When life is hard

Generally I like my life.  Sure, more storage space in my house would be nice, but I can’t really complain about my life. 

But when life is hard (read: I have any sort of deadline coming up) I sometimes wish that I didn’t exist.  Or, more like I wish that I was a bird or a tree and didn’t have to do things like exams.  I just want to escape. 

Last night I had a panic/depressed/pessimistic moment about my upcoming exams and the study that I’ve done.  I don’t feel I know my material like I should, there’s not enough time to learn it properly, and I feel like I don’t know enough to do my exams. 

But when the thought of being a bird came into my head last night it fizzled out.  I realised that the escape–my–life–and–its–problems feeling wasn’t there.  It’s not just my life that I’m in charge of at the moment.  I’m supporting another little life inside of me.  I couldn’t wish to not exist because a little life relies on me to exist. 

Of course, I know that it is God who sustains our baby but my involvement in this has changed my outlook on when life is hard.  I am humbled.  I am maturing.  I’m not so focused on myself.  Life is more than just these upcoming exams. 

I’m glad that this exam period is my last.  I’m sick of study–stress.  But I have to get through four exams before it’s over.  Please pray for me as I study, and for my memory during exams.  I don’t know if I have baby–brain (yet?), but it’s a convenient excuse if I don’t do well in my exams.  But I don’t want to have to use it.  I want to finish college well and be satisfied with my exam efforts. 

I am reminded by a friend who also posted about exam study today that while exam results are correlated with my effort, life results are not.  It’s incredibly freeing that none of my effort counts when it comes to God.  I don’t have to worry about if I’ve worked hard enough, or performed well enough.  I don’t have to wish for an escape when I feel like I’m failing.  Jesus has done all that is necessary for my salvation and my everlasting with God.  Hallelujah!

The end of the last three years

This is my final week of college classes.  I’ve been here before of course.  This started out as a one year project, but it joyfully turned into three. 

Mostly it felt like a normal week.  I feel like it should be more than this.  But classes go on as normal, they just might end in applause if it’s our last lecture in that subject.  I want to savour my time but I don’t really know how to do it.  

J kept coming up with all the things that are my last.  Last Ethics lecture, last chaplaincy group, last split chapel, last return thanks (prayer at the end of lunch).  This was a good reminder, but it never felt like the last to me.  There have been a few things that have helped.  We had breakfast in our chaplaincy group this week, and prayed for our chaplains.  Tonight is the farewell for the women (students and wives) who are leaving college. 

I have mixed feelings about finishing college.  I’m sad about leaving friends and daily in-depth focus on my faith.  I'm glad to leave essays and exams behind me.  I’m looking forward to next year with a mix of excitement and nerves.  

Partly it doesn’t feel finished because I still have 4 exams to get through.  They are a daunting prospect. 

There’s really no resolution to this post.  I don’t quite know how to feel about this week.  How do you deal with endings?

Thankful Thursday

Oops.  It’s Thursday again.  I had at least two posts that I wanted to write before we got here.  One was about the space thing I mentioned last time.  I guess that will have to wait, sorry. 

Here are some of the things I am thankful for this week:

Breakfast date and good advice
J and I went out for a breakfast date on Saturday.  We were already up early because our community had its annual photo that morning.  We had heard about a nice cafe just down the road and decided this was a great opportunity to check it out.  When we got there I saw that the menu had Nutella bombs! 

Now I understand if you don’t know what a Nutella bomb is; I myself only learnt about them a couple of months ago.  It is basically a Nutella milkshake, usually with a jam (or Nutella?) filled doughnut sitting on top of the glass with the straw pushed through it.  I’ve never had one before, so all this is just what I’ve heard from others.  The Nutella bomb at this cafe had a chocolate brownie on the top. 

I really wanted to get one, I’ve never tried it before and I LOVE Nutella.  But J convinced me that I wouldn’t be able to fit it in with breakfast as well.  So I made him promise that we’d come back some other time for a Nutella bomb.  Actually, I don’t think I made him promise, I just told him that we had to come back another time. 

This is what they look like.  When I tried to search online for Nutella bomb I couldn’t find it but it turns out the rest of the world (or just Sydney?) calls them Tella Ball Shakes.  If you click on the picture you can get the story about how they were created/invented. 

At the end of breakfast I realised J was right.  I’d only had a bowl of toasted museli with berries and yoghurt, with a glass of fresh juice, but I knew I definitely couldn’t have fit a Nutella bomb in as well.  Sorry I don’t have a picture of the food (it was delicious), but I’ve never been in the habit of taking photos of my food.  But when I have a Nutella bomb or Tella Ball Shake I’ll try to remember to take a photo!

A driver swap
As you know, our community organises a car pool to get to and from college each day.  This week I’m thankful for the driver who was willing to swap times with J and I so that we could get home a little bit earlier for an appointment we had to get to. 

Final assignment done!
Last night I submitted my final assignment (ever! J said, but I told him to never say never, or ever).  As far as final assignments go it was a pretty easy one to finish on.  It was the second of a two part research assignment where we had to reflect upon an application of our research and what we have learnt through the process.  And as maybe you can tell by the name of this blog, I don’t mind reflecting much at all. 

What are you thankful for this week?

Thankful Thursday

Getting an assignment finished
Last week was my final Research Week of my college career!  I chose to look at the significance of Jesus’ resurrection in the argument of the letter to the Romans.  I’m not sure that I answered the question very well, but I enjoyed looking at Romans in more detail and the things that I have now learnt about it.  Now I know roughly what is the subject of most chapters, and I’ve understood the flow of the argument a bit better.  Of course, the lectures that we’ve been having on Romans this week in class have shown up the holes in my essay!

I often grumble about doing assignments.  It’s my least favourite part of studying at college.  But I’m so thankful for what I have learnt through the process of doing assignments (and thankful that the big assignments are over for me!).

Adelaide catch ups
We flew to Adelaide on Friday for a family wedding.  (This made finishing the assignment due Friday a bit tricky, but thankfully we both managed.)  We saw a lot of people over the weekend because of the wedding and because we visited our home church on Sunday morning.  I’m an introvert, so by the end of the weekend I was feeling pretty emotionally tired (let alone physically because of the late nights of assignment writing and wedding reception).  But despite this, I’m so glad we got the chance to catch up with some of our family and friends. 

Clothes airers (and the space to set them up in)
Normally I do the washing on the weekend but that obviously wasn’t possible this time.  The weather was a bit dreary at the beginning of this week so I had to hang the clothes inside.  I’m thankful for clothes airers that mean a lot of clothes can be hung up in a small space.  I’m also thankful that we have some spaces around our house where the clothes airer is relatively out of the way.  We’re not going to have as much of that free space next year so I’m reminded to be thankful for it now.  (More about that decreased space in another post!)

What are you thankful for this week?

Things I learnt watching State of Origin

Before moving here I had no idea what the State of Origin was. I'd never heard of it. Since then I've learned that it's a series of 3 rugby games played between NSW and Queensland. The rivalry runs deep between these states. But the strange thing is that the players don't usually play together except for these games. They are normally in a range of different state and national teams and most would be regularly playing against rather than with each other.

Today is the second match. Queensland won the first one so NSW is tense. There are a number of rugby fans in our community so there's usually a bunch of people watching it together. I've joined them this year and have learnt some things about this odd sport.

To move forwards the players have to pass backwards. Seems counterintuitive.  Apparently the Americans still don't understand it.

When someone had been tackled they buck their legs around as if to say "Abuse! Abuse! I'm being abused!"

Before the first guy passes the ball off he taps it on his foot. I'm told that this is a memorial to actually kicking the ball. Yet the game still gets called football.

Each team only gets six tackles and then the ball is turned over to the other team. So before this happens someone will kick the ball as far down the field as they can in a last ditch effort to ensure the other team has further to run back the other way to get to their goal line.

A try by itself is worth 4 points. Don't ask me why, it just is. Like a goal in AFL is worth 6 points. It just is.

Everyone has giant thighs.

Run forward, not sideways. If you get stopped by a tackle it doesn't matter. You think like a team, not like an individual. And you think more than one play at a time.

It's all about piling on the guy with the ball.

Every so often there will be a symbolic scrum where a bunch of players get in a huddle and then break apart without doing anything.

Rugby is mostly about running. But you can stop running and kick a goal almost whenever you want. This is called a field goal.  This is probably the only reason that Rugby League can ever be called football. 

Possible cracked or broken rib? No worries. Painkillers and you're right to go back on.

I'm sure there's more I'll learn but I'm gonna get back to watching now!

Friendship when you’re far away

A couple of weeks ago in an Ethics lecture we talked about friendship.  What friendship is, why it’s important.  Our lecturer told us that friendship is usually characterised by three things: attraction, reciprocity, and proximity. 

As we talked about what friendship is I thought about my friends, old and new, and I was so thankful.  I remember when we moved interstate for college I was afraid that I would find it really hard to make new friends and be away from old ones.  But somehow I did make new friends and have kept in touch with some old ones. 

But I’ve really felt the impact that proximity has on friendships.  I’m sure we’ve all experienced it in some way.  We’re no longer friends with all our friends from high school.  And a big reason for this is proximity.  We no longer see each other five days a week.  In many ways this is okay.  Friendships do end, that’s natural.

But I rebelled against the proximity factor as well.  I don’t want my friendships with some people to end.  Whether it be new friends that I’ve made here or old friends back home.  Lack of proximity will become a factor again, as it already is now.  

When you’re living far away from your friends, and you don’t see them regularly you have to put in more effort.  And I’ve often found that since I’m the one who has moved away then I am often the one who has to put in the effort of maintaining contact, or at the least organising to catch up when I’m back home.  Things got better once I realised this!  I think it will be different again when college finishes because everyone is moving away from college and the responsibility of making contact is more equally shared. 

The reciprocity part of friendship also poked at me.  I’ve seen how loving and generous people at college are.  And sometimes I wonder if I’m being like that.  Nobody wants to be a bad friend, me included.  So I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a friend and how I can be better. 

So I have a question and you can comment in the box below (hint: if you don’t have a Google/Wordpress/etc. profile then you can choose the “Name/URL” option next to “Comment as:” and just type your name there and leave URL blank). 
What do you think makes someone a good friend?

Wednesday woes

(Oh no, quick!  Get in a blog post before Thursday so there aren’t two Thankful Thursdays next to each other!  Not only does the Thankful Thursday series ensure that I post once a week, it’s really more like twice a week because I don’t like having two next to each other.  I suppose it doesn’t really matter but for some reason I don’t like it.  So here’s a post about Wednesday instead.)

I’ve just (finally) submitted an assignment which was very painful to do.  I’m currently waiting for J to finish but I really should just go to bed. 

Wednesday isn’t really a woeful day, only on assignment submission days (always Wednesday for third years, apart from research week assignments), and there haven’t been many of those so far this year.  But this assignment was hard.  It was only an 1,000 word book review but the book was difficult to read and difficult to understand and I didn’t enjoy doing any part of the assignment.

But having submitted and (hopefully) understood the book better than when I first read it I’ve realised that even though it was painful, I have learned some things.  And that’s why I’m at college.  I want to learn and grow and stretch my understanding of God and his word.  Even though learning can be painful at times it’s still an important thing to do and it is valuable. 

I can appreciate that this assignment has forced me to learn things that I may have simply glossed over had I not done it.  So I am thankful for doing this assignment (but only in hindsight now that it’s finished!).  And I hope that I remember this moment next time I’m complaining about doing an assignment (friends, please remind me). 

Things I learnt at* the cricket

On Sunday I went to the cricket.  It was the first outdoor professional sporting event I'd ever been to. 

Since marrying J I've slowly been learning the rules of cricket.  I learnt what the score means (the number of people out and the number of runs scored so far), what an over is (six bowls of the ball) and why some bowlers have a run-up and others don't (fast versus spin bowlers).  But I've never been really interested in watching the cricket on TV for more than a few minutes so I was a little apprehensive about going to a live game for 6+ hours.  I didn't really know much about how it all worked.

So here are some of the quirks of cricket from a relative newbie to the game. 

The bowler would die if he had to bowl consecutive overs (more than six bowls).  J's words.  Bowling is hard work.

In getting the ball back to the bowler everyone  on the team (okay, maybe not the outfielders) *must* touch the ball.  This means it is thrown around to all the fielders (perhaps for catching and throwing practice?).  Sometimes even the umpire is included in this fun!

It doesn't matter if you don't hit the ball, you can still run.  Here I was thinking that hitting the ball was the whole point.

Australians drink a lot of beer.  I should have known this already. 

Only the batter who hit the ball gets to count the runs against his name.  But the other batter still has to run unless he wants to get run out.

There are certain times in the game when only a small number of fielders are allowed near the boundary.  Everyone else has to stand nearer to the pitch in the "inner circle" (my words).  This means that you're more likely to see bigger hits or more wickets.  It's really just a rule to make the game more exciting.  It's called a power play. 

The crowd is rubbish at catching the ball.  I guess that's why it's so exciting when it does happen.  To be fair, the ball isn't hit into the crowd very often. 

Left handers make things harder. (sorry everyone).

A Mexican wave is very hard to start.  But when it gets going it's fun to watch it go all the way around the circular stadium.  Sometimes it goes around more than once, or even twice.  Hitting a six effectively stops a Mexican wave. 

Sometimes the wicket keeper doesn't wear his helmet.  Instead he sits it on the ground about five metres behind him.  (This happens when the bowler is a fast bowler and the wicket keeper stands a very long way behind the wicket, for obvious reasons).

The wicket keeper does literally 300 squats a match.  Imagine how strong his legs must be.

When a fielder catches someone out his whole team will run to him from all over the field for a big group hug. I love this camaraderie. 

Don't look at the light.

The third umpire is the slow-mo technology.  (J told me later that there is actually a person behind this technology, a real third umpire who makes a decision based on the slow-mo.  It was more fun thinking that the actual tech was the third umpire.)

The human body is amazing.  We can throw a ball at 148 km an hour!  (Well perhaps not all of us.)

To play (international/professional) cricket you have to know how to slide on grass, roll for a catch, hit the ball while spinning around, catch and throw the ball while running, and throw really, really, ridiculously long.

I think I like cricket now.

 

*I did already know some of these things from J's previous lessons.

The argument about poetry

This year at college we’re studying the Psalms and we had our first lecture on it yesterday.  Though almost all of my subjects at college are the same as J’s, this is one that isn’t (because I’m studying the Old Testament in English and J is doing it in Hebrew).  J will study the Psalms too but not until later in the year.  So I was telling him about my class later in the afternoon.

Psalms are examples of Hebrew poetry so we started the lecture talking about what poetry is.  It turns out that J and I have different definitions of poetry, specifically, his definition is much narrower than mine.  Now, I’ve written some poetry in my time, mostly in the anxiety-ridden final year of school, and I suppose not much of it was very good.  But I fought for my definition of poetry because what I’ve written doesn’t fit into J’s definition. 

Here’s what our lecturer had to say about poetry.  Poetry uses images and metaphors, it condenses experiences (economy of expression as J eloquently put it), there are less verbs in poetry than in prose (called verb gapping), poetry can have some sense of metre, and it can have structure with the use of parallelism, word pairs and so on.  But poetry is more like a syndrome than a disease.  To diagnose a syndrome you have to tick a number of boxes from a list of symptoms, but they don’t all have to be there, and it will be a different set of symptoms in each case. 

I didn’t really mean to write about our argument about what poetry is (but you might like to know that J apologised for devaluing my poetry with his definition, though he’s yet to read any of it). 

I wanted this post to be about how I’m excited to be studying the psalms.  Though I didn’t always enjoy studying poetry at school I actually find myself wanting to go back and read some poetry again.  And I’m inspired to write some poems again.  Maybe, if you keep an eye out, you’ll even see some here one day!

Thankful Thursday

This week has been… well actually I’m not sure how to describe it.  Perhaps I’ll just tell you what I’m thankful for and you’ll get a picture of what my week was like from that.

Showing off my knowledge of the Zoo
Well perhaps that’s not the best way of putting it, but I was in charge of the map and the route we took to tour the zoo so I did feel a bit like a tour guide.  On Saturday we took three friends from church to the Zoo with us.  In our college community a number of families, including us, pool some money together to buy five Zoo membership passes and this means that we can essentially treat friends to a free trip to the zoo.  One of the girls we took on Saturday is new to our church and new to Australia so it was lovely to show her some Australian animals in particular.  I’m thankful for this opportunity to bless our friends and the fun that we had together at the Zoo.  I’m also thankful that the rain stopped pretty early on in the day so we weren’t miserably huddled under  our umbrellas the whole time.

Learning more about the Holy Spirit
This week our college has been having their annual lecture series.  This year the lectures are being given by Michael Horton, on the topic of the Holy Spirit.  I’ve really appreciated learning more about the Holy Spirit.  He’s the member of the Trinity who is spoken about the least so it has been good to look deeper into who he is and what he does.  Though there are moments when the technical terms go over my head, I’ve been pleased at what I have understood and it has shown me that I really have learnt lots over my time at college so far.  Last year I certainly couldn’t have understood as much as I did of these lectures. 

Opportunities to exercise
I’ve fallen out of my regular exercise routine, since the mid year holidays.  I haven’t been very good at getting back into it after my fitness slid downhill over the break.  Interruptions from sickness, study and being away haven’t helped, but this week I seem to be getting back into it.  I exercise with one of the other wives in our community, I play netball and I do ballet.  I’m hoping these things can help get my fitness back up and give me some more energy. 

What are you thankful for this week?

Learning an old skill

I don’t know if people say that knitting is dying out.  I sometimes wonder if old ladies think that it is.  It kind of seems like it’s something that only grandmas do: they knit little booties and bonnets for their baby grandchildren.  But I’ve seen enough young women knitting to know this isn’t true. 

There are a number of women at college who knit: beanies, scarves, gloves.  And finally, they have inspired me.  I’ve decided to learn to knit.  

While back home I asked my mum to teach me to knit.  I'd learn before, as a child, but it never really went anywhere.  I think I only ever knitted one square. 

Here's my practice knitting.  

Now I've decided to knit an infinity scarf.  But I haven't decided what stitch to use.  I'm hoping to get some advice from my knitting friends. 

I know that knitting isn’t dying out, but I sometimes wonder about other ‘old skills’.  I remember a pin lace artist telling me that she thought her art was dying out.  What beautiful skills are we leaving forgotten because of our fast-paced, consumerist, machine-enabled culture?  It makes me sad to think about knowledge that has been lost or forgotten. 

Now I know learning knitting doesn’t really change anything.  If I really wanted to continue the knowledge of a dying art perhaps I should have tried pin lace.  But I do enjoy the feeling of accomplishment from learning the skill of knitting and I’m looking forward to having made something with it.  I won’t have relied on a machine, or someone else, to make me something.  And that makes me feel a little better. 

"Good News for Anxious Christians" book 'review'

This book was recommended to my class at college this year by one of our Mission and Ministry lecturers.  I've been wanting to read it all term but never really got the opportunity until the holidays.  J read it during semester and liked it so much that we bought it. 

The sub-title of the book is 'Ten practical things you don't have to do'.  I haven't finished reading it but what I have read has been such a soothe to my heart.  I've decided that I'd like to blog through the chapters of the book and share with you my highlights.  Hopefully you will find it helpful, as I have, and perhaps are even encouraged to read it yourself. 

In his preface Cary describes his book as an attempt to 'preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to Christians'.  His introduction is about why trying to be Christian makes us anxious and how we can see God's commands in the Bible as freeing us from anxiety rather than producing anxiety. 

Cary attacks what he calls 'the new evangelical theology' which has introduced supposedly practical ideas to help us in Christian life but which are not Biblical, and actually get in the way of believing the gospel. 

These are the areas he addresses in each chapter:

1. Why you don't have to hear God's voice in your heart
2. Why you don't have to believe your intuitions are the Holy Spirit
3. Why you don't have to "Let God take control"
4. Why you don't have to "Find God's will for your life"
5. Why you don't have to be sure you have the right motivations
6. Why you don't have to worry about splitting head from heart
7. Why you don't have to keep getting transformed all the time
8. Why you don't always have to experience joy
9. Why "Applying it to your life" is boring
10. Why basing faith on experience leads to a post-Christian future

There's so much of this that I'm looking forward to reading.  I hope you enjoy learning along with me as I read this book!

Help with my assignment

The study rooms were full on Friday.  Everyone was at the their desk, clicking and typing away.  Every so often the air was punctuated with a heavy sigh. 

That was the first Research Week that I was in the studies (last term’s Research Week I was sick and didn’t want to share my cold with everyone). 

I think I liked writing my essay there.  There’s a sense of camaraderie in the studies.  Everyone is working hard, and those who are struggling are happy to say so.  People would ask each other questions, talk through thoughts they were having and borrow books from each other.  We’re all in this together in some sense.  I also found comfort from the people who were still there, late into the night. 

But there was something else that struck me even more.  I was struck by the fact that there were people praying for me as I wrote the essay.  Not just the unknown-to-me-people who regularly pray for students at our college, or the friends I had asked to pray for me, but even some of my fellow students, also working hard to get the essay done.  Not just praying that I would get it finished on time, but that I would learn and grow from doing it.

In the spirit of the passage I looked at for my essay (Deut 4:32-40):  Search in days gone by and over the world, in what other field of study have you ever hear of this happening? 

This is such a great comfort to me.  The people who I study with aren’t students who I compete with for marks or try to beat in the bell curve.  Or even people I am ambivalent towards as I focus on my own learning.  They are friends, family in Christ, who care about each other, help each other out with resources, and even pray for each other. 

But this is not just a comfort to me.  It is also a rebuke.  I was so focused on my own essay; getting it right and getting it done, that I didn’t really think about asking God to help anyone else with theirs.  How selfish of me.

I am thankful for not just the things I learn at college, but also the way that my attitudes and motivations are being reshaped.  Please pray that God would continue to change my heart to be more like Jesus, as I will be praying for my fellow students.

The creative college assignment

Our most recent college assignment was quite different from the usual essay.  For Doctrine 2 we had to write a hymn or a prayer on one of four set topics.  The aim of the assignment was to get us to express theological truths in simple ways for congregational use.  I chose to write a hymn about the ascension. 

I'm not sure how everyone felt about this assignment, but the general vibe I got from the people I talked to was that of excitement.  It was nice to be doing something very creative and more practical than an essay.  I really enjoyed doing mine (apart from the sometimes frustrating nature of metre and rhyme!) and so I thought I'd share it with you and I hope it encourages you like it did me. 

It doesn't have a name because most hymns only have a number.  It's the tune that is named, and that's what I've provided with its metre, as well as a song with that tune and its number. 

FOREST GREEN 86.86D
(“O Little Town of Bethlehem”, hymn 240)

The Christ has died that we might live,
yet rose up from the dead.
Eternal life to us was give,
it was just as he said.
And then he rose up in a cloud,
was hidden from their sight.
With kingly reign he was endowed,
and sat down at God’s right.

When Christ ascended to his throne
he left the earth below.
The Holy Spirit he has shown;
a gift to us who know.
By Spirit Christ abides in us,
his likeness to instil.
We’ve knowledge of his mind to trust
that we can know his will.

From heav’n Christ intercedes for man,
before our God as priest.
By his humanity he can
our weakness know not least.
As envoy to the holy one,
God’s mercy he doth win,
he stands forever, failing none,
our confidence in him.

As king in heaven over all,
the Christ at God’s right hand.
He shares the power in God’s hall,
he’s gloried as God planned.
A place prepared is his intent,
where we’ll forever spend.
Then he’ll return the way he went,
to judge all at the end. 

One week down

We’ve finished our first week back at college and are quickly onto the next.  I admit that I was having some doubts about going back to college.  Was this really the right decision?  But as soon as I arrived I felt much better.  There were a number of things that affirmed this for me during the week. 

New things to study
I’m really looking forward to some of the things that we’re going to study this year.  We get to go into a lot more depth in doctrine and Old Testament this year.  I’m looking forward to studying John in New Testament (because he’s just so confusing sometimes!), and we start philosophy this year as well.  We also look in detail at the Reformation and I’m really looking forward to learning about what happened then and the detail in the differences between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. 

A focus on prayer
This year in women’s chapel we’re having a focus on prayer.  I’m not really sure what that looks like in practice, but I’m excited to be doing this.  I’ve been wanting for a few years now to look at prayer more closely and to improve my prayer habits.  I hope that this focus will help me to do that. 

The need for musicians
Due to some shuffling of people, Wednesday’s women’s chapel has been left with fewer musicians than normal so I volunteered to not only song lead (which I did last year) but also play the piano in chapel (as long as they’re happy for me to just play chords!). 

Filling out my committee
At college everyone is involved in a committee, be it prayer, tutoring, orientation, library.  My committee leader was pleased when he found out that I was continuing at college because it meant we had exactly enough (the minimum number of) people on the committee.  I loved helping out with my committee last year, I’ll write more about it soon. 

Keeping up in class
We heard last year that second year is a bit of a step up from first year in terms of workload and expectations.  I’ve been please that I’ve been able to mentally keep up in class (at least for now!), particularly in Greek, which is much more complicated and fast-paced than last year.  Additionally, though I wouldn’t be surprised if I drop behind in the set readings (as almost everyone inevitably does), it feels good to have started reading for a number of subjects. 

I’m excited to see what God will be teaching me this year and I hope you enjoy reading about it. 

Why I enjoyed studying (at Bible college)

I've already talked a little bit about some of the perks of studying at my particular Bible college.  But those aren't really the reasons why I loved studying here.  In fact it has little to do with the college itself at all (though it is a great institution).  I loved studying at Bible college because of what I learnt, and am still learning (and who says I can’t vicariously learn more through J next year!).  It is the content that made it so enjoyable. 

 

Of course I also enjoyed studying with a fantastic group of people.  Studying at Bible college was so different to school and uni.  People looked out for each other, shared notes and study tips, prayed for each other.  It is easy to think, after a year of it, that all of this is normal, but it really isn’t.  I’m not sure I’ll ever be in such a supportive learning environment ever again. 

But it was what I learnt that made this year so valuable to me.  I learnt about the most important person in my life by studying the most important book in the world.  I've staked my life on what the Bible says, and I want to know more about it.  If I could study only one thing in my life it wouldn’t be the human body or brain, it wouldn’t be our planet or any of the things on it, it wouldn’t even be my husband or the streets of this new-to-me city.  It would be the Bible, because by it I can know God. 

 

This year at college I learnt how to understand the Bible better, not only by learning some of the ancient Greek language, but also by learning about different styles of writing, some historical background to both the Old and the New Testaments, and how Christians of the past have understood the Bible. 

 

I will be a student of the Bible for the rest of my life.  I will always be seeking to understand it and by this draw closer to God.  This year was a wonderful chance to do this in a more “full time” way.  Thank you God. 

When I fail

I've been learning to drive J's manual car now that we have only one.  I was taught in an automatic.  In fact J's car is the only manual I've ever driven. 

He first started teaching me while we were dating.  I wanted to learn so that if I ever had to drive a manual in an emergency I wouldn't freak out and start crying because I couldn't get the car moving.  I got to a competent level so that I could drive the car from his house to the friend's house we had Bible study at and back again.  But then we stopped and I didn't start learning again until the end of last year when we were planning to sell one car (my automatic) in preparation for moving interstate. 

It was almost speed learning then.  I had to learn so that I could share the driving on the way across the country.  Since we've been here I've hardly driven.  This city is full of hills and I hadn't learnt to do a hill start in a manual so I wasn't very keen to do any driving.  We decided that Sunday mornings would probably be pretty safe so I've been driving to or from church. 

But while we were back in our home city during our mid-year holidays I wanted to do a lot more driving to get my confidence and skills up.  This suggestion found me attempting a hill start on the steep slope of the cul-de-sac where my parents live.

"Okay, hand brake on.  Now find the friction point... good.  Accelerate a little... now bring the clutch out a little more and accelerate a little again.  (You'll probably have to do this two or three times).  Good!  Now take the hand brake off and accelerate."

Stall.

"It's okay, try again."

Hand brake, clutch, accelerate... clutch, accelerate... hand brake...

Stall again.  

When I fail I just want to give up.  I didn't want to keep trying, I just wanted to give up and get J to drive.  It made me wonder if this is how I always react to failure.  Actually I think this is how many of us react to failure.  We don't want to put ourselves through continual negative feedback.  Failure is a blow to our confidence and sometimes also our self-esteem. 

Often we're told to keep trying, to not give up, to not let failure beat us.  But I'm not saying that.  I realised from this experience that I need to be realistic about what I can and can't achieve; when to give up on something that I can't do and when to keep trying. 

I knew which category driving fit into.  I had only failed at the hill start a few times.  It certainly wasn't something that was impossible for me to do.  So I tried again, and off we went. 

 

This got me thinking.  Where else does this tendency appear in my life?  Should I have more confidence in my abilities?  How should I react when I fail?  These are some questions I'll be asking myself. 

How do you react when you fail?

Watching 'The Bible'

Last night J and I watched Channel Nine's new miniseries, 'The Bible'.  I was pretty excited that it was being shown on TV, on a major channel no less and I was really looking forward to seeing how the story of the Bible would be portrayed.  

I'm not really going to give it a review.  You can go here for that.  But I wanted to share some of my thoughts about it.

The perks of exams

We're in the middle of exams at college at the moment.  Well okay, it's only the start of exam week, but I've already have two exams, and have two more left, so it's the middle for me.

I've now done exams at three different institutions: my high school, my undergraduate university, and now Bible college.  The procedure has been different for each of them.  Of the three, college has been by far the best.  Let me tell you why.

What I learned

Last week at college we had what is called Research Week.  We didn't have any classes, and every year level had a major assignment due at the end of the week (except 4th years, they just have lots of work all the time as far as I can tell). 

For first years it was a New Testament Essay.  In New Testament we've been studying Mark, Ephesians and 1 Peter, so the essay topics cover things from these books of the Bible.  The topic I chose comes from 1 Peter.  The question was about the resurrection and I chose it because I often forget about the resurrection when I think about an outline to the gospel, I don't really understand it's full significance and I wanted to understand the resurrection better.