of the Bible we can now read. What a privilege to study and I am so thankful for your prayers!

Me and one of the girls I was translating with were really excited because we were given a passage we'd never seen before, from somewhere in the Bible, and we were able to translate it in around 2 minutes. Such a buzz. Until the other guy in our group (who had done Greek before) sat down, took a quick glance at the sentence in Greek and said "That's from John's Gospel!"
Looks like we still have a way to go. But we are getting there.
love B

Pray for Greek and Godliness

Dear Friends,
I wanted to ask for two quick prayer points. First, please pray that I study and learn well for my Greek exam this Friday. Secondly, can you pray for my godliness. I am finding it hard not to be caught up with marks. Pray that I study to learn, and that I deal with whatever marks I get with a godly attitude.
Ta,
love B

Lessons about marriage to be learned from the Gilmore girls

My sister has got me very much hooked to the Gilmore Girls. So entertain, such witty humour and some really facinating relationships. But its got me asking the question that used to bugged me during my somewhat embarrassing day-time soap phase, "How come television characters are so smart about most things but so dumb about relationships?". I have a sneaky suspicion it might have to do with the need for interesting story lines- but it bugs me non the less.

This is the typical situation in a television show:

Man A is dating the women of his dreams Lady A. Man A does something stupid or wrong but is afraid to tell Lady A and ruin the relationship and so keeps it a scret and even lies about it. Time passes. Stupid Male friend B lets the cat out of the bag and Man A and Lady A break up- and she admits she could forgive him for the mistake-but not for hiding it. Time passes. After a miserable time apart they get back together. But then Man A starts doing something that frustrates Lady A, and she decides not to say anything for the sake of the relationship. Time passes. They grow apart as Lady A doesn't really open up about things anymore due to her frustration, and Man A doesn't know what he's doing wrong. So Man A starts spending more time with Stupid Male friend B or Attractive Lady friend B- and Lady A spends all her time complaining about Man A to whoever will listen. It all blows up and they break up. Time passes...

Communication people! It makes for less exciting television shows but much more rewarding relationships!

Fantasy Fiction

For those of you who don't know, I occasionally embark on the obscure hobby of writing fiction.

Its predominately a dormant hobby- because at various phases of my life I move in and out of it due to time and motivation. I've been doing bits and pieces since I was a kid, got a bit more serious when I was in Uni and at early stages of work, lost interest when Tim came along (he can be very distracting you know ;)- then rekindled it again over this summer. When I write, life is generally more exciting, I am happier- and strangely I become easier to live with. And for some reason, despite 23 years of time passing and passions changing, the literary dreams that started when I was five (with my first short story- "The Day the Sun turned Pink") I still can't bare to put to rest. So I find myself once again attempting to write a novel.

At the moment I am embarking into the world of fantasy fiction- with somewhat hilarious results. I'm out of the habit of writing, so much of my efforts so far come out as cliche and over the top- I'd show you some but I'm much too embarrassed of it. Plus I'd never realised just how much planning goes into a fantasy story. Every time I start writing I realise there is a whole lot of background thinking that I still have to do before my story comes together. What is my world, what is its history- these thoughts occupy my time much more than actually time typing out actually words on a computer.

But it has raised for me an interesting question of how as a Christian I should go about writing fantasy. I dealt with some of these issues in my mind during the start of the Harry Potter craze (of which I was and am very much swept up in)- but I've realised that its another ball game when you are actually doing the writing. In a fantasy world- unless you are in the calibre of brilliance of CS Lewis- it doesn't seem possible to have a God figure without somehow being heretical or down-playing the glory of the one true God. Yet how do you make a world which makes sense without him- given that this world and all that is in it is held together and has its meaning in Christ?

Then you have the question of magic. Given the way the Bible talks about magic- how do you use it within fantasy? My current thinking is to include it- but keep it very clearly in the realm of the unreal. But is that just a cop-out because it is such a useful literary device?

I would love to use my story as an evangelistic tool- but again I feel that a clear gospel presentation within it is very much beyond me. But pre-evangelism? Can it be a place to raise issues to do with morality, sin and judgement? The failing of the human race?

When I studied Creative writing at Uni I feel very much into the trap of writing to sound smart and to impress my classmates- not at all thinking what it meant to write as a Christian. But at the same time I don't want to produce something that is wooden and false because I'm trying to turn my art into theological prose.

Anyway, those are my random thoughts, which I'm hopefully going to add to by doing a bit of reading on the topic. If anyone has any thoughts on these issues I'd appreciate hearing them.
B

Pray and Praise

Here is a gorgeous picture of my sister in law Elise and her fiance Harry at their engagement party yesterday. Aren't they gorgeous! It was such a special day- and I think I appreciated it more because it was the first time that we'd seen both of them since they moved to Sydney and also since they got engaged.

Elise is a nurse, and she has been doing quite a bit of nursing work in Burma and Thailand and is really passionate about it. One thing that she learnt when she was over there was that the Karin tribe's Christians celebrate the big occasions in their life (such as birthdays) with a time of prayer and praise to God. Elise was inspired by this, so she attempted to start this tradition among the Grants by organising us all to spend an hour on the morning of their engagement party singing songs to God, sharing reflections from his word for her and Harry for their marriage, and praying for them and for the family and the party.

It was such a special time, particularly poignant since Harry became a Christian last year-and as this was an answer to all our long terms prayers- it was so special to have him pray with us!

One thing that Elise said that really got me thinking was that she said "Why is it that our response to special occasions is to eat and drink and dance?". I don't think any of these things are wrong- in fact, I think these are great gifts from God to help us express our joy ('specially dancing- oh how I'd missed it!). But as God gives us these, as well as the blessings of marriage, life and family how much more appropriate is it to sing his praises and thank and pray when we celebrate!

I was talking with a friend last time I was down in Melbourne last time and she asked "Do you feel like an in-law with Tim's family or do you feel like family?", and since then I've been realising more and more what a blessing it is to be part of the Grants. They are one of the best models I've seen of Christian hospitality. It is the kind of house that is always full because Joel and Elise feel so comfortable having their friends round- and from the moment I first walked in I was welcomed with open arms. And Tim and I knew we could turn up without notice and always we would be looked after and Lois (Tim's Mum) would be able to accommodate us into whatever meal was on- because she is always prepared for any unexpected visitors.

Living in Sydney is giving Tim and I chances to practice this hospitality as we host interstate guests and have College friends round. I pray that Tim and I will have a house as welcoming as the Grant, and one that's first reaction to good news is prayer and praise.

love Belinda

Belinda's afternoon in the Third person

Belinda sat down on the couch and rubbed her head. Why, why, why she wondered, did she still have a headache? She had sleeped well, ate well, studied not to much, and had just had a peaceful walk home. She stubbornly pushed aside the thought that she might be coming down with something. It would go away. It had to go away. Life already felt too out of control, a few days in bed when she should be sorting things out would send it all over the edge.

Not that she hadn't had a wonderful day. That was the thing about Belinda. Despite headaches and frustration and the spinning sensation caused by so many thoughts- she almost always had good days. Greek, the dragon of first term- if not vanquished- was at the very least sulking in its cave. The classes were interesting, chapel had been the most entertaining of the year (go Benny!), and relationships were good. In fact on the relationships scales-nearly every day there had been a subtle shift as people moved from the side of aquantance to the side of friend.

But still there was uncertainty and Belinda for the most part hated uncertainty. The terms work still didn't fit in neat little columns in her mind- and every so often she had horrible preminitions of late nights trying to summarise books she hadn't had time to read. But it was the end of term four that really worried her. Almost everyday someone would ask- what are you doing next year? Continuing to study? And Belinda would smile a smile that only expressed a pinch of her real frustration and would say "Not sure really, sorry"

Every so often Belinda would think back to those conversations she has had- millions and trillions of conversations she had had with Christian women about uncertainty. Almost every women she had discipled had once heard it- because there is something about being a women and struggling with uncertainty. And Belinda would say the phrase that she loves because its true and she came up with it "God is as much in control when we know what's going to happen as when we don't".

And as she thought back to those conversations-she would try to take it on board, not because she should practice what she preaches, but because it's true. And then she would pray that God would help her trust him, trust him with her spinning heads and her work and her relationships and her headache and her future and her uncertainty. And she would ask his forgiveness for her lack of faith in his goodness and grace. How often she asked for this! And how comforting to know that there was never any such thing as too often!

Belinda smiled to herself, got off the couch and picked up her next assignment of the term. She began to read...

Procrastination doesn't pay

Sorry I haven't written in a while.

I've just had one of those really blah weeks. There has been some lovely stuff (great times with friends and the equip conferences was excellent- will write about it soon) but I have been feeling a bit off colour and head-achey, the result being that rather than actually doing a respectable amount of work I did maybe half an hours study a day this week. Which means i have an essay due tomorrow. Which I haven't finished. And now I actually do feel properly sick and have to work through it!

Procrastination doesn't pay kiddies. Write that down. No, I said write it down. Don't go onto facebook, don't go watch TV. I said write it down! Where are you going? Didn't you hear what I said? It doesn't pay...don't leave...you still haven't written it down...wait...
;)

Crusades

Today was a sad day.

As a Christian, I love to think that Christians- due to the Spirit in their lives and their wonderful privilege of knowing their great God as father- are more loving than the rest of the world. And my theology and my experience would say that in some senses they are. But today we looked at the crusades in my "History of Christian Mission" subject- and I had to face the fact that my brothers and sisters in Christ in the past made a stupid, evil mistake. I am not even assuming that all crusaders were Christians- but I think it is fair to say that at least some involved in the process were.

The killing of the Jews along the way. The threat of death to those conquered unless they were baptised. The lack of any real compassion or love for the Muslims they were attacking. Conquering and conquest under the pretence of redemption. Pure and simple racism flying behind a banner that contained the cross of my saviour.

It is heart breaking. It is sin. It is remarkable that Christ died for those misguided crusaders. It is remarkable that he died for me.

Praise the Lord for his grace- let us pray that our Jewish and Muslim neighbours would see love through Christian witness, and know that grace through Christ.

Papyrus

The theme of this week at College seems to be archeology. As we study the Old Testament, as we move (relatively quickly) through our overview of the books and sections of the Bible, we pause momentarily at various points to put what we are learning in its historical context. Much of this involves thinking about archaeology and what place it has in coming to understand the Bible. Some people find it a bit boring- but I love it! It is amazing to think about God, working in and through history to enact his purposes. Its helpful to think about what archeology can and can't prove (it doesn't-reasonably enough- always seem to want to answer the questions we want to ask)- and yet the little evidence mixed in with the Biblical account gives me comfort that God's word truly describes what happens.

But the most interesting archaeological discovery I had this week was in a lecture about Papyrus. You see, for many, many years- there was a lot of mystery as to how to understand many words in the Greek New Testament (around 760!) that only ever appeared in the Bible. People would try to work it out from context and from earlier translations- but this process was fraught with error. People even talked about "New Testament Greek" like it was a language all of its own that couldn't be compared to anything.

One of the problems was that the writings of New Testament days often did not last because the paper would rot away from connection with water- either rain or flooding depending where it was found.

But in Egypt there was a town by the name of Oxyrhynchus. Oxyrhynchus got its water from a canal off the Nile- and so unlike the rest of Egypt it was not subject to flooding. And being in the dessert- they never got any rain. So when the people of Oxyrhynchus dug holes in the dessert sand and buried their papyrus documents (everything from bills to religious documents)- 2000 years later archaeologists were able to find it completely in-tact!

The Oldest copy of a part of the New Testament was found in Oxyrhynchus- a section of the gospel of John that appears to be copied with decades of John penning the original! And those 760 Greek words that were only found in the New Testament were almost all found in the Oxyrhynchus documents- so that we can now have an even better understanding of what the writers of the New Testament meant when they used certain words- and can be more confident that our translations are correct.

Archeology doesn't seem to always answer the questions that we want to ask- and sometimes can be frustrating. But this week was a real reminder that God is in control of all of it- and provides for his people.

Sandy and Me

I was retreving photos off my phone and found this one of Sandy's visit in March and thought I'd put it up. One of the rare photos where we look alike! So strange not being in the same city as my sister- after being in the same house and even the same bedroom for so long!

Love you Sandy!

B

That priceless moment

I had a lovely day today. You know that priceless moment when someone you spend time with moves from an aquantance to a friend? Sometimes it just passes you with little fan-fare; and you don't even remember that there was ever a time when conversation was silted and barriers were up. Sometimes (oh those beautiful rare times!) you met someone and it's there from the instant you first talk- you are friends and you would always be friends. Other times it is very dramatic when pain or shared goals bring you together because you just happened to be the person there at the key time.

And sometimes you know a person for a little while and are friendish and then you get past that hurdle with a really lovely, deep, meaningful conversation. I had two of them today.

What a lovely day! Praise God.