Could Have Been A Birthday Post

I read the book instead of moving

I was really tempted to do a birthday post, really tempted. Tempted to write about my thoughts and feelings over the turn of the year for me but I’ll pass on that. I have decided to pass on that because of a more pending issue. An issue that I figure has greater importance than my turn of the year. A week or so ago a friend of mine dropped a book on my table and asked me to read it. I blatantly denied the suggestion like I always would to anything he would suggest unless it involved food or coke, I love food and coke by the way. I really love coca cola. Anyway, I figure he expected the reaction so he left the book and went about his business. For the next couple of days he would ask me almost every day like clockwork if I had read the book yet. I felt like lying but I was decent enough to tell him the truth and say no. He was like the woman who wanted justice and I was the unjust judge, except I was more reasonable, I think…

Yesterday I figured I should start reading the book so I could get him off my back. So carried the book with me to church, not to read it in church, my days of doing that are long over. The bus ride to church is forty minutes to and twenty minutes back. So I carried it, somehow or other my roommate and I were almost late to catch the bus. So what started off as a light jog turned into a race and I got my Usain Bolt on and won. I arrived in the bus and started reading. The book blew me away. Easy to follow and rich with biblical truths that cut right to the heart. The name of the book is “Your Own Jesus” by Mark Hall of Casting Crowns. I started it and as we reached the church stop I was already twenty pages into the book and I didn’t feel it. Somehow, by God’s grace I managed to concentrate in church. On the bus back from church I opened it again and thirty pages passed by between then and the time I sat down for lunch. Now yes I am a fast reader but I give the book the vast majority of the credit. It is baby simple but rich. Basically I tore through the book, except for the evening service and dinner I was right in there and by 11pm I was done.

I actually didn't read the cover till now

The book left me in a place of awe over my relationship with God. Over where it was, where it could be and where it should be. I was ready to kneel in awe and worship of the God I serve. By now you want to know what the book was about I can imagine so I will do my level best to say enough but not too much so you can try to track it down yourself and dig in. it is a devotional book, relying a lot on personal reflection as you go through it. It starts by explaining the slow fade, and yes he regularly uses tittles of his songs. It actually makes you understand the heart behind the pen and the message of them. It speaks of how the gradual change in one direction, that is one straying from God, naturally should mean there is a slow and hard return. It is not something that happens in the blink of an eye and requires diligence. He also speaks over how it is that God frees us of our sin as far as the east is from the west. This does not mean that we have no remaining sin but how that once he forgives us it is once and for all. We tend to reflect our human understanding and logic on God, in that we expect God to get fed up of forgiving because even the most loving parent would get tired at some point. God is not like this, human logic does not apply to him. He throws your sin away as far as the east is from the west. He says, one of the reasons God does not use north and south is because if you went north on earth at some point you will find yourself in the south but you can never go so far east that you end up in the west, it just keeps on going and personally I find that great.

The last lesson I leave you with is how that a lot of people expect a prayer to fix all your problems and you will return to the relationship you had with God before your one or many sins that took you away from him. It takes a lot of work and prayer. Personal effort. We would never grow in grace if God simply pulled us out of our problems. Our experiences make us who we are and make us better instruments for his use so we should work hard to return to our relationship with God but accept that all that happens to us is with his power and plan and is for our good.

 Expect to sweat and fall, the road is hard

All in all I highly recommend the book, not that I’m a guru on which books to read, but if the book falls on your head on a cloudy day. Don’t panic, pick it up and read it. Also, that nagging guy who you know just might bring you a diamond once every blue moon

Two Horrible Days and the "Why" Question

Two Horrible Days and the “Why” Question

The past two days have not been the highest points in my life. That’s is actually putting it mildly, it was another test in the "trust God or dive head first into the crashing waves" scenario. I’m not yet through it but I think I have chosen the former.

It all started with my plan for the semester. I do a bit of creative writing that turns itself into poetry, scripts and random thoughts. So I decided to focus all that and use the gifts that I have been given in whatever avenue I could find. The first plan was to shoot a short film every weekend or two, so I pulled out an idea I had been toying around with for the past two months, turned it into a mini script, found me some actors and a camera man to boot. I figured that would be my only big project, apart from school work of course, for the next two weeks when I got wind of the Zambian independence celebration and another idea hit me. It hit me during lunch and I was so psyched I completely abandoned lunch to put my idea in recorded form so I wouldn’t lose it. I don’t write things down that much, it requires a mind that is able to stick to one chain of thought for a decent period of time, my mind is not like that, so I record my thoughts then write it down after listening to it and weeding out the wheat from the weeds as it were. Anyway I went to the organizers and they were more than happy for me to jump on board.

I jumped head first into it and got the people I needed to help out, those I could not reach I asked people to reach and I figured we would be all set by the day and time of the shoot. A few things to note, all the people involved were volunteers, which is a problem of its own but I will get to that later. Secondly the time until the shoot was a little under 48 hours. The first hit of bad news came when I called one of the actors in project one, strictly speaking one of the two actors and, and he was going through a couple of issues of his own and so we had to cancel rehearsal. From previous experience I have learnt if you miss the rehearsal before the day of the shoot just cancel the shoot. It’s not worth the disappointment. So I cancelled project one, it was not easy, I was really ready for that one and was really looking forward to putting in a decent shift. So I began to focus on project two, and in order to vent the pent up tension. I did my level best, even worked on flash cards and not just the pen on workbook flash cards, I put in a shift.

Enter problem number two. The camera man showed up on time but without the memory card, after a couple of minutes that felt like and hour we found a memory card only to come back and find out that the camera was flat and would not turn on. Let me mention now that this is not the rant of an angry man and you will see this at the end, for those who think it a rant, skip to the final paragraph. Anyway, we somehow managed to find us a camera and went on location. Apart from those who moved with me everyone else was late. So we made calls and heard stories ranging from I’m on my way to I’m coming down the stairs right now. This is actually quite comical in hindsight. So the first group arrive and I figure we can start with just them, there were supposed to be four groups by the way. So we start, this was almost 20 minutes passed the time we should have started and the sun was no longer were I needed it to be so we made adjustments and soldiered on. A lot of drama happened along the way but I will skip that. We managed to get something on tape, but it was not enough and this was only with the first group, the second, third and fourth had not yet fully arrived. Only the occasional one in most cases none. We even pulled a passer-by or two off the street just to try something but before we could get into position, camera two went flat. And I mean flat, deader than a door nail flat..

We cancelled the shoot and are trying to organize another. As I went back to my room I figured I had enough material to pull the proverbial rabbit out of the hat. I could sugar coat this, in actual fact I cant.. There was no rabbit pulling that day. And everyone seemed satisfied and jolly except me which for those of you who have felt disappointment tends to happen nine out of ten times. I was in a slump till I fell asleep. And the sleep was not all that restful, I'll tell you that.

The new morning brought with it time to go over my recorded ideas, the footage from the previous day and conversations with people who had the capability to encourage. To say the least, his blessings really are new every morning. Out of all that I came out with this… Why was I doing all that I was doing? Was it some form of self-gratification? Was it a chance for me to do something and have people look at it and praise me? Or was it to produce something that would please my father in heaven, the people who asked me to do it, the target audience and myself, in that order. The latter seemed like a more convenient answer. The reality was it was not MY video shoot that did not happen it was THE video shoot that did not happen. I was making something personal that was not even about me. If I kept my eyes on the goal which was to produce something that pleases the four parties mentioned above in their specific order, I would have been able to pick myself up and walk on with my chin up despite the state of my clothes. Unfortunately this is a very hard lesson to learn and it is likely I might have this problem again, hopefully this will help me out then. The good news is the horrible two days are over, who knows what will happen next..

I Finally Believe Global Warming!

 

I Finally Believe Global Warming!

 

Yeah… Some of you should be thinking where has he been? Well I have been around, I just never subscribed to the idea that the earth is getting hotter and would eventually reach a point where it was too hot for humans to survive. Another thought was, I won’t be around for the worst of it so let me just wing it. Today’s lesson blew all that kind of thinking out of the water.

 

The lesson was in a class called Building Physics, which has very little to do with physics, thank God. Anyway the class begun at 8am and because of a productive spree last night I arrived in class just before 9am. Just in case the powers that be are reading this we will leave the explanation for my lateness as a productive spree. Anyway I arrive in class and the lecturer is speaking about diseases associated with being in buildings, I won’t go into that as most of you would not want to relieve that section of the class. Then it got interesting, but to explain this I have to go back a little further to my summer vacation. I was having a chat with my Uncle, a practicing architect in South Africa and he was explaining why certain materials have to undergo certain process before they can be used in the construction process. This is not what we would spend hours every day talking about by the way, that would just be weird. He mentioned how Architecture goes against the environment. The architect designs something that is unnatural to the eco system or environment and strictly speaking the environment fights back and it is that fighting back that we must reduce and if possible prevent. This struck some chord in me but was silent up until the point in the lecture that we left off at. That we might not just be fighting the earth, we might actually be killing it!

 

The lecturer, who really was a lecturess, spoke about how much energy is used in the entire process of a buildings life cycle. All the way from design by the architect, through construction, use and right down to demolition. She explained at length how much garbage is used up by a person per year and how all these factors in terms of building construction and use affect the environment. Now all this I knew as do most of you and some might be losing interest at this point so I will get to the part that caught me. It was that we will never be able to get the pollution level to zero, we can just reduce it. We will always be killing the planet, in short just as a human has a life span and will eventually die, so does the planet. As long as we are on the planet the planet too will die. Now don’t worry I am not suggesting we are completely to blame. Neither am I suggesting we conduct a mass suicide in order to save the planet, that’s stupid. Why save a planet if no one will enjoy it. I am also not suggesting we find another planet, though a zero gravity life on the moon would not be that bad an idea. What I am trying to bring forward is what I think the real problem is.

 

I was initially shocked that all the scientists who are all about global warming have not yet seen that there is a God somewhere but then I remembered the age old lesson, the heart is sinful and deceitful… …who can understand it. Everything really is corrupted, even the earth. The beautiful planet is dying and as noble as it is to try slow down the inevitable is it not more prudent to think on the life that will expire before the planet, i.e. yours and mine. All these thoughts hit me mid lecture and I could not shake it off the whole day, it still sobers me up even now, over 12 hours later. The point is, sin is here, not forever but it is here and its destructive powers continue to wreak havoc. We can’t just go back to living in caves, we are passed that, we do what we can to live on and that sometimes involves building ridiculously shaped buildings that will continue to fight against the earth but we must keep in mind that this is not it, everything will come to end when God comes to judge for what we have done with the life and time we have been given.

 

The lesson I learned today, was this. Do my best to reduce the rate at which the planet dies so the next generation actually has something decent to look at, not something out of a really weird movie. And don’t put all my hope and faith in this life, because even if I live to be a million, the earth might be dead long before I get there

The question isn’t why, The question is what

The question isn’t why, The question is what

The thought to start a blog has been solid in my mind for a while now and the delay was caused by my debate on the “why” question. Then after a conversation with my dad that I thought will be longer it hit me that the question is not “why” but “what”. I will explain. I can actually explain stuff that I think now since it is a blog post instead of a Facebook status or tweet. Anyway, the product of the brief discussion with my father was that the question of “why” or “why not” would be around forever but if I could answer the big question of “what” I write would be about and the answer is solid then I am really on to something. And quite frankly there is a quite a bit that I want to write. The next big question was “what” would be the purpose or direction, after all setting off on a journey and not knowing the direction would be pretty stupid and whereas I tend to be known for the more than occasional stupid idea, this I hope is not one of them. So after much thought and much prayer, I just had to pray for direction it was as obvious as it is to look at a map for journey purposes, it hit me. Where am I? In Cyprus. Doing “what”? Studying. Apart from the odd Facebook post and tweet here and there “what” do people know about the life of a Christian, in this case me, studying in North Cyprus? Almost nothing. So… how about I write on my journey in Cyprus. The idea was not half bad if I do say so myself. So this is it. As for “what” I will write, I will write on a couple of events here and there. Things that happen on campus and in class through my eyes, of course. Random thoughts, because I do have quite a number of those. The odd interview with interesting characters, I am at an international universities with over forty different nationalities in one place. The number of interesting character types is borderline ridiculous and this just needs to be shared. As this is the first of quite a few posts and I don’t want people to think I go on and on and on and on I will end with a clarification. Anyone familiar with Richard Belcher’s Journey series might be inclined to think this is similar. ITS NOT. For a few reasons, I would like to be smart and say three or five like a typical Calvinist but in reality I don’t know right now but my fingers will move till I have no point left in my head. I have poor organization skills. Anyway, firstly I am not as good as Mr. Belcher and gave up trying in that field. Secondly, whereas this might have spiritual gleanings into factors of life surround my situation/s it will not be solely that. Thirdly, I have no idea how to do the cover page art for the journeys and a journey without the cover page would just be awkward. Fifthly I see myself as more of a Dink character and imagine the chaos if Dink were given a whole journey series. I will leave the mistake as it is because most likely it won’t be the last so you might as well get used to it now. Now we just hope and pray the journey will be enlightening for all, especially me