Money: To give or to keep?

We've been talking about money again recently - oohlala, the taboo subject - and about giving and generosity. It's interesting how people always ask "How much should we give?" In a weird way, it reminds me a lot of the question of "How far can we go?" couples tend to ask. However, a brilliant response I once heard to this was to point out that this was the wrong question entirely -the right one would be to ask: "How far can we stay sexually pure? How far can we stay away from temptation?"

In a similar sense, maybe we shouldn't be asking "How much should we give?" expecting an answer of a certain amount of money that we can give to ease our consciences about not giving anything and to relieve our selfishness so that we don't give too much... Maybe the right question is to ask "How much should we keep? Why not give it all away?"

That might seem a little bit crazy, but it should be a challenge to you to consider your dependency on money - do we really need it? Why are we so attached to it?

hmmm...

The future is swiftly approaching... What to do!??!

A friend and I were recently talking about the future. My future, in fact: What I'm going to be doing in 10/20 years time... Or rather, what I'm not going to be doing, as right now, I have NO idea!

Anyway, we were talking through the idea of working for God's glory, and not your own, and I voiced aloud the difficultly of finding a balance between doing your work well, and doing enough to just keep up with the others in your field/department. He simply pointed out that we shouldn't make it our goal to keep up with others, because there will be people for whom work is everything, for whom work is an idol. And this is not the case for us.

Hmmm...

PS Just to clarify...

Umm... I tend to shout at God a lot. Well, not really shout at, but rather get frustrated, confused, mad, sometimes despairing... Not that I'm saying we should shout at God. But we should come to Him with our true real selves, and talk to Him as if we are His children. Sometimes, for some silly reason, I put pressure on myself to have these perfectly worded prayers etc.etc., but I actually think it's really fake and not what God wants. Umm, yeah. So if you're in a bit of a bad place, talk to God about it, and tell Him how you're really feeling.

Okay.

Ummm... yeah...

This world and the next… #3

[For context, check out This world and the next... #2 ]

So after a turmoil-filled and emotional few days, quite possibly weeks, of thinking about all the injustices of this world, and of the things I wanted to help with, I found myself one evening absolutely miserable: to put it simply, I was just sick of and fed-up with being trapped in this academic circus.

[To be honest, I have an inkling that this feeling could have been aided in part by my many swiftly-approaching deadlines.]

Frustrated, I voiced my thoughts to God [okay, maybe I shouted a little bit inside], asking Him why I was here when I'd be of so much more use out there. Wherever out there was. [I never get a clear picture of what "out there" means; probably because a gritty reality might scare off my overromanticised mental images of being a gracious, supercool, much-beloved humanitarian ;)]

Yet, after more thinking and what-I-shall-euphemistically-call-prayer, I came to realize that my frustration was stemming from a belief that I knew better than God..! Maybe I WON'T be of much more use out there. Maybe my calling will be to stay in this academic high tower, and to be a Christian witness to those that are stuck in intellectualism... [Gee whiz, I hope not! They think too much! ;)]

I must trust in God, that He knows what is best for me, and that He has placed me in a situation where I CAN make a difference where I am. Because He has.

Going home

A good friend of mine helps out at Sunday School occasionally, and she recently related the following anecdote to me:

She'd asked the children in her class what the highlight of their week had been. When it was the turn of one of the young boys, he said without hesitation: "My highlight was that my granddad got to go to the place where he wanted to be the most."

His grandfather had passed away unexpectedly earlier that week.

Many members of the church family were left heartbroken and grieving, yet he had grasped the amazing truth that though the ones left behind were mourning, his granddad was home now.

Varying details in the gospels... Eeek!??

One of my friends asked me the other day about the seemingly problematic discrepancies in detail between the various gospels.

I say "seemingly-problematic" though, as many historicists credit the varying differences in the gospels as ADDING to their believability as eyewitness accounts. If they had been exactly the same, that's when you should start wondering if the authors had gotten together and decided to conspire together on what to write.

Think of any event for yourself- you'll get at least one slightly different account for every person who saw it! The fact that there are so many minor aspects which differ, don't take away from the gospels as truth- they lend authenticity to the accounts as eyewitness accounts.

Having said that, the points on which they differ aren't major points- so what if there was one angel or two angels? What is important is that the key points remain the same - Jesus rose again and was seen in real life!

Romans 12:12 says

"Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, and faithful in prayer."

Isn't that great?