The Pit

I read a psalm the other day which, in describing God, commented that he 'redeems your life from the pit.' This is but one of many wonderous and indescrible acts of love, but how wonderful a statement that is, that the Lord God overlooks our many inadequacies and folly's because of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, and seeks to lift us out of the pit. The pit - what a great word. A word conveying a place that instantly identifies us with a place or environment that is not going to be pleasant. Even as I write this post the first thing that comes to mind when i think of a pit is a cess pit, the oldest and most traditional form of waste extraction. Nice!

Of course, the scary thing about that pit is that it might not be at that level of extremity. It might not be a cess pit. It could just be a depression in the ground. A place that is blatantly not on the higher ground that God might want us to be upon. A circumstance and surrounding that is not the straight path that comes from following the Lord. And yet when it is not a cess pit and when it is just a slight depression, surely that is the most dangerous place. In those circumstance we may not have even noticed that we are in a pit, and we continue on oblivious to the fact that we are in danger, not even stopping to cry out to the Lord for rescue.

I'll change tack here for a second as I am very aware you might be confused with my topographical nonsense above. The pit of course is not necessarily a place - although it might be if you fall down a big hole in the future and plead with the Lord for rescue. Hoping that that is going to be exceptionally unlikely though, in the vast majority of cases the pit is a comment on the state of our lives, and often our spiritual lives. The pit could refer to our feeling or perception when times seem exceptionally difficult. Unemployment, loss of a loved one, illness, rejection, etc etc etc. It could also refer to the simple and plain fact that we have slipped and slided to a point spiritually were we are so convicted of our guilt and seemingly trapped by our sin and folly that we struggle even to look to the Lord for hope. We are blinkered, lost and depressed by our surroundings. Surroundings that look like an inescapble pit rather than the straight path we should be on.

So in this spiritual/daily lives sense, the pit is a place of despair. The pit I referred to above, that of very difficult circumstances or severe spiritual backsliding, is perhaps best translated into the the cess pit. A place where we know whole heartedly we are in trouble and all we can do is scream out to God and ask Him to lift us. The minor depression in the land though is much more tricky. This could be manageable, continuous stress that is slowly eating away and causing us illhealth of poor relationships, or a job or lifestyle which although not demonstrably bad is keeping us from God's straight paths. Spiritually it could be that we are neglecting our Bibles or prayer and that slowly but surely we are sinking into the ground. This is scary as before we know it we can be in that huge, slimy pit of despair (the cess pit) but having massively damaged our own lives, hurt others and succeeded only in not obeying God.

Having said all that, the one wonderful thing to take from all this topological stuff is this plain and simple truth - that the Lord God in his loving, perfect way, will lift you out of the pit, whatever pit it may be, and place your feet firmly on solid ground. How wonderful and joyous is that? And the shrewd amongst you will realise that its exactly how this blog post began - meaning that you can leave out all the stuff in the middle. Brilliant! :-)

Encounters with a Fairy Ogre

I'll try to keep this brief as even I may have to concede my blog entries have a tendancy to delve into waffle at the mo. I've spent most of today sorting through clothing and equipment that I used this last weekend camping in the Lakes. Almost all of it was damp, wet or saturated which should give you an idea of just how wet it was these last few days. But what great days they were.

A group of us celebrated Andy Moll's stag weekend with a meal in Liverpool on Friday and then two short days in the Lake District, walking, camping and eating and drinking in the Buttermere area. It rained a lot and there were moments when the wind was so vicious it was hurling our neighbours tents across rivers and bringing down trees that later blocked at least one of the roads out of the valley. And yet, even with such terrible weather it was a great weekend of friendship and fellowship, and I hope, a suitable way to mark Andy's tranisition from a life sans Beko to a new married life.

It really was a great weekend.

Time and Commitments

One of the things I find hardest in the world we live in is just how hard it can be to use time effectively. Before I go on, I realise and appreciate that there are ways in which we can discipline ourselves to better use the time we are given. Making the choice to not watch television and study your Bible for example. Or choosing to get out of bed on a Saturday morning rather than lye there for another few hours. These are but a few examples. However, I hope that it is acceptible to say that inspite of our best efforts there are still moments in which the precious time God gives us slips away into oblivion, or becomes almost inpossible to manage in a way that satisfies what is being asked of us.

And it is on that point - using time to satisfy commitments in our lives - that I now turn. Very often in life (although much less so at the moment) I find that I am in positions which require me to make a firm commitment. To stand up and say 'I will be there' or 'I will do that'. Very often these may be commitments to people we care about, and equally often we may have to make a decision between different people or groups of people that are important in our lives. This is when it gets messy, not least when other external factors that are beyond our control come into play.

Making a commitment is important and failing to do so can be hurtful and frustrating to others and falls short of being a good witness to friends and family. At the same time however making a commitment in haste or in the knowledge that we might not be able to follow through is equally risky and foolish. Thus it is that using our time wisely and both making and keeping our commitments is a very difficult business at times and one that I know leaves me troubled.

My friend Bill

Having recently demolished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, i've now started reading a book I bought recently by Bill Bryson. Entitled, rather simply, Shakespeare (a title that should leave little imagine to what its about in a loose sense), I'd first eyed it up a few months ago in the bestseller list at Tesco, but held off buying the book as I had so many others to read and wanted to be careful about money and how much I was spending. Anyhoo, having cleared a few books and seeing it again in a delightful little bookshop in Grasmere in the Lakes, I decided to buy Shakespeare.

Now, as much as I do have at least a passing interest in England's most famous bard, I bought this book mostly because it was by Bill Bryson. Indeed, it would be safe to say that I have been a Bryson fan for a long, long time, and the mere addition of his name to a book will be enough for me to at least give it great consideration as book to buy and read. His books A Walk in the Woods and Notes from a Big Country would both easily make it on to my top ten favourite reads, whilst I find the vast majority of his other works both interesting and engaging. Certainly his autobiographical The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid seemed a little lacking and a bit disappointing, but even that had its moments of sheer joy and brilliance.

The reason I like Bill Bryon books boils down to a few key points. First of all he is a man who is very obviously a bit of a geek - like me. He is a dedicated, capable researcher and passionate student about all kinds of subjects. He seems to love information, learning, researching and covers a whole range of subjects (as displayed generally in the boggling amount of information he crams into his travel books, and more specifically in his History of Nearly Everything science book and the English language studies such as Made in America) and in adopting this position, having this attitude to learning, he is a man after my own heart. I too love consuming information, researching and do this in a variety of subject areas.

Secondly, he seems to have a very balanced, considered approach to his research. Certainly his opinion and persepctive shine through in all his work, but at the same time I do feel reassured that he is at least open to the possibility that he is by no means right. He has humility and a determined belief to consider many angles. This I respect immensly.

Thirdly, he is an American who loves America and Britain equally, has lived in both countries, and is married to a British woman. He is, therefore someone who shares the strange transatlantic world that I seem at this moment to be living.

Fourthly, he has a passion for the outdoors, for the culture and heritage he sees around him and an equal passion to preserve that culture and heritage. He has the American links, the interesting learning and history, language etc etc. In other words we seem to have many common interests and that obviously helps engage you in reading books.

Fifly, he has a writing style that manages to convey all that information in a way that is very much likeable and approachable to people who might otherwise find the topic dull and/or beyond them. His work on science A Short History of Nearly Everything was a joy to read in the way it helped explain and relate the most complex of scienftic theories. And best of all you are never more than a few pages away from honest, open, humble humour.

These are the reasons I like Bill Bryson books and the reason I am now reading a book on Shakespeare. Go buy a Bill Bryson book today and put a knowledgeble smile on your face.

Great Picture

This is a great picture, even if I do say so myself. Something about it, the colours, the sheer raw nature of the wood and the metal together, all help me appreciate it more than I would another picture. It is, in case you were wondering, part of an old medieval door from a stately home in sunniest Lancashire.

Space Loos

I haven't written on here for a while, a sign, perhaps, of the fact that I've been in the Lakes for a week and also been somewhat distracted with life.

However, I feel an entry is needed and what better than to talk about the rather bizarre world of the space programme (the global space programme) and its sheer oddness. You may have seen in the news recently that the International Space Station has been experiencing lavatory troubles. It seems that the $100 billion space station is equipped with only one toilet, a somewhat surprising oversight (especially given its remoteness if anything goes wrong), and one that prompted an unprecedented plumbing emergency this week, as said waste extractor broke.

Back on earth Russian engineers hurridly prepared the urgently needed replacement parts (the ISS is of course a mixture of global technologies), which were then loaded onto a plane, flown over to Florida, rushed through US customs in a diplomatic bag (thus avoiding the pitfalls of long customs delays), taken to NASA, who then set about stripping the space shuttle (which was due to launch on a seporate mission) of non-essential items so as to accomodate the toilet bits'n'bobs. At which point the shuttle lifted off, docked with the ISS, and an engineer successfully repaird the loo. Joy of joys!!!

A successful and staggeringly complex operation to fix a toilet. An expensive one too, coming in at some $450 million. For a toilet! Amazing.