A new blog for a new time

Three years ago I was in my second year of uni and this blog became a place that I could think, ponder and dream. My university journey has now reached its end.

Today I am no longer a student, I stand at the start of my latest journey , a journey into the unknown.

It’s a  journey on which I will meet people, go places and try things I never thought I would.

It’s a journey with a rhythm, a rhythm of highs and lows, descants and drop beats.

It’s a journey that I hope will step by step bring me closer to God.

And with a new journey I felt that I needed a new blog. A fresh compartment to store the memories, a blank canvas for the thoughts.

I would love it if you would continue to walk with me on the journey, so this is your official invitation to join me as I try living on the off-beats!

x

#1 Start a Giving Jar…

Today during the Ash Wednesday service school launched a new campaign. The aim is to raise money to provide a community with the most basic of needs;
Clean Water.

I was planning on giving up non-fairtrade chocolate for Lent this year (something Im planning on continuing after Easter) so in preperation I made sure that any chocolate in my house was fair trade.

I can honestly say that, 24 hours in, the worst thing about having 2 bars of dairy milk in the kitchen cupboard is knowing that it’s there, and knowing that it’s there is difficult because to save money for the water campaign I need to have stopped spending money on something.

Since this morning I’ve decided that that something is chocolate.

So that’s it…no chocolate for 40days. The Dairy Milk, in all it’s fair trade goodness, will still be there at Easter.

It’s going to be a challenge but it seems like a small price to pay for clean water!

40 days 40 acts 40 chances to be generous…

The idea started at 3am on a weekend away;

What if we could get all 50 of our youth group doing one thing a week to benefit others?

From there the weekly Act of Kindness was born, each week we’d come up with a new and creative way for the youth to be kind to others. We’ve left 6 word memos at bus stops, litter picked in the local area and baked a LOT of cakes.

This Lent however we decided to do something a bit different; 40acts of generosity, one a day for the duration of Lent. By signing up to http://www.40acts.org.uk we are getting the acts emailled to us each morning. This year the challenge isn’t just to give up; it’s to give out!

I’m aiming to use on here to update on how it’s going… Still wondering what to do for Lent? It’s not to late to sign up!

40acts in 40days.

Are you in?

www.40acts.org.uk

52 – 26 … and 26 to go

Are we prepared to believe that extreme poverty can end in our lifetime?

Are we prepared to believe that in 2035 we are going to be throwing the biggest party the world has ever seen?

Are we prepared to believe that 26 can become zero?

If so what are WE going to do about?

Missing Generation

Thoughts from Home Group:

We aren’t cute faced babies or silver haired ladies,

We can’t be won over with Sunday school crafts or flower arranging,

Our world is advancing faster than you can imagine.

If we want it we can have it with out having to wait.

The internet is in our pockets

The world is on our doorstep

The future’s in our hands

Or so they keep telling us!

A letter from Mary

Thirteen years old and pregnant.. sound like a Jeremy Kyle episode? In fact it’s the story of a mother, who brought the most precious child into this world. A child who became a man, a child who was already a saviour, a Lord who left an indellible mark in the hearts of creation…

Here’s Mary’s Story

The Natwivity!

As advent arrives and Christmas approaches the navitiy is sweeping twitter….

www.natwivity.com

is the twitter nativity…doing what it says on the tin, the nativity story over 25 days in 140 character burst, with thoughts from everyone from Mary to the Shepherds, Herod to the Wisemen it’s a great way to remember what happened in the build up to Christmas.

Life through my Viewfinder

Ever wondered what it would be like to be inside somebody elses head just for a few hours, to see what they see, hear what they hear, feel what they feel?

Everyones different, it’s one of the things that makes Creation so fantastic! If we were all the same things would get pretty dull pretty quickly, there’d be no new advances in science, technology or the arts. Ok so everyone thinking seeing hearing and feeling the same may lead to there being no arguments, no anger, no wars but that’s not how God created us!

You can say what you like…but we’ve already won!

This past fortnight has been a bit of a rollercoaster to be honest, and as usual I didn’t deal with the lows particuarly well…in fact in most cases I didn’t deal with them at all.

The big issue lately is that my heads been so full of worries about university work, talk preperations, friends who are ill, people who need me, that even though I myself have been physically fine and as mentally ok as I ever am, I’ve felt like I’ve been drowning.

I love the fact that people talk to me about their worries and problems but it does limit the number of people I feel I can offload to and over the past weeks my already short list became even shorter.Maybe that’s why I feel more comfortable talking about this stuff on here rather than to my friends…or maybe it’s just because I have a sneaking suspicion that noone out there in cyberland actually reads what I write!

Radical Faith in a Familiar Place

As Peter watches a figure walks towards him across the waters of Lake Galilee, as the man draws nearer Peter begins to wonder what the heck is going on. I mean he’d grown up on the shores of Lake Galilee he knows that the only reason anyone would get out of a boat in the middle of the lake during a storm was to commit suicide or to try and rescue a drowning friend, and surely if that was the case they’d be sinking, fighting the waves, crying for help. But this guy, this guy’s just walking calmly across the surface, not even an inch of rising damp in his robe! In all his experinces people don’t walk on water…they just don’t!