Well its been a couple of months since I last updated my blog. I guess this shows I wasnt made for blogging. So whats been happening.

1. I got my degree classification on friday. I got a 2.1. Praise Jesus. I found the last few months of my degree difficult and God carried me through, so I cant take any credit for my grade. All the glory goes to my maker and my sustainer.

2. I have been thinking about the world of work lately with some fear and foreboding. Does fun end when a man starts to work? Will life be about work, eating and sleeping? Will I lose all my friends? Will I be able to hack 40-45 years of work day in and day out? Many questions. In the midst of this a few verses have been of help:

Matthew 6: 31-34
31So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Philippians 4:6-7
6Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

By the power of the Holy spirit, I just need to give all my worries to God and rest in his peace. I am afraid that is taking a while.

Grace and Peace,

Keeks

Happy Easter,

Got a great text message that sums up the expectation of Easter from a friend: "Its Friday, but Sundays coming". Easter has being a good time for me. In retrospect, I have missed the message of grace over the last few weeks. Often seeing the process of santification as me orientiated, not God orientiated. A good friend gave a great definition of grace on Good Friday. In his characteristically blunt manner he said: "it means you dont have to do nothing". I have on many occassions forgotten the line from the hymn amazing grace that goes: "’Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,And grace will lead me home". Many times, I have relegated grace to my salvation, but have forgotten that grace is not only needed for the start of the christian journey, but for all of it. Where do I go from this revelation?

"Grace so amzing, so divine, deserves my soul, my life, my all".

Howdy,

Been a while since I have done any blogging. Its the night of super tuesday and I am wrecked. Didnt sleep much last night, its catching up with me today. Had hallgroup and we looked at Mark 4:1-35. It contained quite a few parables: the sower, light on a lampstand, the growing seed and the mustard seed. We had great discussion in our group, but the more I study the bible, the little I realise I know and the more I have to wrestle, chew and digest it to understand what God is saying. Its humbling and its mad frustrated, but Got to learn to depend on God in the midst of it all. Really struggle with personal bible reading and prayer, its because of the mix of finding it hard, my laziness and my sinful cold heart. I need to keep my eye on Jesus.
Now on Super Tuesday, I have had the conviction for a while that politics has become an idol to me. Sometimes I enter a room of Christians and instead of talking about Jesus or worship, we talk about poll numbers, strategy, kingmakers and votes. Nothing wrong with these things, but its a sad indictment if I talk about politics more than the risen Christ.
So my views on super tuesday. I think McCain will come out as topdog with the GOP and Clinton and Obama will be a tie. Its amazing how Obama has managed to close the gap with Clinton in a matter of months. At the end of last year, Obama was trailing over 20 points in the national polls, now he's neck and neck. How come?
I think as corny as it sounds that Obama is a once a lifetime politician in the mode of J.F.K and FDR, a man whose mere words can paint a vivid picture and can cause multitudes to catch a dream and chant " Yes we can". His speeches produce tingles down my spin and his delivery and physical presence of the stump is a beauty to watch. Now comes the question. Have we been suckered by Obama? Is the gut in your throat, spine tingling oratory a diversion from his fleshness bones of policy, or is it a portal into the heart of a man who believes America is more united than divided and has a vision for uniting it that is inclusive enough to entertain ideas from all sides of the politic spectrum. The truth is only the Lord knows. Only time will tell. Maybe our doubts about Obama are planted by a Clinton adminsteration which is intent on playing the experience card to maximum potential or devastation, depending what flag you fly. Watching Clinton's ads, she does seem to mention policy points, but not in any depth worthy of analysis.
What I am sure of is that she is a talented lady who has characteristics worthy for a chief executive, but will a Clinton presidency improve America's setting in the world and boost it domestically. I dont know. Clinton being a fixture in American politics so long that it makes it so difficult to do a critical analysis.

The ultimate question to ask in deciding between these two is:

Is the "leader of the free world" we need a young dreamer or an old weathered sage?

Well 95% of precincts are in, in Nevada. A second win for Hillary "the comeback kid" Clinton. Well, I am suprised, not really. I was gutted though. I prefer Obama in the Hillary-Obama match up. Poor John Edwards got only 4% of the votes.

So a few questions:

Has Obama lost his shine?

Is Clinton a sure bet for the nomination?

Is Edwards heading for the politicial scrapyard?

In answer to the first question, I dont think that Obama has lost his shine. To view his loss in context, at a point during the end of last year, he was approximately 30 points behind Clinton. Cutting into her lead by 25 points is quite an achievement. He may have lost the locomotive motion of Iowa, but Obama still has the shine of a new pair of boots.
Secondly, I dont think Hillary is a sure bet for the nomination. Obama has made major gains with African Americans, he did better than Clinton in that constituency in Nevada. Also Hillary is still a decisive figure who is closely linked with Bill Clinton era Democartic politics. Is the best way forward the way back?
Lastly, I think Edwards has done woefully in Nevada, but been a North Carolina boy, he should do better come next week in South Carolina. I echo time magazine in thinking that Edwards is sticking around as a third leg in a two horse race to be a Kingmaker come Convention. His delegates if given to Obama will challenge Clinton's supremacy and if he decides to give them to Clinton, her supremacy in the nomination race will be secure. Unless, he surges in the Southern States like Texas and Missippi. (It is unknown how these constituencies will react to an African American or a woman.) Edwards' race is lost.

Well, Roll on South Carolina.

note: I know I have analysed the Republician race, but its just not as breathbreaking!

Late night web surfing.

Came across this on the time magazine website.

I will have to contextualize it cause non-politicos reading wont understand it.

Context: It's ribbing Mike Huckabee about his Christmas message which was more Christ focused than everyone else's. I think they thought huckabee was over burnishing his evangelical credentials, so they decided to poke fun.

Was that funny?

Just spent the last 3 days working on an essay I had the whole of the holidays to do. Why was I so dumb. It was finished, but it could have been better. I had to run to make the submission deadline as well. Not desirable, but maybe I like the thrill of danger. Butt lazy is another explaination that comes to mind.
After my submission deadline, watched the MSNBC Democratic debate. For the first time, I actually took time to listen to John Edwards. Must admit I got really really carried away with Obamania. John Edwards is not as articulate as Barack, but he's got bags of righteous populist anger about him. I like that. Hilary seemed to have a bit of it when she was talking about Bush's handling of Iraq. Not for much else though. What struck me though was that the debate was really civil, almost too civil. The candidates did not really lay into each other and bent over backwards to be nice. Not want I want to see in a debate. I want to see more than limp fisted jabs, I want upper cuts, body punches and lots of blood. All done in a strictly metaphorical manner of course. One thing that also disturbed me was the tactics they all used. If the answer to a question didnt paint them in the best light, they answered it and then went on a tangent, almost to make you forget the answer they gave. For some questions, they didnt really answer the question. They just mumbled on about something related. Politics eh.

Bring on South Carolina and Nevada

Forgot to say, been keeping a close eye on the primaries across the Pond.

A few points:

- I have a man crush on obama, his oration gives me goosebumps

- I'm a fan of the Mac and I am glad he's back.

-I do like Mike, but I think his tax, immigration and foreign policy views are wack.

- The Clinton and Obama battle is too close to call

- Edwards to jump onto an Obama ticket after Nevada

Well its been over a month since I last updated my blog, not good I know. Just wanted to give people an update of how I have been doing. First off, thanks Kat for commenting about my blog. I am sure you are probably the only person who reads it. One question, were you bored out of your mind when you did?lol.
Christmas has been a very restful period. I wasnt a tower of diligence and to be honest didnt do much work. I will probably suffer for it later. My dissertation tutor will probably kill me, cause I promised to read and do so much and I have 3 days to do a 2,500 word essay.
The only real reading I have done is the 1st 3 chapters of Hosea. Its been part of my sporadic quiet time reading. I can see so much of myself in the spiritually adulterous Israelities and I see God's continuous mercy in my life as it was present with the people of Isreal despite their gross sinfulness. I also got an idea of God's hate of sin, the language in Hosea is pretty harsh and God rains down a whole assortment of punishment on the people of Isreal because of their sin, but reading Hosea, God's jealous love for them cannot be doubted. Hope that I can put into practice what I was hit by in Hosea and devote myself to living a lifestyle of worship for God and letting go of the many idols of my heart.
Now onto the label of my blog. Just watched a Channel 4 documentary called "make me a virgin", by a guy called Jamie Campbell who refers to himself as an ex evangelical christian. The documentary was based on Jamie's attempt to make a promotional video for the "Silver ring thing". A pro-abstinence group from the States who have opened up a flagship office in Horsham. At first, I cringed at the idea of Channel 4 making a documentary on anything to do with christianity as I believe that they are in many senses anti-christian, but hats off to him,on the whole it was a fairly balanced documentary. Even though, I thought some bits were badly done and wrongly contextualized. I thought it was great that he didnt cram his documentary full of Christians with extremist views, but he actually looked for as he put it "reasonably normal" people. One of those such people was Fred Stoeker, the author of Everyman's Battle. He talked about his sexually promisicuous past, coming to faith and his passion for purity. He also discussed his legendary "bouncing eyes" technique. Its based on training your eyes to look away from sexually suggestive images in order for it to become habit. A few other good things in the documentary, but I think the main ingredient to it been a good documentary was the lack of Richard Dawkinesque christian demonisation.
Having said that some of the comments some kids in the documentary made were a bit weird. Guess you have to have some suggested Christian weirdness in a channel 4 documentary.Here are two paraphrased examples:

" You have the best sex when you are married"- My reply:I wouldnt know, but I doubt its the rule of thumb.

"Jesus romances me"- My reply:Girl, Jesus isnt you boyfriend.


My main beef with Jamie is that he went off on one in the documentary about christians believing you went to hell if you dont believe in Jesus, which is theologically correct and then asking an interviewee a leading question about whether Islam was satanic or not. I would agree that these are important questions, but I think it was used as a tool to dismiss Christians as extremists, thus giving the secular viewer an excuse to dismiss the message of abstinence. Maybe my analysis is reading too much into it ?
An interesting side bar in the documentary was Jamie being challenged on his lost Christian faith by one of his interviewees, who encouraged him to seek God's forgiveness and to get an STD test if he was sexually active. He subsquently found out he had Chylamadia. Another interviewee told him it was a consequence of living against God's standard, which he spun into "God gave me Chylamadia". A very entertaining and insightful documentary on several levels. If you want to watch it, sign up for channel 4 on demand and look for it amongst the free programmes. Also pray for Jamie that his heart may be troubled by what he heard about God's forgiveness and make Jesus his King.