"Holidays"...

So it's blustering away here in tamworth where a nice storm is brewing - really really windy!!! Packed up and moved a car-load of stuff up here yesterday, and there's another carload to come next week... packing is probably my bugbear at the moment ;) It's cool to be home again for a little while as well - my family's not going to see me again before mid-january after i leave for SPRTE!

The end of year is always a really surreal time for me, particularly with FOCUS - after forming good relationships over a year, exams come and go and then people go back home :'( - i guess it's a reminder that this earth and this life is temporary and things change!

I'm currently reading an awesome book by Philip Yancey called "I was just wondering" - raising questions like "What is God like? How can he love so many people at once? Why are there so many animals in the world? Why do so few Christians exhibit joy?" and one of the questions in the book I came across was "What would a Christian Book look like an a completely secular culture - say, Japan?" and the incredible story of Shusaku Endo, a prominent author and lifelong Christian in Japan. 

There was stuff in it about how he discovered the God that is not only majestic and conquering, as western culture portrays him with the massive cathedrals and crusades and the holy roman empire, but he is also the God that makes himself powerless, coming as Jesus whose life was defined by rejection! This helped Endo, as he experienced rejection in Japan due to his faith, and in the West, due to his race. The way he puts it is that Japan understand the "father-love" of God - the authority and majesty, but has not seen the "mother-love" of God - the love that forgives, heals and draws, rather than forces, people to itself.

Yancey concludes with how it is not just Japan, but all of us, that need to remember both the cross (of suffering, humiliation and rejection) and the empty tomb (of glory and might and power) - that we serve both a crucified and risen Lord!

1 week to go until SPRTE! woohoo!!