Last weekend was pretty relaxing - saturday = gardening (as you can see from tom's blog), wandering in town and eating some nice food. sunday = BBQ with some friends in bath and a long sleep. I like days like that. Sadly there never seem to be enough of them!

This week i have been thinking about whether or not to write down some thoughts to a charity that i volunteer for following receiving their 3-year plan and their prayer guidelines. In essence they are meant to be based on a 'christian ethos' but i'm finding more and more that their idea of what a christian ethos is and mine differ somewhat. Although i'm sure what they do is valuable, i find myself time and again compromising what i believe to be the way jesus told us to live in the name of political correctness, not wanting to offend volunteers who aren't christians and having to stick to very strict guidelines because of obtaining funding from certain organisations. What to do...

I've reinstated an age-old habit of trying to spend some time outside with God each day, namely a bit before work and some at lunchtimes. I realised that going to the gym was eating up into the times i used to spend with God and that it was hard to find other times. I also love being outside in a nice big open space - check out Groms' blog for this on 24 april - and it's definitely one of the easiest ways i let stuff go and give it to God. it's a place of peace and freedom for me. It feels good to be prioritising and not letting things get the better of me. The better of me belongs to Him and I am the one who suffers (as well as those around me who get the brunt of my un-discipled self) when i don't let him have it!

I love our housegroup. Last night we spent most of the evening just discussing things and it felt so good, so unforced and really interesting. We found ourselves starting off talking about the series we're doing at church at the mo called ' How to fall in love with God' and whether or not you can be 'in love' with god or if it should be something deeper. I guess it stems a bit from the notion that when you are in love with someone it is usually a romantic love with someone of the opposite sex (for heterosexuals i guess) and for guys it's a bit weird. This then moved onto singing 'love songs' to God and how in the Vineyard we have quite a lot of these and whether it's a good or bad/ right or wrong thing. We talked about emotionalism and then about how worship leaders lead worship by carefully planning what order certain songs will go in. It was brought up that it can be so manipulative and felt wary of having their emotions brought out to order. Others talked about how stirring the emotions was a good thing as it helped open up places we don't normally let open up, hence enabling us to worship God more fully. Then it moved onto if we needed to have excellence in music in order to help people worship and how bad musicianship made people unable to concentrate but how the bible talks about worship coming from the heart and expressions of that should be happening whatever. Very interesting debates!!

I couldn't quite formulate my thoughts during the evening but in the car on the way home Tom told me what he thought i was thinking about and he was spot on. I love having a husband who can know me so well. I wish i could express myself the way that he seems able to express me! In the main i think my thoughts were somewhere along the lines of a little fear of emotionalism as worship isn't really all about how I feel, it's about what we're offering up to God and just as our relationships with God have ups and downs and in the down times we may not 'feel' anything for him at all, so it probably is when we worship. So even when we don't 'feel' anything during singing, what we should be offering is a heart-felt bit of praise and proclamation to God of who he is and what he's done.

I think there are many more thought on this but i have to get down to some work now. maybe later on....

PS tom if you read, this please feel free to reiterate what you said in teh car last night in a comment!!

yesterday i had the strange experience of one of Daniel Beddingfield's songs making me cry (I KNOW!!!). I had spent half a day at a Christian festival thing and came away feeling moderately frustrated at the amount of junk that was being sold in the 'market place' area. It was mainly in the form of books and some of you may know that i don't cope particularly well with Christian bookshops who try to 'advance the kindgom through retail'. Anyway, i was driving home and skim-listening to Daniel in the car (it's Andrew's CD he left in the people carrier : ) and it came to track 8 which is called honest questions where he seems to be addressing God and asking him if he knows what's going on in his life. God's reply is this:

I will pour the water down upon a thirsty barren land
And streams will flow
From the dust of your bruised and broken soul
And you will grow like the grass
Upon the furtile plains of Asia by the streams
Of living water you will grow

and i started to cry! (not helpful when driving through country lanes!) i felt so sad that some people try so hard to find God and a better God-life through books and studying when HE is the one who provides life (and that often selling books in this way is a means of making more people do that). I'm not dissing 'Christian' books as i have shelves stacked full of them. I think i feel sad that people can use them as a substitute means of trying to find God rather than coming to God directly and reading the bible to find him. I wonder if that's fair.

I was talking to Tom about this this morning (as you do - heavy discussion at 8.15am!) and about how i'm not so good at processing. i just get cross and then find no way of telling people without ranting and offending them. He told me wonderfully gently about processing and needing to do it in order to figure out if i DO think i'm onto something and then also to figure out why it is i feel this way and then how best to maybe explain what i mean. What i'm trying to say is that this is a thought in process and maybe if you read this and react, to remember that!

so a very quick blog at the end of the day before i head home. The last thing i wanted to coomment on about Dubai was the fact that there were no police cars anywhere, not one screeching siren etc. Amazing. When i questioned someone as to why, they infomred me that it was due to the severe penalties that face people who do commit crime. As many of those living in Dubai are on visas, the general habit of the authorities is to a. chop off hands of those caught doing it (although i'm not sure this really exists quite as much as it used to!!!!) and b. sentence them to a very long time in prison and throw away their visa. Pretty much a disaster for them but a great way to reduce crime!

Great relaxing easter weekend and good to hear that the Turrigianos, who are coming to work with us from New York starting this summer got their visas! Great : )

I'm sure there's lots more i was going t o write but it's hometime and i can't think straight. long busy day!!

I'm back now! What a great experience Dubai was. We got to go into the desert on our safari. Much amusement (and almost hurling) all round driving over the dunes in a 4x4. Ours was the first in the lead which meant we had the bumpiest ride as we had to break the tops of the dunes. At one point we drove up to the top of dune and ratehr hastily over the other side, only to hear swearing from our driver as we plumetted down a vertical drop, bonnet first, the other side. Spades were retrived and then tow ropes. We got out eventually and it definitely added a new dimension to things! Sleeping out in the desert was good too - waking up and finding lots of bizarre animal tracks everywhere and wondering what perils we had escaped from in the night.

I think i forgot to mention before about the driving in Dubai. If you've ever seen one of those Britain's worst/most dangerous drivers programmes where people drive the wrong way up motorway exits, swerve through the trafiic, run people over etc, well this is Dubai 24-7. What shocker! I'm surprised that there's anyone left alive in the nation!

Coming back was shock to the system - very cold! But good to be back in our own space.

Thoughts this week so far have included ones about how God is really starting to properly set me free from some stuff from years ago - relief!; how it's hard to not get cross with Tom's work when he has to work such stupidly long hours (i'm sure it's illegal) and what can i do about it; and how when you actually really put your mind to it, it is easy to fit in time for God.

I also read 'The Heavenly Man' book about brother Yun when i was on holiday. Some of the things that happened were so ludicrous and outrageous it could only have been God. It inspired me though to be more accepting of circumstances and made me think a lot about how we often pray for things to be finished when often we need to pray for God to finish them when he wants to and for us to learn what he wants us to in that time. How does this alter my perception of prayer i wonder and what does that mean for intercession? Somehow i think it does change something, but i need to figure that one out a bit more before i venture opinion on it!

So here we are in Dubai - land of vast amounts of sand and money. It's been such a great trip so far. i like going on trips where you actually don't have to be a real tourist and can spend time just chilling out and doing normal things too. We've explored a museum, some of the old 'souqs' - markets, where you get harrassed into buying everything and anything, and swum. I even made it to the gym yesterday!! This afternoon we are heading out into the desert for a proper tourist thing. We are going on an overnight guided 'safari' and sleeping out there. I'm so so excited!! Sadly it's quite windy today, which doesn't bode well for trying to keep sand out of my shoes!
A few notable things about Dubai - the difference between the head coverings (fdish dash) that the guys wear are due to their ethnic origins (egypt, UAE, Jordan etc); EVERYONE has expensive cars, mainly mercedes or 4x4 (which seem to replace people carriers out here); diamonds are very cheap, little kebabs are even cheaper and it's very very hot.
I have found it fascinating to spend some time in a country which has so many different values than ours (although sadly it's becoming more and more permeated with western things). I love the call to prayer which happens so many times each day (it's made me sit down and pray each time, just to keep up and outdo them!) and i love all the different traditional forms of clothing you see when you walk down the street (the population is mainly indian and pakistani, mixed in with a good bunch of Arabs); i love that there are vegetarian restaurants everywhere and they don't sell stupid stuffed peppers, but instead the most amazing indian vegetarian food i've ever eaten and i love that you can barter someone down to pretty much half the marked price for something and it's normal and the owners think they got a good del! (It has to be noted that Tom's mum is an expert at this. Even for htings she doesnt realy want she'll start bartering just for the fun of it. she can't help herself!)
Anyway, i have to go as i'm meant to be helping make palm crosses for palm sunday this sunday at the english speaking church here. (which, i must mention, is in a big square hidden away in town, where pretty much all the churches meet. There are around, get this, 140 different christian denominations which meet there. CRAZY!! And we think people should integrate more in the UK! One notable one was an indian run church which had the rather appealing notice outside of its church - "the wages of sin are death". Oddly it wasn' really a very big church! I think i'd like to see what a proper native Christian church is like. Going ot the very British c of e one was a bit of a head spin. Just like being in the UK but hotter. Odd odd odd... )