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-this is stuff i took from my gap year "diary" (really a word doc called what i learnt on my gap year) and am posting it here because as much as it is really messy, i hope that it might be encouraging to others who know me to read about all the things ive learnt and be encouraged (or tell me where im deluded still!!)-

7^th July 

Have have have to get all this down. Just had an extremely long conversation with grandma which I have to record!! 

So the reason I haven’t been writing anything down about how the entire month of June has been was #1 because I never found the right time #2 I didn’t feel like I had anything to put down here #3 I was recording a lot of things in postcards and whatsapp conversations instead #4 I was also in a flux

Being in a flux, meaning (as I told Grandma just now), I was doubting a lot of things (and this doubt dates back to even before I left for the UK), second guessing a lot of things I thought to be true and also quite upset with God in the face of bad things happening and the holiday being less than perfect. What I was doing was I was comparing my “state” in the present with the sort of “on fire for God, close walk with Jesus” sort of person i used to be and finding that something was wrong. I didn’t feel as close to Jesus as I did before. I didn’t want to read the bible as I had before. I didn’t understand Jesus as I had before, everything was just going wrong and I was really quite down and miserable.and angry in fact too, because I didnt understand why a loving God would be so silent and distant and allow me to be so sad.

Grandma asked me how I got through that. (and I really truly ONLY JUST got through it, like now I feel like Im back on track) I think the answer was that even as I was constantly reassessing everything I believed in, on all those long car rides through the highlands, trying to reason away all the doubts that kept popping up in my mind (and failing) (and just sinking further into a quagmire of OMG I CANT EVEN JUSTIFY MY BELIEFS TO MYSELF EVERYTHING I THOUGHT I KNEW SO CERTAINLY MUST BE A DELUSION), even then, the ONE THING that I never let go of was the surety that God is real. And I can never let go of that. It is a fact. God has revealed himself to me in my life. There have been too many God-incidences for me to deny his existence.(even if i wanted to) And so even though I went to that small Dalrossie church and I couldn’t even sing wholeheartedly, or at Rougham Church last week and I wasn’t very into it, or even at Saint Pauls Cathedral, where I still felt half like an outsider who didn’t buy into all that man made religion stuff, the point is I STILL WENT.

I feel like crossing that out now “I still went”, because it makes it seem like I did something that saved myself. That it was my own actions that preserved me through the valley of the shadow of death etc. but that’s not what I mean… because really, it was God who was able to keep reaching out to me, slowly, slowly…through Aunty Sheila’s present of that book of morning moments/quotes with God book that the first two pages really spoke directly to me- I remember that whole week God kept telling me Praise God Praise God, and it was around that time that I felt like doing the exact opposite, it felt like I had nothing to praise God FOR, but he kept telling me the same message, sort of reminding me of Who God is. And other things, the hymns in the dalrossie church which made me cry, I remember one of them was God speaking to me telling me that he would never leave me that I was his child, words of comfort which I really really needed. The choir singing at saint pauls, reading The Problem of Pain, still reading my bible occasionally...And then today, through the sermon at West Road church which was on Hebrews 11:12-

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses let us throw off anything that hinders, and the sin that so easily entangles and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. (fixing our eyes upon Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith)

This really has to be my LIFE VERSE. Because IT IS the only way to live the Christian life. And so this is why I said to Grandma that even though I felt quite lonely at the church cos no one talked to me, God has a plan and makes all things work together for the good of those who love him! Why, well because this verse tied in perfectly with the section of the Crazy Love audiobook that I was listening to on the Coach back to Bury from Cambridge last night. Ive been thinking about this issue of Love a lot I think because I kept feeling that I didn’t love God enough, that I didn’t desire him enough of that this desire kept fading and I didn’t know how to force such emotions. I wanted to love God but I just didn’t, I wanted to read the bible but I didn’t feel like it, I wanted to be on fire but I just wasn’t! So anyway, I listened to the audiobook and Francis Chan was saying that basically, all God requires of us is FAITH THROUGH LOVE, believing in Him, and Loving Him (loving God also means loving others). But the only way to love God is to pray and ask God to help you to love Him! Its all God! And I think he even mentioned the running a race imagery, or he said something along the lines of- ultimately, we just need to pursue God (and I take this to mean through prayer and reading the Word primarily) because if we think that we can make ourselves love him, that’s not dying to ourselves and its works righteousness, thinking that WE can DO something right. Im forgetting some bits, so Im just going to write here what I scribbled down in my note book as I listened to the key bits of the book last night (thank you rick warren for reminding me that the best way to remember things is to write them down you are so right!!!)

Anyway,

All God wants of us is Faith working through love

Help. I don’t love you.

-the answer is not to try harder to love God, but to let him in (Rev 3:20 behold I stand at the door and knock). Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.

-we need God to love God!

& the Holy Spirit needs to work in our lives (added note: BECAUSE THIS KIND OF LOVE IS SUPERNATURAL!!! IT IS SET APART, HOLY LOVE!)

Its like a race,

Keep running,

Keep pursuing Christ>

Its when we stop running towards Christ that we feel restless

So, really, this “spiritual drought” that Ive been facing wasn’t because something was wrong like I thought it was. I thought that I’d done something wrong or something must have been wrong with my theology etc…but really what had happened was that I had stopped running the race with my eyes fixed on jesus. Well, actually I hadn’t stopped running because I still believed that God is real, but I was definitely crawling along at a slower pace than before and now. I think I want to mention something amazing that I read in C.S. Lewis’ The Problem of Pain[1] recently that I think contains some real wisdom about why I suddenly stopped sprinting and started to brisk walk (like how people give up in NAFA 2.4): ***it’s a long passage that I will have to re-read and fill in the blanks later but all I remember was that I was saying that we are always overwhelmed with how much God loves us, and we ask for less love, not more.

Well, so now I know that I need to cling on to this Father of Love, especially through prayer, which is something I have always neglected. And the best thing about this race that Im running is that all I need to do is finish it, and God will give me just enough of what I need to get through every season of life, even if I don’t run the whole race at the same bullet train speed.

In our conversation, me and Grandma also talked about love and the law. Which really happened because I’d been thinking about God’s love and the example that J sets with her open door policy, she’ll marry/baptise/christen anybody who wants it more or less, and I asked Grandma if J would marry a homosexual couple. #1 Im so happy that Grandma took me seriously and was able to have a great discussion with me on it.

We had established that we have no right to judge others,J says that if someone wants to receive God’s blessing “who am I to stand in the way of them and God” & we talked about the woman that the whole town wanted to stone and Jesus saying “Let he who has no sin cast the first stone” & everyone walking away…and how Jesus ate with Zaccheous the tax collector. So clearly Gods love is for everybody and EVERYBODY (we also read Rev 3:20 later on which say behold I stand at the door and knock…if ANYONE…I realise I always forget the second part of the verse which says If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.i always wondered why it was that Jesus said eat...) Then I was thinking, God calls us to be holy, so while yes we have no right to judge, being holy means being set a part, being different, so shouldn’t we have some standards?

And Grandma said, very decisively, “Well, the only standard is LOVE.”

That really just blew me away. And she’s right! Jesus says love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul mind and strength and love your neighbour as yourself! Only these two remain!!! And this kind of love is HOLY! Because being holy means being set apart. And if we keep focusing on BEING DIFFERENT from society- I mean societies CHANGE so we could be different from thesocietal norm one second and in line with it the next! And also, if we think about being holy in terms of being good people, well there are also many good people who are non Christian so what sets us apart from them! Grandma told me about a church in Trafalgar square where every night volunteers come and give food to the tramps, and she said that the ladies there might also notice that a tramps boot needed stitching and they would say to them, if you just come round the back I might be able to mend that for you. And of course when the tramp took his shoe off, his feet would need attending to as well, and the ladies would not only fix their shoes but also care for their feet and blisters and everything! And the tramps love them! THIS IS HOLY LOVE! I think that there is a HUGE DIFFERENCE- between being a good person who doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, always goes to church etc. etc. and a person who is WILLING TO WASH A TRAMPS DIRTY GROSS FEET. That is so RADICAL that it just SHOUTS TO THE WORLD THAT IT HAS TO BE THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. And I pray that I will also be able to LOVE THAT BIG.

So, LOVE IS THE STANDARD> Which is why things like genocide will never be ethical- unless you can have a LOVING genocide.but applying that to todays grand debate on homosexuality, how do we approach it? And we came to the conclusion that you cant say eg. You would always marry a homosexual couple or you would never. Because what is the most loving for one couple might not be the most loving for the other couple. The example I gave grandma was that I might do the washing up for my mum because that would be loving because shes tired after a long day at work and she would really appreciate it and need the rest. But I wouldn’t do the washing up (or usually the collection of a few days dirty dishes) that is left in s and js sink because that wont help them learn how to be responsible for their own mess and run a household independently. So you need to know the people and their situation, and understand them and how they work. And love can be tough love, it doesn’t mean ohhhh I love you I’ll do anything for you, whatever you say goes. It not sentimentality. I think theres more to be said on homosexuality because I think God has laid out some pretty specific things in the bible about it, so I hope to read up about that a bit more, that and the idea of cohabitation and what marriage is…but anyway I was saying to grandma that because of this standard of love, Christians are still called to make judgement calls –not to pass judgement on other people but to have the wisdom (from above) and maturity (ditto) to know what to do in difficult situations, to continue to display Christ’s love and sacrifice and service.

Really praying that God will strengthen me. And teach me to love him more and desire him more and love others with his love.

p.s. blessing in disguise: the tea I drank after a nice BBQ dinner at the woolpack has kept me awake and lively enough to have that marathon discussion with grandma and get all this recorded so hurray for that! 3am.

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[1] NB, another part of The Problem of Pain that I bookmarked that is a great analogy to explain how we sinned “in Adam” (as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive 1Cor xv,22) ---Theoretically, I suppose, we might say “Yes: we behave like vermin, but then that is because we are vermin. And that, at any rate, is not our fault.” But the fact that we are vermin, so far from being felt as an excuse, is a greater shame and grief to us than any of the particular acts which it leads us to commit. The situation is not as nearly as hard as some people make out. It arises among human beings whenever a very badly brought up boy is introduced into a decent family. They rightly remind themselves that it is “not his own fault” that he is a bully, a coward, a tale-bearer and a liar. But none the less, however it came there, his present character is detestable. They cannot love him for what he is, they can only try to turn him into what he is not. In the meantime, though the boy is most unfortunate in having been so brought up, you cannot quite call his character a “misfortune” as if he were one thing and his character another. It is he- he himself- who bullies and sneaks and likes doing it. And if he begins to mend he will inevitably feel shame and guilt at what he is just beginning to cease to be.