So I have submitted my rough proposal for this year’s final project. It read like this:
- the responsibility of those with mental illness for their godliness
- a comparison of the approaches to this by Malcolm Jeeves and David Powlison/Bruce Welch, with a view to Biblical wisdom concerning these matters (mind/body, mental illness, repentance, sickness)
Pray what I do helps God’s people think hard and love well as a result.
Cheek brimful to bursting
Crinkled one-eye joy
We: onlookers now
- who are these two?
Freshness of first-day joy washed
Reverent, standing, centred on a platform
- faces forward, his slightly turned
To watch from eye-corner, to espy his bride
what is it? how do the labels of psychiatric and psychological overlap and where are their domains?
does the Bible have anything explicit to say about mental illness?
what is mental illness anyway? how do we distinguish it from normal responses to particular events in life?
even after diagnosis, how can we help?
people with broken legs and broken minds alike are sinners needing the transforming grace of Jesus.
how do I navigate this?
i’ll be spending a year trying to sort that out.
We had a home group of 3 last night – and two of us live in this house! I found it challenging thinking how in Colossians Paul so tightly links sticking to the gospel with loving other members of Christ’s body. There’s no such thing in Christianity as “a private faith”, “an individual belief” – the very nature of becoming a Christian is to become a member of Christ’s body and so be joined to others inseparably.
One of the things I’ve been thinking about since writing an ethics essay earlier this year is how knowing who God is begins to erode our self-protective instincts. He is humanity’s God. God pro humanity. Jesus’ incarnation testifies to that. “For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven”. The events of creation and redemption speak in union about the character of God – God for us. Knowing that Jesus has “got our back” means we are freed to look out for others.
To help us understand that and for it to change us requires less bludgeoning and more proclamation. Less guilt-inducing complaint and more grace-filled announcements that Jesus is the one upon whom our concerns can be laid because he cares for us. We need to hear “the old, old story” of Jesus and his love so that we can obey his commandment to “love one another as I loved you”.
Or at least two days in a row!
I’ve cleaned out our laundry, mopped kitchen and laundry floors, thrown out lots of plastic bags and a foot spa which never worked, and I’ve washed our kitchen curtains. Things already feel cleaner. The rain is falling solidly outside and inside is warmly lit by my happy-light.
Oh, and our house smells beautiful. Our wedding florist sent us an amazing bouquet just to say thanks (and I guess to advertise). The bunch was so big we had to put them into two vases and so their scent is filling our living room!
I’ve got bread baking in the oven and I’ve started catching up on Briefing magazines from way back in May.
Yeah, it’s been a while. Kath’s still in the darkness in some sense – writing reports. I’m out of it. Tonight the last “official” things of my college year is done. Had a great dinner with college people who live near us and now I’m really on holidays.
Two weeks full of 7 exams. And we’re done. And I’m going to miss a lot of friends who have finished and are moving away.
So I’ve got plans for my time off – I plan to be a better husband, I plan on reading more fiction, I plan to clean our home one room at a time, in a week we’ll spend a weekend away on the south coast by the Shoalhaven River near the ocean, I plan to bake and cook more, I plan on getting adult swim classes, I plan on making some more fly screens too.
I’m sitting now in the late evening summer light on a camping chair on my mini ground-floor balcony with my laptop, drinking lime cordial and listening to digital radio. Holidays are lovely.
i make bread
not the labourious but also curiously relaxing and therapeutic kind of making which involves beating and waiting and beating and baking…
no, we got a bread machine for our wedding.. and we’ve used it regularly.
but two weeks ago i grew tired of bread the shape of a elongated cube, and with the bottom middle missing because the dough mixer baked itself into the loaf
so i found out how to optimise the machine’s usability – get it to mix and knead the dough, with its own rising cycles, and then transfer it to a real loaf tin and bake in the oven.
surprisingly it takes a shorter time to bake it this way, makes a nicer loaf, and i’m really happy..
i didn’t bake any bread today. what prompted this reflection was walking into the kitchen and noticing my lovely loaf of bread and wanting to tell people about it
–side reflection: why aren’t my encounters with Jesus similarly producing such free expression of the joy i have in knowing him?
ethics essay
lung function test
growing basil and parsley
rain coming
feeling good though
I ran yesterday. 4kms. Not much for a runner. Pretty decent for me. It was after this run – on such a beautiful sunny (though not hot) day – that GoogleEarth helped me calculate the distance and then find a new run to do on the other side of the bridge along the murky Cook’s River. Should be great to explore the new track and see if I can run just that little bit further next time.
And I planted basil and parsley. I love watching things grow.
or the day after… or the one after that…. at least, it will come out at some point in the near future and shine on our unit.
We receive no sunshine on our unit throughout winter. We face entirely the wrong direction and the trees and surrounding buildings fill up what little sunshine might have filtered through otherwise. So plants try hard to grow but stutter. One of the small pleasures I’m looking forward to will be sitting on our tiny balcony with a cup of tea and enjoying the morning sunshine.
But when it comes out, I’m all ready. I have basil seeds and parsley seeds. I have a pot and soil mix. I’m going to grow some things!
Holidays now for me. Or, more properly, study leave. I have some assignments some I’m reading lots.
Friends coming over tonight. So I’ll be cooking lamb shanks. Yum.
