Running out of time

Why do I feel like I running out of time? the clock is ticking and I feel so left behind... Moulann

I love an old song called Stressed Out by Moulann (myspace) (listen to the song), whose music my friend Matt played to me quite a few years ago. I have two opposite behaviour patterns when I'm all stressed out. One is to become super organized and prepare things way in advance i.e. I confront and control the objects causing stress. The other is total avoidance until the deadlines create desperation, i.e. I become a victim of the stress. I've reached a point at the moment where I'm in avoidance which if you know me is very rare. But I have a number of people I'm worried about including my Auntie Mary, plus I have a horrible schedule until after Christmas. I need a number of miracles.

The problem as I know is placing my trust correctly and releasing the worries. I've scarcely played my cello in a while and am not giving enough time to praying. Praying is a real tension about trusting God will deliver and my own responsibility of human action of doing something to bring things about.

Our Study in Romans last night just brought all that home to a reality. Why am I blogging so much about this? Perhaps I've got to get playing/praying...

See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame. Romans 9:33

Waiting patiently

When we have the Lord to look forward to we can already experience him in the waiting. Henri Nouwen

I am amazed sometimes how ideas collide from different places. This last week I've been talking and listening and have come to conclusion the younger you are the more the challenge to learn patience in a relationship with God. Sometimes its worrying about what we are going to do with or for God and yet more we want to get on with it. We are impatient with ourselves because we seem not to be getting any better. The run up to Christmas, called Advent is a season of patience for Israel needed a lot of patience for her Messiah and for us awaiting the second coming and also in the frenetic tensions of the season. Today being Black Friday the beginning of the shopping season! My reading today from Henri Nouwen was on patience.

If we do not wait patiently in expectation for God's coming in glory, we start wandering around, going from one little sensation to another. Our lives get stuffed with newspaper items, television stories, and gossip. Then our minds lose the discipline of discerning between what leads us closer to God and what doesn't, and our hearts gradually lose their spiritual sensitivity.

Without waiting for the second coming of Christ, we will stagnate quickly and become tempted to indulge in whatever gives us a moment of pleasure.

Let us live decently, as in the light of day; with no orgies or drunkenness, no promiscuity or licentiousness, and no wrangling or jealousy. Let your armour be the Lord Jesus Christ, and stop worrying about how your disordered natural inclinations may be fulfilled. Romans 13:13-14

enough faith

To pray means to be willing to be naive, [not to have everything right or sussed out nor pure without self motives]. Emilie Griffin

This trio is a Gibson harp guitar, a Gibson mandolin and a cello (origin unknown). I can't really imagine the sound or what sort of music they played.

In prayer I don't know what makes for sufficient faith in some circumstances. Sometimes I make bold claims in prayer for God's action and other times I am penitent and not even sure what to ask for. We've been praying for unemployed individuals to find and jobs and I heard 7 found work. We've been praying for 30 students from my campus to attend International Christmas - I don't know whether this is bravado or a faith statement. I spent an hour talking together with a student a couple of weeks ago about thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. What can I pray for and is there something I shouldn't pray for?

I read Richard Foster's Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home in April 2003. I noticed this quotation ...

To pray is to change. This is a great grace. How good of God to provide a path whereby our lives can be taken ove by love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control. The movement inward comes first because without interior transformation the movement into God's glory would overwhlem us and the movement out into ministry would destroy us.

Prayer is more about being changed by the presence of God and less about asking for things. Prayer isn't about a quantity or quality of faith but a relationship always deepening, openness and willingness for change and transformation.

But to this day the Lord has not given you minds that understand nor eyes that see, nor ears that hear! Deut 29:4

A shadow, not yet

Two days of limited activity and the flu and I've already dropped 5 pounds. One of the advantages of Western good living means I have all this excess weight to live off when I get sick. But then again when you're sleeping a lot during the day as well as the night you don't eat that much. But my helping students still goes on.

A phone call tonight brought the need to understand conflict and conflict resolution. There are four types of conflict pseudo, content, value and ego. I'd never heard of these initially so a frantic search on the internet to understand what the question was. Pseudo conflict isn't really conflict at all, merely behaviour which irritates. While content conflict is frequently a disagreement over a fact which awaits confirmation. When we get to value conflicts we reach situations of difficult resolution because the opposing people have different values. Finally we reach ego conflict where conflict reaches its most personal though it still involves value conflict. It reaches a point where they cannot “agree to disagree!"

I suppose my conflict with the virus in my body has reached the ego stage, we cannot agree to disagree. I think I'm winning at the moment.