Sorry it's been a while. I blogged on Saturday and then when I went to publish it I lost the whole thing. So frustrating!! Had an amazing week last week with gLo. Approx 170 kids from Lurgan gathered together across denominations to try and represent Jesus to our community. It was another awesome week of exploring together the values of prayer, community and sacrifice.

While I feel so alive with the events of this summer, it has left me tired in every way you can be tired. The thing is though everything is just starting for the new season in the next couple of weeks!! Plus I have a deadline for my disertation for the next two weeks...about another 7000 words to go!! I was reading Phil's blog on sleep tonight. I think he is exactly right but also exactly what I am not doing well at the minute. I would values your prayers.

On a differnt note - had a great day today performing the wedding ceremony for my good friends Neil and Judith Dawson. They are a smashing couple and was great to be part of it.

More tomorrow hopefully as I seek to get back to the blog!!

Just finished another week of glo. I am tired in every way you can be tired but as always after gLo I feel fulfilled, alive and glad to have been part of kingdom business. We had about 170 kids involved in kids clubs, sporting activities, dance workshops, visiting old people, community clean-ups and hanging out with kids in the local community centres. We pushed back our boundaries and moved in to new areas we have never been in before, seeking to continue to live out the values of prayer, community and sacrifice in our own little town of Lurgan. Each night we meet together and worshipped God. It was there we met with God and He showed us that the gardens we cleaned and conversations we had that day with kids were what real worhsip is all about. We found people that need God and sought to infect our community with the power of love. I still need to process my thoughts but I am so thankful and grateful to stand with this young people as we explore how we can be Jesus in our town.

gLo is on its way!!

Been praying every morning this week for an hour with the guys for gLo. Really starting to get excited about it now and praying that God will give the young people a fresh vision of faith, hope and love. That we will not just simply be nice but that we will have fatih, hope and love infused with the power of God so that these three will pentrate darkness, lonliness, depression, religion and pride. 'The kingdom of God does not come in word but in power.'

The Irresistible Revolution

Have taken a few days this week up at Cranfield to try and get a bit more of my disertation written. In case you are not one of the people I have moaned at about this already, I have to write 20,000 words on an 'Old Testament vision for alternative community.' I love the title and the idea (I picked it myself) but I starting to get a bit bogged down with the academia that is involved with writting such a piece and feeling the pressure of my ever looming deadline. There is so much interesting stuff in it though which I will try to blog over the next few weeks. Hopefully it will be interesting for you too!!

In between my reading and research for this I have been reading Shane Claiborne's new book, The Irresstible Revolution. It has been inspiring reading through the journey of someone who has passionatley sought to take the call of Jesus - to leave everything and follow Him - as seriously as they can. A number of things have stood out for me. This morning I am thinking about our attitudes toward the poor. Is giving are clothes to a charity enough? Is simply sending money to a mission organisation what Jesus called us to do? This things are amazing and generally extremely worthwhile but sometimes I wonder how much does it actually cost us. Jesus seems to be asking us for something deeper. Claibourne says,
'The church becomes a distribution center, a place where the poor come to get stuff and the rich come to dump stuff. Both go away satisfied but no leaves transformed...Jesus did not simply set up a program but modeled a way of living that incarnated the reign of God.'
I really do not want to simply feel good over distant acts of charity anymore. I want to seek to model out a way of life, based on the life of Jesus, where the poor become more part of my immediate community and where they help me to become more like Jesus. People are only transformed when they are 'infected by love.' More to follow...

Woe to the Pharisees!! (like me)

I have been thinking alot about these verses over the last few days,
'Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the dish and then the outside will also be clean...You are like whitewashed tomb, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean.'
The more I think about Jesus' teachings, the more I realise that what really annoyed Him was anything that was not true. He hated falseness and pretense and He still does but the devil, who is the father of lies, seems subtly capable of dragging us all into this game of impressing each other with our religiousity from time to time. Thank-God for showing me that He sees through this in my life and in His abounding grace offers me a place to be true to myself and more importantly true to Him. Jesus make us more 'true.'

Readjustment

I am home from Uganda about 4 days now and the process of readjustment is well underway. It is such a wierd feeling. I like home, in fact I love home. There is a safey and security with what you know that I personally feel is important for me. In saying this however so much of me wants to be back in the village of Jandira (the village where we worked). I have said before that Africa does something to your soul. After a month of being there I think I start to see things differently - I start to feel at home being myself and giving of myself. It's nice to be away from the desk, paperwork and daily routine of home but it is even nicer to be away from the need to impress, the drive to succeed and compete against others, the insecurity of not fitting in, the superficiality of the media and the shallowness of our society at times. It is just so refreshing to be in a place where you can feel at home with yourself, and with others. The scary thing is that you only really notice these things when you outside of your own environment. It is this sense of feeling at home with yourself that I want to bring home with me this time. To live more freely I suppose and to live with a heartfelt thanks to God that He has given us a chance to live in this beautiful world.

By the way for a recap on what we achieved while we were away click the link to John Mac's blog - it is really cool.