A bit of belle & sebastian and a bit of life

Just back from running youth tonight and enjoying a little Belle & Sebastian while I attempt to reflect on my rather manic day. They've got a new album for 2010 which Spotify has nicely provided for my listening pleasure.

Today I got to do lots more organising, had meetings with 3 different people and got to visit some lovely friends at Gateway to do some planning for a great event. It's been exciting but seriously busy.

I think that before I was a Christian I always thought that Christianity was about rules, about doing the right thing. I've begun to see how wrong I was. (That tends to happen a lot tbh!) I know I can't always keep the rules and most of the time I fail at doing the right thing. Just like so many other humans, I think about myself, I see things wrong and I hurt people. So, to understand that's it's not by what I do that I get to call myself a Christian, but through Jesus and His loving sacrifice, is an incredible revelation. In the Bible it speaks of Jesus coming to bring life, and actually that's not just in terms of life again when we die and then are raised to life, it means life on this earth...

In Psalm 16 it says

"You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore."

You see, following Jesus brings fullness of life, freedom from insecurity, brokenness, and the general trappings of the world. It's not as if I go to church because I have to, but because I love to. I don't serve and spend a year working for the church because that's what is expected it's because I've been given life and that stirs in me a heart for something that 4 years ago I would've shunned and turned my nose up at.

Today was one of those days where you catch a glimpse of the fullness of life. Without trying to sound deep or poetic, I just saw some of the many benefits of knowing Christ, and knowing Him as a friend and not just a nice moral teacher who died 2000 years ago. That idea of Jesus could not be further from the truth.

And these things cause me to ponder, what will I get to do, or see, or be in my lifetime? What has been prepared for me to do? It's exciting because there is no other way, apart from Jesus that I would get to live the life I do, and I know it's not because of me.

In darkness and in light, in times of fog or in clarity, God is good and there have been several incredible blessings today, that remind me how good Jesus is. And though I shall never fully understand or comprehend, I know what I'm living for...