ANGRY PROPHETS ::

It has to be the first time in my life that when reading Isaiah my attention was caught and transfixed, not on what I thought I would find (angry old shouty Isaiah, lambasting the wretched Israelites for their sin and unfaithfulness), but on the God who’s message he brought.

I am captured, captivated, torn and tearful reading the words of love, of unashamed devotion that God has for his people. It is almost too much. The promises of help. The commitment to renewal, restoration. Speaking to their fears with hope and unending, undeserved love. Reading the words, it feels like I have stumbled across a lover’s letter, it is tender and intimate. I hardly know this God, and yet here he is, revealing himself to me.

17.5 million people...7 on the beach

It strikes me as rather absurd that in a city that is cradled by snow-capped mountains and washed on it's verges by the Pacific ocean, that we are so busy doing 'life' that we forget to live. It is only because Phil is doing a Saturday class, that I have for the first time since I can't even remember, set foot on the beach 45 minutes from our house.

There was the rhythmic silence of the pounding surf and the cries of overhead pelicans. The distant splashing of seals in the sparkling water, and lazy sailboats thinking about making the trip to a fog shrouded Catalina Island. It was a place forgotten by people who have too much to do to notice the clouds pass overhead, too much to do to listen to the kids giggling madly as they run from the breakers.

For two hours I stopped. Thank God. Each breath of the salty air brought a measure of calm, of healing, of presence. I sat simply soaking in the bright detail of every grain, every broken shell, every particle of the Sabbath moment I was in, and somewhere in my crushed little soul I felt deeply alive.

Really?

"Do you really love Jesus? No, really. If you look at the last week of your life, the choices you've made the things that you've said, could you really say that you love Jesus?"

It was the first thing Dave Feiser said to me last week. Cut to last night. Mike Erre at Rock Harbor...

"So if we say we love Jesus, and we've sung a hundred thousand worship songs and we tell everyone that we're living our lives in the light of his teachings...then let me ask when it was that we last picked up the Bible and, for ourselves - not for class, not for credit - just leafed through, read and reflected on the only four attested accounts of his life and teaching? We say we follow him, we say we love him, do we really even know him?"

...

Now this isn't some kind of self induced guilt trip, some 'try harder' moment. This is one of those points in time where lucidity and clarity rule. Where the inconsistency of my private life and my public self are uncomfortably sharing the same seat. I don't like it. At all. I am a hypocrite, an actor. I want to follow Jesus, I am convinced by the historical truth of him, and compelled by the reality of his existence and person. I want to follow him, to relate to him, but my relationship is anemic.

Sam asked last night if it was one of the ten commandments to read your Bible and pray every day. "No" I said, "It would be a bit odd if just because I was your mum I made a law that said that you had to speak to me every day. It's not a law, it's just something you do when you have a relationship with God, because you want to spend time with Him, knowing what he knows, learning to live and love like does." Then I heard myself.

I heard that to know and not to do is not to know. I agree. I want to know. So, not in some sense of legalistic weirdness, but in an attempt to know Jesus for myself, so that I can love him, follow his teaching, live out his love, I want to spend time, commit to spend time with him. (OK, so I know some of you might be shocked that having moved half way across the world to obey God's call, it is not my practice to be faithful in daily spending uninterrupted moments with our God. Well, please accept the broken truth of me.)

In order to help me focus on this commitment, I am planning every Tuesday morning this semester, from about 8:45am, to read and pray sat outside the Talbot lounge. It's going in my planner this morning. If anyone out there wants to gather, not to talk, not to chat, simply to be together reading, journalling, praying, in an openness to hear from the Spirit of God, through the life of Jesus, by word of God, then you are more than welcome!

I did not come to seminary to stuff my head full of facts about God, I came to have my life shaped by him. Sadly I've found that sometimes his intentions for me get overlooked in the business of being Christians rather than the business of following Christ. This semester, God help me, I plan on following Jesus. Really.