Tsunami

Sitting here in my office looking at the clouded sky outside, I cannot even comprehend what has happened, I read newspaper articleshttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,18690-1419246,00.html and am reduced to tears by what people are going through, Yet numbed by the images. It feels like a Holywood movie, not reality, yet I know it is.
What can we d? Money and prayers seem so inadequate. I want to jump on a plane and go and help these people, yet would I cope.
How does anyone cope?

Another article

December 18, 2004

The meaning at the very heart of Christmas

GEOFFREY ROWELL
THE TIMESONLINE

“SEASON’S GREETINGS” is the bland message on those Christmas cards sent by those anxious and careful not to offend the supposed religious beliefs of others or impose religion on its cultured despisers. But even a season has a reference, and the “season” is not some politically manufactured secular celebration like those that the French Revolution tried to impose on France or communism on Russia. Those were celebrations without deep human resonance and meaning. They lacked roots and have therefore withered on the branch.
Truly human celebrations can never originate from political pastiche; they are always grounded in a faith which responds and reaches out to God, and so touches in the deepest way the meaning, significance and purpose of our lives. We would not put up lights, or send cards, or give presents, or celebrate with turkey or champagne, without Jesus Christ. It is his birth which Christmas celebrates.
Of course, like all human celebrations, Christmas has drawn into itself all kinds of traditions and customs, threads which run back into the old Roman festival of the unconquered sun, or the German Christmas trees made popular by Prince Albert, and St Nicholas, a Christian bishop in south-west Turkey metamorphosed in America via the colloquial Dutch “Sinter-klaas” into the jolly, rubicund Santa Claus bringing presents with reindeer (and hence providing tourist opportunities for Lapland). All this is unsurprising, just as is the transformation of St Matthew’s magi or astrologers who came to pay homage to the infant Jesus signifying his rule and lordship over the cosmic powers which held humanity captive into “three kings from Persian lands afar”, for the prophet Isaiah had spoken of kings falling down before the promised Messiah. The human imagination is fertile, and is part of the creativity that we were given by God.
But we need always to be reminded of what is at the heart of it all. The birth of Jesus Christ, so movingly recounted in the gospels of Luke and Matthew, is a birth celebrated because of a life and a death, and a victory over death.
For Christians every Sunday is a feast of the Resurrection, and every Christian festival is always an Easter festival — and that includes Christmas. The Annunciation of Gabriel to Mary, the village girl of Nazareth, that she is to become the bearer of the Son of God, is a moment of new creation. So too is the birth at Bethlehem, and that is all fulfilled in the new life which bursts from the grave at Easter, a life in which through his life-giving Spirit we share. So the Christmas collect speaks both of the birth at Bethlehem, and of our new birth — of our being made God’s children by adoption and grace by the same life-giving Spirit which overshadowed the Blessed Virgin at the Incarnation. Christ went, as Bishop Lancelot Andrewes liked to say, “to the very ground-sill of our nature”. The God who comes among us is a God who empties Himself, pours himself out in love, comes down to the lowest part of our need, framed, formed, and fashioned as an unborn child, and then weak, helpless and dependent in the muck and mire of the manger, whose pricking straw is seen by St Bernard as foreshadowing the piercing nails of the Cross.
Christmas celebrates and challenges. At its heart is the overwhelming mystery of a God who stoops to us in the most amazing humility, revealing and disclosing Himself in the most human language, that of a human life. St John speaks of “the Word made flesh”, the Logos, or Divine Reason by which all things were ordered being made in our likeness. In that we behold the glory of God, and see and know what God is like, what is the source and origin of all that is, and the end and goal of our human life. That love “so amazing, so divine” is the truth we celebrate at Christmas.
We could want nothing more, and yet, if that is the truth, then that must shape our human lives, and the ordering of our society. It is a love which, as Mary sang, “puts down the mighty from their seats and exalts the humble and the meek”. This is the reality we celebrate, deeper than the time-limited rhetoric of politics It is the true source of life and peace and the measure of all our human rights and duties. This Divine Love draws us to adoration at Christmas, and even more wonderfully is a life which we are invited to share and in which to find the meaning of our lives.
The Right Rev Geoffrey Rowell is Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe

Where i am at the moment

How is everyone? Well I hope.
Just thought I'd give an update on things going on in my life at the moment.
Dad - He came off his binge a week last Monday, I think anyway. Detox was nothing like what it normally is; shakes, sickness, sweats, hallucinations etc and so I wonder whether he was still on a small amount of alcohol even though he said that he had come off it. I didn't really stay with him when he was coming off the alcohol. I had promised to take a friend to a job interview she had and then drive her back to Liverpool. I also didn't want to help him too much as this would have taken personal responsibility away from him; he would have been doing it because I was there helping him rather than him wanting to do it. I spoke to him the following day to find out what he was going to do about the alcohol as he couldn't carry on like this and his response was "Emma, do you really think I am going to go over Christmas without having a drink?" I knew then that he felt no remorse or realisation of what he is doing to himself and other people.
The Monday evening as he began to sober up he became the overbearing father again, ringing me on the way back from Liverpool to check I was OK and saying that he worries about me and I should let him know I am OK. Firstly, I am nearly 26, secondly I have lived in Liverpool, America, travelled most of Britain, travelled a small amount of America and thirdly HE COULDN'T HAVE GIVEN TO FIGS ABOUT ME WHEN HE WAS LYING IN BED SURROUNDED BY BEER CANS THE WEEK BEFORE!!!! I crave the day when I can I have my independence back but for now I know I am to live at home.
So we are now in the place we have been for the past 3 years. I come in after youth group / bible study / anything.......he's had a few drinks and doesn't want to speak incase I figure out he's had a few drinks (not that I can't figure it out myself!!) so he goes in a mood with me......I think I could handle it better if he were a happy drinker but drink just makes him depressed and feeling even more sorry for himself!
The rest of my family - Probably not best to go there at the moment......there just seems to be argument after argument between my brother and my Dad. My brothers girlfriend and I know to keep out of things like that as it will all calm down and they will be speaking again soon, but there is another member of her family that doesn't keep out of it and so enticed my brother into ringing my Dad and threatening to beat him up and kill him if he saw him the other day. Oh happy days!!! I then had to put up with another member of Amanda's family ringing up and informing me that the reason Dad was drinking so much was that he was lonely and he only really had me as I was his "real daughter" and my brother was adopted so wasn't really my Dads son....I hit the roof when he said this to me and praise the Lord his credit ran out on is phone before I really let rip.
Me - I am doing well at the moment though not a lover of this time of year. A few strange things have happened lately and I am having to put a hold on them as I figure out why they have happened and what they are meant to do with them.
Firstly a guy sent me a box of chocolates in work. He is from our a company that supplies the system we work on and is based in the South of the Country. He came up for the day to install an upgrade of the system. The following day we were in contact by e-mail and they had screwed part of the system up on their end. He asked whether a box of chocolates would make amends, so i replied with yes and I was looking forward to the box of chocolates. to my astonishment a large box arrived on my desk a week later with a huge box of chocolates in their, from a well known and expensive chocolate company and there were about 40 in the box so not cheap. I e-mailed to thank him and then we have e-mailed sporadically over the past few weeks regarding works issues but also including jokey / personal stuff like what we're up to for Christmas. I know for most people this would seem like harmless flirting, but is it a good witness? I don't even know if he is a Christian and would not date him unless he was.....Why did this happen? I know it only seems small to most people but I don't want to get hurt / hopes up, I don't want to hurt someone else and I want to be part of Gods plan not my own. I crave a partner so much but I don't want to fall into any pits where it's not part of the great plan God has for me.
Secondly the job issue. Where am I going? At the moment I have no idea but suddenly there seems to be a burning desire within me to learn academically more about the bible. I have a sudden craving for either bible school or to do a Masters (grad school) and this seems to have come out of the blue. It is something I have often pondered on but not something I have ever really considered in depth......is it something God wants me to do? I don't know.
Thirdly, I need to get away for a weekend. I am going to try and save me money and then find somewhere to go and just have time out by myself. No phone, computer, TV ,just me and my bible. It's now finding the time and money to do that.
Anyway I hope that this hasn't bored you too much, it' s pretty much where I'm at at the moment.
Hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and all the best for the new year.
God bless
Emma x x

Where is the church?

I hope you are as challenged by this article as much as I am.
I did much grumbling to my Christian friends regarding the nativity scene at Madame Tussauds but did nothing about it.
I hope that this is a wake up call to us all that we can't just sit back and accept the humiliation and ridicule that Chirsitianity takes in this country but that we as Christians will stand up for what we believe in. If it had been the ridicule of a Hindu / Muslim festival that had taken place I think that members of these faiths would be alot more vocal than we have been.
Please post your comments would be great to know what you think
Emma

Remember Jesus? He's that baby they all forgot in the Parable of Tussauds
Michael Gove
The truth is, we have become inured towards all this cultural hostility directed at Christianity


THE REAL surprise is that anyone was shocked. When Madame Tussauds decided to depict David and Victoria Beckham as Mary and Joseph with Tony Blair, George Bush and the Duke of Edinburgh as The Three Wise Men and Samuel L. Jackson, Hugh Grant and Graham Norton as shepherds, not forgetting Kylie Minogue as an angel, they presumably imagined there was nothing particularly daring in the exercise. Especially when Jesus Himself hardly featured in the tableau.
After all, when Tate Britain exhibited a representation of the Crucifixion made up of discarded Marlboro Light cigarettes, Sarah Lucas’s Christ You Know It Ain’t Easy, in May this year there was no denunciation from the Church of England. Even though Lucas’s work was displayed alongside Damien Hirst’s take on the Passion, a cow carcass entitled The Pursuit of Oblivion, there was no expression of dismay at the distastefulness of it all from the Vatican that I can recall. Admittedly, when Hirst depicted Jesus lying in a cardboard box marked Quality Office Products and entitled his work Jesus is Laid in the Tomb the Evangelical Alliance was moved to comment that these transgressive exercises were becoming “a little tired”. Indeed.
If only, the Madame Tussauds management must be thinking, they had entitled their tableau The Impossibility of Reverence in the Mind of the Heat Generation and asked Nick Serota to contribute a programme note praising them for their subversive reimagining of myth in a way that challenged contemporary establishment views of what we meant by Christmas “stars”, then there wouldn’t have been any trouble.
As my colleague Daniel Finkelstein has pointed out before, it is the events that don’t cause controversy, or provoke news “storms”, that tell you more about Britain than those that do. As he remarked, we got in a frightful tizz about the permissiveness of the prison regime that Jeffrey Archer enjoyed in the final months of his sentence. But the real scandal was that Archer’s treatment wasn’t exceptional. He wasn’t doing anything more than taking advantage of a stunningly lax regime which many prisoners could exploit. The scandal was that no one had objected to the prevailing culture beforehand. So it is with the Beckham Nativity. The really surprising thing is that this calculated offence to Christianity, out of all the deliberate assaults on the Church, should have created such a storm. For the truth is, we have become practically inured towards cultural hostility directed at Christianity.
Indeed, the cheap sensationalism of Young British Artists is no longer, in any sense, boundary-breaking because reverence is the last thing our society appears to accord to traditional Christianity. Consider the coverage of the “Christian Right” during the American presidential elections, and the repeated assumption underlying the reporting that we were in the presence of something dangerous. The casual equation of Christian evangelicals with Islamic fundamentalists, implying moral equivalence between people who want to keep unborn children alive and those who want living Jews and homosexuals dead, did no one a service.
It is, of course, not just legitimate but in certain cases vitally necessary to question the legislative agenda of some Christian groups in the US. Such criticism has certainly enjoyed free rein. But in a spirit of pluralism, I would just ask, how often have the European media given space for a sympathetic hearing to America’s Christian mainstream?
The assumption that possession of traditional religious belief is somehow disabling was, of course, underscored by the treatment of Rocco Buttiglione, the Italian candidate for an EU commissionership. I should say, for the avoidance of doubt, that I profoundly disagree with Signor Buttiglione’s views about homosexuality. I certainly don’t think they should influence public policy. But then neither did he.
He was denied public office in the new EU because he refused to disavow his Catholic faith, even though he explained that it would not, and should not, bear on the performance of his public duties. It’s all very well for us to say that sometimes private acts can prevent someone discharging their public duty effectively. But it has come to something when one of the private acts that debars you from office is taking Mass.
It is in the context of a prevailing cultural hostility towards traditional Christianity that the words last week of Jayne Ozanne, a senior adviser to the Archbishop of Canterbury, should be read. Ms Ozanne feared that a time would be coming when Christians were “ridiculed for their faith and pressurised into making it a purely private matter”. She may have been guilty of hyperbole when she used the language of “persecution” but the retreat of Christianity from the public square is certainly increasingly apparent. And perhaps nowhere more so than in the failure of Britain’s church leaders to raise their voces against real, and terrible, persecution of Christians across the globe.
In China, Vietnam, Laos, Nigeria, Sudan, Egypt and Indonesia, Christians are variously imprisoned for their faith, tortured, have their families broken up, the public expression of their faith banned, their homes and churches burnt and their schools closed. But who champions their cause, and where do we hear of their suffering? Is this not a religious hatred against which we need to bear witness?
One does not have to be a Christian to be grateful for the ethical teachings of Jesus, the cultural glories of Christianity and the charitable work of the Church. Even those who do not attend church can understand how valuable it is to give one hour a week to consideration of our place in the world, reflection on how we have fallen short in our duties to others and association with those who are also pledging themselves to live better lives. Our society has, undoubtedly, been enriched by its Christian heritage. But our passion is now elsewhere. We are in danger, like Madame Tussauds, of being so caught up in our thoughts about Bush and Blair, or Posh and Becks, that we push Jesus Himself out of the picture.
Michael Gore, The Times Newspaper, December 15th 2004

Psalm 27

The LORD is my light and my salvation-
whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life-
of whom shall I be afraid?
When evil men advance against me
to devour my flesh,
when my enemies and my foes attack me,
they will stumble and fall.
Though an army besiege me,
my heart will not fear;
though war break out against me,
even then will I be confident.

One thing I ask of the LORD ,
this is what I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
and to seek him in his temple.
For in the day of trouble
he will keep me safe in his dwelling;
he will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle
and set me high upon a rock.
Then my head will be exalted
above the enemies who surround me;
at his tabernacle will I sacrifice with shouts of joy;
I will sing and make music to the LORD .

Hear my voice when I call, O LORD ;
be merciful to me and answer me.
My heart says of you, "Seek his face!"
Your face, LORD , I will seek.
Do not hide your face from me,

do not turn your servant away in anger;
You have been my helper

Do not reject me or forsake me,
O God my Savior.
Though my father and mother forsake me,
the LORD will receive me.
Teach me your way, O LORD ;
lead me in a straight path
because of my oppressors.
Do not turn me over to the desire of my foes,
for false witnesses rise up against me,
breathing out violence.

I am still confident of this:
I will see the goodness of the LORD
in the land of the living.
Wait for the LORD ;
be strong and take heart
and wait for the LORD .

Thought for the day

Am sure that these apply more to women than men, but I think they're great for everyone.
Enjoy

Think about these one at a time BEFORE going on to the next one...IT DOES MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD, especially the thought at the end.NATURAL HIGHS
1. Being in love.
2. Laughing so hard your face hurts.
3. A hot shower.
4. No queues at the supermarket.
5. Taking a drive on a pretty road.
6. Hearing your favourite song on the radio.
7. Lying in bed listening to the rain outside.
8. Hot towels fresh out of the dryer.
9. Chocolate milkshake ... (or vanilla ... or strawberry!)
10. A bubble bath.
11. Giggling.
12. A good conversation.
13. Finding a £20 note in your coat from last winter.
14. Running through sprinklers.
15. Laughing for absolutely no reason at all.
16. Having someone tell you that you're beautiful.
17. Accidentally overhearing someone say something nice about you.
18. Waking up and realising you still have a few hours left to sleep.
19. Making new friends or spending time with old ones.
20. Having someone play with your hair.
21. Sweet dreams.
22. Making eye contact with a cute stranger.
23. Holding hands with someone you care about.
24. Running into an old friend and realising that some things (good or bad) never change.
25. Watching the expression on someone's face as they open a much-desired present from you.
26. Getting out of bed every morning and being grateful for another beautiful day.
27. Knowing that somebody misses you.
28. Getting a hug from someone you care about deeply.
29. Knowing you've done the right thing, no matter what other people think.
30. Knoing above all else there is God who cares deeply about you, has a plan for you and sent your son for you.

Update

Just a quick note as I am in work and about to finish as I am only doing a half day.
Sadly Dad is still on the alcohol. He hasn't realyl left the house , or his bed, for a week no apart from going too and from the off licence to get more alcohol.
I arrived home at around 10:45 last night to find him still drunk but no alcohol around him. I couldn't figure out what he had drunk. Inbetween the ramblings and the vacant stares I managed to understand that the alcohol I had hidden in my room (I know hindsight is a wonderful thing) he'd drunk 2/3rds of my litre bottle of 14 year old Glendfiddich whiskey!! That wound me up as in a way that constituted stealing even if it was only from me! Well, there was around 1/4 of the bottle left, plus some Baileys, plus some Glenfiddich liquer and it all went down the sink. I would rather not have any in the house.
Am angry, despaired, guilty, mad, lonely and at my witts end at the moment. A lady from my church e-mailed me the other day and talked about me feeling like an orphan and for the first time it had been put into words how I was feeling, exactly like an orphan, even at the age of 25.
It is trusting that my heavenly father will never abandon, orphan or mentally abuse me with names, swear words and emotional blackmail.
Please continue to keep me in your prayers. Psalm 145 has been a great source of strength and peace over the past few days.
Blessings
ELJ

Hmmmm.....
Don't know what I am going to write at the moment. It's 1st December and meant to be such a happy time. Christmas is on the way......celebration time. There are so many things that I am thankful for; friends, e-mail, a job, a knowledge of what Christmas truly means, my health.
While I recognise these blessings I am feeling very low at the moment. I always begin to get pent up before Christmas; it's the season where my disfunctional family become even more disfunctional. My brother, his girlfriend and my nephew have decided that they are not coming up to ours at all on Christmas day. We can go there in the morning but because I have church this will mean I get to see my nephew for no more than 1/2 an hour on Christmas day. I never know where we are going or what we are doing on Christmas day as it is only Dad and I. This year we are going to my Aunt and Uncle's which will mean it will be over with by 2pm and it will just be Dad and I for the rest of the day. There is always the fear of the amount that Dad is drinking over the Christmas time. In the UK this is what it seems to revolve around....how much drink you can over the holiday.
Sadly this has already started. Dad has been drinking a lot of alcohol lately. He started before we went on holiday even though he had been off it completely for 5 weeks after our visit to the hospital when he last had a blow out with copious amounts of alcohol. I went home yesterday lunchtime and he was drunk. He couldn't stand without swaying. When I returned from youthgroup last night he was very drunk. I think in the day he had had 5 - 7 litres of beer. I went upstairs to write a letter to a friend and I heard him come up. He was then shuffling around his room and then I heard an almighty bang as he fell over. He was so drunk he couldn't get himself back up. He then went off to work this morning but returned 45 minutes earlier than normal. He is a Cleaner / Caretaker so what he has done is left work at 7:55 before all the office workers arrive at 8 and realised that he had been drinking. Once again when he came in at this time he was swaying from side to side so had obviously drunk the last few cans he had this morning.
I cannot even exlpain how I am beginning to feel at the moment. I ask God why....when is all this going to end. There is a feeling of responsibility for dad, that if I were a better daughter this wouldn't be happening. There is also so much guilt involved. How can I think about moving out, he has no one and if I do that he will really hit the bottle. Also the guilt that this has to be hidden. I want to hide it from my Aunts as according to them it is my fault, I should be staying in more and not doing so many things in church and then he wouldn't be doing this. Hide it from the outside world.....what must people think when he goes to buy alcohol at 8:30 in the morning. Hide it fom so many peoplebecause though this is killing me inside, he is still my Dad and I hate people condemning him. I have a desire to get away but where to? And how? I honestly feel that people think I am being over dramatic and that things can't be this bad, but I feel that I am a piece of wood that has been slowly but surely sanded down to hardly anything. I feel tired and worn and know that the only thing that can get me through this once again is God. I just feel as if I am trudging through mud and mire at the moment in no particular direction but just wanting to get through this situation. I feel lonely, which is only amplified by my struggle with singleness at the moment.But....
I will praise you, O LORD , among the nations;
I will sing of you among the peoples.
For great is your love, higher than the heavens; your faithfulness reaches to the skies.
Be exalted, O God, above the heavens, and let your glory be over all the earth.
Save us and help us with your right hand, that those you love may be delivered.
Psalm 108: 3-6