i just had a really gorgeous breakfast (toasted pita with cream cheese, a date, and a couple of strawberries), and before that I read bits from 2 gorgeous books (‘God of the Fairy-tale’ and ‘Dangerous Wonder’), and before that I had a really nice shower (singing along with Verra Cruz in my head), and before that I was in bed, day-dreaming about long-lost school friends whom I haven’t seen for 7 years.
amen.
One of the many-things-requiring-decisions-to-be-made that is presently facing me in these interesting days of transition is the offer I’ve been made to go and work in Gaza for a short time (mostly to be involved in FRME‘s humanitarian wing, seemingly). I want to go (so so so so much), but amidst all the other life-forming questions I’m presently looking for reasonable answers to comes the fact that it’s just a flipping dangerous place to put yourself.
Have a read of this – my friend Luke’s blog. For the last few months he’s been in Gaza, doing something like what I might expect to be doing, should I go. Even the most normal things are pretty far out …
[thought you’d like to know]
[and don’t you just love bilingual countries?!]
Gosh, the last two days have been flipping full-on in David-land. If I said ‘exhausting’ you’d just think I’m a bit tired, but SO much life-and-death (almost) stuff has come up that ‘just being tired’ seems incredibly freeing and relaxing 🙂
I’m not going to say any more, but please pray for me if you can! Thanks.
I know that it’s terribly hip (and therefore, not hip at all) to go quoting Mother Teresa at every opportunity, but I like this one:
We can do no great things,
only small things with great love.
Plus, I got it on the tab of my Honest Tea draw-string teabag, as brought to me by a very nice young lady whom I like very much. So that’s very nice.
I turned 25 this week! Yes, well done me. But the thing is, I think I might have had my best birthday ever 🙂
Here it is in 7 easy steps:
i. Started off with doing my Coptic Prayers, and God seemingly SAYING STUFF to me – I had the line ‘you are my son, and today I have begotten you’ come into my head, so I found it in Hebrews and was directed to where it’s quoted from – Psalm 2. It’s followed by ‘Ask of me and I will give you the nations as your inheritance; the ends of the earth as your possesion.’ A nice God-sized birthday present!
ii. I’ve never been given flowers in my life, and then I was! Including 10 white roses – my favourite flower, as well as our Yorkshire national emblem.
iii. And then we had waffles for breakfast.
iv. And then, after a great morning of this-and-that, we went out in our little boat! Out to one of the harbour islands, for a picnic, a beach, swimming & paddling etc. And even some getting out of the boat to push when we got stuck in the shallow mud offshore 🙂
v. Then a short nap.
vi. Then a fabulous birthday dinner (of Lebanese chicken), some presents, a whopping carrot-cake birthday cake, and a listen through my iconic birthday song …
vii. Then the most perfect moonlight walk I can remember (including sitting on the swings and enthusing about Benny Hinn – shocker!) with fun and holiness hanging around hand-in-hand, as it did when got back home.
But the funny thing about my perfect birthday is that it started on Tuesday, and finished yesterday (Thursday). Interesting. Nice to spread it out though, yeah?
THE ONE AND ONLY by Chesney Hawkes
Call me, call me by my name or call me by number,
Just put me through,
I’ll still be doing it the way I do it,
And yet, you try to make me forget,
Who I really am, don’t tell me, I’d know best,
I’m not the same as all the rest,
I am the one and only,
Nobody I’d rather be,
I am the one and only,
You can’t take that away from me
I’ve been a player in the crowd scene,
A flicker on the big screen,
My soul embraces one more in a million faces,
High hopes and aspirations, ideas above my station
Maybe but all this time I’ve tried to walk with dignity and pride
I am the one and only,
Nobody I’d rather be,
I am the one and only,
You can’t take that away from me
I can’t wear this uniform without some compromises,
Because you’ll find out that we come,
In different shapes and sizes,
No one can be myself like I can,
For this job I’m the best man,
And while this may be true, you are the one and only you!
It’s funny (kind of) how these things happen, but today I found myself horribly (almost inconsolably) convicted of something I really screwed up in, back when I was about 14 or 15. A couple of years below me in school was a guy who, for no fault of his own, was teased, bullied, and (as far as I could see) pretty much tortured nearly every day of his life – I can’t imagine what that might do to you, and it makes me sad just to think about it …
And the thing was, I KNEW him: we actually went to the same church for quite a while. And while we were never exactly ‘friends’, I can’t believe that I was so cold-hearted as to keep my distance, when I (as an older, vaguely well respected, boy) was in a perfect position to just identify myself with him once in a while, y’know? Just to be mates a bit. It’s not hard.
God seems to be highlighting the stuff in Mt 25 to me at the moment: "I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in …". I want to live like that, but today I was just full of regrets because I didn’t, at possibly the most significant period in someone’s life. I’m basically powerless to redeem the situation at all, and my prayers sound forlorn.
a stone in the road 