More from Twitter and life to challenge me!

I thought that since we were nearly in February and I hadn't said a lot, that it was time to talk about January and all of the exciting things that have happened in the last couple of week, plus the things that have reminded me of who I am and what I can do. I've only got half an hour so I'll be short!

Like I said in my last post, I have an addiction to twitter. I don't have normal conversations with people any more and Chris and I often chat abut what's been said by people we both follow, or sometimes I'll talk about the slightly more obscure people/ideas that I follow. I am currently proving that I can exist outside of 140 characters, so that's really good news for me.

I follow Twitturgies which is 140 or less characters of pure God gold, now they don't tweet as often as everyone else (I think it's meant to be less than once a day) so it becomes exciting when they have done the deed. And it is always challenging, which is why most of the time I will re-tweet. Yesterdays was interesting as it fitted nicely with what I was watching on TV. The BBC has a habit of showing Open University programmes after the 10 O'clock news and last night was about pain and pleasure, the things that cause it and the things that stop us from feeling pain. The final statement was 'The greatest pleasure is sharing things'.

'Right' I thought, 'I'll tweet that'! And so I did. I didn't get much of a response because it was late at night, but hey-ho. I looked at twitturgies and they had this 'I set aside hostility to practise hospitality. I journey from exclusion to embrace. Help me God to find your grace in every face I see' which in a way speaks more to me more than the final statement of the programme I was watching. (it's called Pleasure and Pain with Michael Mosley and will be on iplayer for a week! and you can follow twitturgies here)


'Help me God to find your grace in every face I see'

It's a challenge for me, because we are all human and some of us are nastier than others, yet of course there are some real saints in the world. It's easy to see God in the things we like, what we enjoy doing (I love my job, but what about those that don't?), who we like but what about the negative aspect of all our lives, where can we see God in that? 


I don't know the answer. I'm trying to figure it out for myself as it is regularly something that smacks me in the face and well as the sort of human I'm called to be in God and that nagging voice in my head of 'you shouldn't' or 'don't do that'. I am free, I know that, but I'm not sure how to live it and how to make a difference by living it.


I think that is something that a lot of my generation struggle with as Christians from a church upbringing. We are the generation who could probably put down our faith and not really be bothered. The rest of the world has, those in their 20's are not really fussed about attending church (making it hard to find someone for marriage!) and those who do attend often don't have the teaching background to further their faith or aren't passionate about what Christ has done for them, or they simply don't see the relevance of their faith to let it shine though, for fear of being ridiculed or put down, or being asked tough questions.It can be something we just do on a Sunday because it's something we have always done.


I was privileged enough to be asked to join my friends on a weekend away to Longleat for Momentum Weekend. It was exciting, I love centre parcs a little too much sometimes, so spending a weekend worshipping as well as being in the middle of a forest, yes please! Also, one of my favourite speakers is part of the Momentum movement, though he does go on for a bit! My friends were introduced to the delights of Mike Pilavachi and Andy Croft - who have a wonderful relationship and a go at each other now and then to show that off! Their teaching was fab and it was a great encouragement for me to see 300 young adults (and 2 babies!?!).


They started the weekend with this video but also got us talking later on in the weekend about how we worship as a church and when our worship occurs. I came away with a greater understand ing of my faith and my friends, and hopefully an opportunity to take them to momentum or Soul Survivor later on in the summer.


I have now talking about far more than I wanted to and the blog has fallen into Friday afternoon, rather than Wednesday before school (all the best things take God's time). There are plenty more things to discuss... like the creeds from the early (300 year old) church at CCS and the new phone I have and how I can't find an app for anything I want to do, as well as the ridiculously small manual they sent me and the work we are doing in school and at Shaken Up.


Any comments...??

Twitter addict

Maybe it's time to add my twitter feed to my blog as I have already tweeted over 500 times since joining up to the thing just before Christmas. I am a fan of tweetdeck although it doesn't really help me to type in names of people I want to tweet, none the less, it does spell check for me... though currently I'm sticking to simple words and just replying to people I know.

I'm still not 100% sure on etiquette for twitter and sometimes I feel as thought I am breaking some unsaid rule about what I'm allowed to say. It seems that my facebook friends know be well enough to know that I occasionally ramble in scripture or chat about what God is doing in my life, whereas the twitter friends I have are all by some sort of motorsport association, so it's interesting to me when there is loads of reaction on facebook, but barely any on twitter. Still there are things that will always be taboo, no matter where you are and what you are doing.

The life of the youth work carries on (and every so often explodes) I have found myself in bed for the most part of the later half of this week, working out a cold that has taken over. My body was waiting for the 11th Jan to completely break down on me, having fought off every other thing going to get me through the Christmas busyness and New year celebrations, plus a weekend away at Centre Parcs with 300 young adults (well 18 - 30's (why would you bring babies on this sort of weekend)). So the last couple of weeks feels like it's taken forever, yet it's now really far away. We're already up to the third Sunday.

God, in His infinite wisdom (yes, surprise!) Has taught me a lot about love and worry in the last couple of weeks as well as mission and Biblical perspectives on things that I never thought I would understand. Amos keeps cropping up in my life and has done since I turned 16. I would say that it's odd, if I didn't know any better!! But I do and I'm grateful for the work that God is doing in my life and in the life of those around me to work for His glory.

I have an over-riding sense of the Holy Spirit resting on my life right now, like He's waiting for me to catch up with Him, to figure out what I'm actually doing and where I need to be in the next term or so, to have those moments where I learn from God and gather myself for another wave of work.

Right, I need to get my sleeping sorted, otherwise I'll never get well!!