It's been so long again

So it has been a pretty full on number of weeks since I last wrote to all you lovely people who read this blog.
But they have been a good few weeks too. Had our exams for last term (they went pretty well, thanks for asking). And then holidays last week.
Holidays were great! Got to see a lot of people, and just chill, which is fantastic. It was so cool to see the homeland with all its lovely green-ness. Thank God for New Zealand, and all you awesome people who live in it.
I've been thinking, just now, about worship songs that we sing in church and such. Having grown up in church, I just kind of sing any song that they are playing as a worship band, and that kind of worries me now. Since coming to Bible College, I guess I have become more aware of what we are singing in church and what it means to those who sing it.
One of our lecturers in term 1 was talking about the song "Indescribable". Now, one of the lyrics of this song is "Who has told every lightning bolt where it should go?" But if that is the case, then what about all those people killed and injured from being hit by lightning? Does God want people to be hit by lightning? I don't know, because sometimes, may be He allows it to happen, as He allows so many other bad things to happen in this world. But it does bring up a good point.
Another thing that I have been thinking about was a time I was in church and we were singing "Blessed be Your Name". As far as I can gather (and I have sung this song many times, and know all of the lyrics) this song is about praising God in the good times and the bad times. The pastor got up after singing this song, with an interpretation of the bridge which says:
"You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord blessed be Your Name"
and so it was interpreted that the way this works is that God will take away your sickness, and all those things that are going wrong in your life, and then He will give you healing, and all the good things in life.
Now, don't get me wrong, I do believe that God does that in life, and there are many examples of this through history and around the world. And the interpretation used for this church service may have been appropriate.
BUT, I do not think that this is what Matt Redman meant when he wrote this song.
The bridge I think should be interpreted in context with the rest of the song, which makes it mean that no matter what comes in life, the good and the bad, it doesn't matter, because I will bless the Name of the Lord, because that is the ultimate thing! That is a powerful theme to have for a song, and I believe it is right, and God loves it when we overcome the bad and rise over it in praise for our God who rides through it all with us.
Anyway, those are two thoughts/examples on worship songs in church. Now instead of just singing, I am trying to use my head with my worship and listen to and mean what I am singing to my God. It makes worship come alive, and helps especially for us younger generation who may find ourselves in a church singing hymns.
Why don't you try it one day soon?

Balancing

It seems like Christianity is such a balancing act. You can't go one way, or the other, without being 'wrong' in it. It certainly is a narrow path to walk and the Bible tells us to not take one step to the right or to the left, like a balancing act, a tightrope, you can't lean either way without falling off the wire! I kind of came to this while reading about the ecumenical councils for my church history assignment. The councils were discussing how Jesus had two natures, and two wills to correspond with those natures, but people were swinging one way by saying he had two utterly separate natures, or merging them completely by saying he only had one will. But in reality it seems likely (and this is what I believe) that Jesus does have two natures, but they are neither completely merged, nor are they completely separate. They are God-done, so that we cannot really perceive how they are put together, just kind of know that they are indeed put together. Just the whole balance thing. And tonight at KYB more revelation came: It is the Holy Spirit which is our great balancer! To keep with the illustration of the tightrope, the Holy Spirit is that big long stick that the people use to help keep their balance. Sometimes it is appropriate to swing slightly one way or the other, and it is the Holy Spirit which helps us see that. He is the one who keeps us steady. Now this is where the analogy falls short, however, in that a skilled tightrope artist can do it without the stick and still make it to the other side without falling. However, in life, we cannot make it to Heaven without the Holy Spirit in us, and that does not happen without belief in Jesus and that we need to cross the tightrope in the first place!

POEM Tuesday! Harrah!

Got very inspired in my class this morning, and so I wrote a poem :)
I'm quite proud of this one, so I hope you like it!

Darkness Falls, Light Prevails.

Darkness falls
The end has come
Jesus is dead
The curtain is torn
The earth shakes
The devil proclaims
He has won.

On that early morn
Light rose again
Sunday is here
The Son rises again
All through the world
Let it be known
Through and through...

Light Prevails!

Copyright 2010, Jo Wallace

SLEEP

I have to say, I like sleep, quite a lot.
Especially recently, because I have been quite tired.
The bulk of this poem came to me just before bed one night, so I scribbled it down, so that I would not forget it, and allow me to sleep (I find I can't really sleep if I am trying to remember something, so if I write it down I can forget it long enough to sleep. Just some sleep advice right there :)

Anyway, lets stop mucking around, and get to the poem. Enjoy!

Sleep.

Sleep is the lobby between one day and the next.
It divides the days that fall through the passage of time
Onto us mere mortals who wander through it all.
Sleep separates us from the past that binds,
And the future which has its fears.
It hems us in to focus on today,
On the now, which is freedom.

Copyright, Joanna Wallace, 2010.

Fear mongering

So during the last term, we gt a visit from Roy Woods, a missionary who used to live in Papua New Guinea with the Akyom people there. We heard s much about their culture before and after Jesus was introduced to their tribe. It was amazing the differences Jesus brought in all of their lives.
The thin was before they got Jesus was that they were very fearful all the time. They did not even have a word in their language for happiness. They lived in very tall tree-houses and did not trust their own tribes people a few tree-houses away! There was always pay back to be made, but you never knew when that was going to occur, which can be the biggest fear around.
Now, I have come back to NZ and to the influence of the television media again (I don't watch TV in Australia). I can see the fear mongering influence in the ads. They are all about making you look good, so that you do not age, essentially because aging is not seen as something worthwhile in our western culture. What ever happened to aging gracefully? Can we not deal with looking at our face in the mirror so that we must put makeup on everyday and add colour to our eyes? We should not fear growing old. God made us to grow old. Proverbs 16:31 says "Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained by a righteous life." So why do we fear it? Why do we cover it up?
We think we are better than the tribes-people who fear each other. But do we not do the same thing, just in a more modern way?

Monks, Cheerleaders, and Activists

You are now probably expecting a crazy joke about these three types of people right?? Well, I am sorry to disappoint you, but I do not know any jokes about these three? Do you? Leave them in comments, I'd love to hear them!

Anyways, the reason I am talking about these three things is because I went to the Vetamorphus retreat thingo in the weekend as a part of the BMW course, and getting my Certificate 3 in Christian Ministry (Don't ask me what a Cert 3 is, I honestly don't know, some kind of Australian High School something).
Anyway, the guest speaker was this guy called Steve, and he was very good. And he was the one who originally spoke about Monks, Cheerleaders, and Activists.
You see, we were talking about Church and stuff, and what the minimal things required to make a church was. And then he told a story about talking to a bunch of ladies wondering what it was that he did. He was in fact (a pastor?) over a collection of house churches.
He knew, though, that if he said he was a pastor, or any of that Christianese stuff, that it would turn them off entirely. So he used this illustration:
Church as a collection of Monks, Cheerleaders and Activists.
Monks: In any religion Monks set themselves a part to search for a higher being that they are sure exists. They try to seek out what that being wants from us.
Cheerleaders: In their original sense, cheerleaders exist to cheer on the team for what they are doing. They also encourage one another to keep doing so even when the team is losing.
Activists: Activists realise that all the world is in turmoil. It's a big problem. But they believe that they can be active in putting the world back together by doing a small part that the higher being asks us to do.

I thought that this was such an amazing concept that I had to share it with you. It rings so true with me and with what we do. And gives others an idea about what Church and being a Christian is all about.

Poem Sunday! Harrah!

God, the
Only One,
Dangerous is He.

Going
Outside of His way
Disastrous it may be.

Get
Over yourself
Die to yourself.

Give
Over to Him,
Deliver yourself to the Father.

Guide you, He will
Over and above all else
Death, then, cannot separate you.

copyright, Joanna Wallace 2010


So, I have had a bit of fun with acrostic poems recently. Mainly because we have been looking at Hebrew poetry in Old Testament, and some of the Psalms were written in an acrostic way. For example Psalm 119, each of the sections starts with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Which is why the Psalm is the longest chapter in the Bible. Epic!

Anyway, that's all for now. Talk to you all later in the week!