"Faith is believing that one of two things will happen. That there will be something solid for you to stand on or that you will be taught to fly."

I've been pretty quiet on here recently. I'm juggling school, work, and some other personal things and it's gotten to be quite a lot the last few weeks. I'll be back soon. Just wanted to share this quote which I read on a friend's facebook page. Seems to be where I'm living these days...

just bolstering myself a little

"You won't have to lift a hand in this battle; just stand firm, Judah and Jerusalem, and watch GOD's saving work for you take shape. Don't be afraid. Don't waver. March out boldly tomorrow - GOD is with you."

"No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised."

"Does God speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfil?"

"You of little faith, why did you doubt?"

timing

"When God plants the seed of his word in your life he is not asking you to make it happen as soon as possible. He is asking you to have faith." - Matt Helmsley, associate pastor of my church on Sunday.

Germination of 2000-year-old seeds

In the 1970s, during excavations at Herod the Great's palace on Masada in Israel, two thousand year old Judean date palm seeds were recovered. The cache of seeds was found contained in an ancient jar, and had experienced a very dry, sheltered environment, which helped to preserve the seeds. Radiocarbon dating at theUniversity of Zurich confirmed the age of the seeds at 2000 ±50 years. After their discovery the seeds were held in storage for thirty years at Bar-Ilan University.

On 25 January 2005, the Jewish festival of Tu Bishvat (Arbor Day), Dr. Elaine Solowey, a specialist in rare and medicinal plants at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies pretreated several of the seeds in a fertilizer and hormone-rich solution. She then planted three of the seeds at Kibbutz Ketura in the Arabah desert of southern Israel.[1] One of the seeds sprouted six weeks later. As of June 2008, the tree has nearly a dozen fronds, and is nearly 1.4 m (4 ft) tall.

The plant has been nicknamed "Methuselah," after the longest-lived person in the Bible. Methuselah is remarkable in being the oldest known tree seed successfully germinated, and also in being the only living representative of the Judean date palm, a tree extinct for over 1800 years, which was once a major food and export crop in ancient Judea.

Date palm trees are dioecious. If Methuselah is female, it may produce fruit by 2010. Methuselah's seeds could then be used to cultivate additional Date palm trees.

When compared with three other cultivars of date palm, genetic tests showed the plant to be most closely related to the old Egyptian variety Hayany (also Hiani, Hayani), 13% of its DNA being different.^[3] They may have shared the same wild ancestor.

In addition to its honoured place in Judean history, the palm may contribute useful characteristics such as environmental tolerance and disease resistance, to modern date cultivars.

Dr. Sarah Sallon, the head of the project, wants to see if the ancient tree has any unique medicinal properties no longer found in today's date palm varieties. “The Judean date was used for all kinds of things from fertility, to aphrodisiacs, against infections, against tumors,” she said. “This is all part of the folk story.”

my opinion

Last night (well, I suppose it would be more accurate to say this morning) I finished the final book of the Harry Potter series. I must say I don't understand the reaction they have received in the Christian community over the last ten years.

They seem to me quite a powerful allegory of the Christian life. Someone paid the price for us to live by Their own willingness to die in our place. We finally overcome that same evil in our lives by our own choices of love and self-sacrifice. And I guess I always feel like magic in stories is just a picture of the supernatural.

So, I suppose I could understand not liking them if you believe that the supernatural is not for us any longer. That Jesus' promise that we would do greater things than he did died out with the first century apostles. But I do not believe that. I believe that God's promises are sure and never ending. And I believe that we should always be aiming for the kind of belief and trust that leads to such great authority that we can fly or walk on water or be translated from one place to another or even see dead people raised up.

I believe that we need to stop limiting God with our own fears. This morning I read in Isaiah that "a trusting life will never topple." And I think we all know that "love never fails." So whatever else I do with my life, my goal is always enlarging my capacity to love and my capacity to trust.

some very good advice

A couple years ago I spent several months listening to a teaching called "Living Your Destiny" by Graham Cooke on repeat. Really life changing stuff, let me tell you.

One thing he suggested was to write out prophetic words you have received in bullet form so it is easy to access them and to recognize themes that the Lord is speaking over you. This past weekend the stress of not knowing what my next step is caught up with me. I found it very helpful to read over the things the Lord has said about me. It was like giving my spirit a long, cool, refreshing drink of water.

Something that was especially relevant to the place I'm at was this one:

"You are standing in front of a big door with a doorknob too big for you to turn, but you try anyway. As you reach up, the door swings open on its own and you walk right through."

We recently had some visitors from the States by way of Tunisia who had a young son. We were talking about the sun going down and his dad asked him, "What's going to happen in the morning Riley?" And Riley said, "The sun will come up." "What does it mean when the sun comes up?" "That God is faithful."

Even though one of the main reasons the stress had caught up with me is physical weariness from the sun waking me up between 4:30 and 5:00am the last three weeks it is good to remember what that sunrise really means.

a prophetic act

First I would like to make this disclaimer: I'm probably going to have a lot to say about Ireland for a while, bear with me cause I can't help it.

One of the murals I saw on the peace line had this scripture on it:

"For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to all of us. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father." -Ephesians 2:14-18

I have taken a map of the city that was a pull out from a "what's happening" sort of magazine and written this in bold letters. As I looked it up I made this addition:

"In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit." - verse 22

I just wanted to declare this in as many ways as possible. God's heart for the city.

Oh, and a little post script, If you click on the link to 24-7 Ireland there's an article by one of the guys I met, it's the one about St. Luke's on the Shankill, Belfast. I guess that's all for now...

does anybody have a testimony of grace?

Last week was this term's mission week. (Each term we have a week to get out of Guildford and do something "missional.") I was part of a group that went to a place in England called The Cotswold's. We stopped to pray as we were entering the valley we were visiting, asking the Lord for direction because we really didn't have any plans other than see what he wanted to do. Frances felt like we should get off the motorway and take the back roads and I had a word about seeking out old paths.

So Frances took the map and started navigating us away from the main roads. As we were looking for the right road we passed one called "Old Road" so we turned around and went down it. We decided to stop at this little old church to explore and pray a bit. While we were there a lady came in to do a lunch time prayer for Lent. We asked if we could join her and told her a bit of what we were doing.

She ended up asking us back to her house for tea and cake. While we were there she shared some of her story. She and her husband and a couple other families in the area had felt the Lord leading them to worship where they lived instead of traveling to bigger churches with more things happening in the spirit. So, for the last several years they had been attending this little Anglican church with ever dwindling numbers, praying for God to do something in their village.

She was so encouraged just to have us there, she said she had been praying for the Lord to do something just to show her that he was hearing their prayers. We prayed with her for a while before we left. It was really cool!

When we got back home I had a package waiting from my mom with all the stuff to do my taxes. (And some other fun stuff!) Over the summer I had used my credit cards to pay for Transit, trusting the Lord to provide the money to pay them off before I left. The money didn't come and I had whipped through my savings by January making payments on them. My parents aren't in a position to help me out and so I was planning to cash in some stock that was given to me when I quit my job to be able to make payments until the end of Transit. I was hoping my tax return would be enough to have a bit of spending money for the rest of the time, I was hoping for $500. When I did my taxes online my return came to almost $1400!!! Which should be enough to pay my credit cards through the end of Transit and have a bit of spending money too!

It's funny how difficult I make things sometimes. I worked really hard to stay in a place of peace and of trusting the Lord to provide, really, really hard. And then he did. And I felt a bit silly for all the effort I had to put into it! The lesson isn't quite over yet as I still don't know what is happening when Transit finishes (July 4th is our last day) and while the Lord provided enough to make payments for a while, I still have all that debt to pay off completely. Hopefully the trusting will be a bit easier this time!

PS, Pictures were taken but not by me, I'll post some when friends have put them on Facebook and I can steal them!

a little something to brighten your new year

While sitting in Victoria Coach Station recently, waiting for a bus, I read this in the latest issue of Relevant Magazine:

"A mathematical discovery by Oxford scientists is being called 'one of the most important developments in the history of science' (at least by one expert). According to the researchers, by studying quantum mechanics, they have determined that parallel universes do exist."

(Other researchers still dismiss the theory as fanciful.)