Merry Christmas Everyone!

Yeh...so i realise that i post this on Boxing Day, but hey...the thought was there! I'm discovering that Christmas is starting to lose its appeal slightly. Although i had a moderately pleasant day yesterday, it was spent with my parents and my Grandad mainly cooking, eating, washing up and watching tv! Ah for the days of kiddy excitement (i guess this is what comes of gettin into your late 20's and having no family of your own to keep entertained!...awwww...poor, single Ruth i hear you cry...bring on the sympathy vote!!)

But what of the meaning of Christmas for me?? It's gotta be about promises. Jesus is a God promise - kept. A promise of salvation, of presence, of guidance...of all those things and more, revealed in the humility of a baby. I love it! I love the being almost forced into being sociable with people, an excuse to party hard, to make contact with those forgotten for the rest of the year!

Anyway...still on a plan to have shorter entries! So...Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year!

R xx

better blogger!

i've decided that not only do i need to increase my blogging frequency, but also i need to decrease the content! for those of you that don't know me personally, you've probably already gathered that i can talk for England! so...a quick blog...lets see if i can manage it!

carols at Christmas...why is it that we love singing them? Is it a reminiscence of childhood thing? Why, when non-churchgoing friends of mine went to a packed carol service, and my minister addressed the hoards saying "i hope you're all here for more than a good sing" they told me after that, well actually they were, and have never returned since?

and after all, what exactly does 'late in time behold him come' mean!?!? there you go...a random...and relatively short ponder for you!

R x

Music and Creation...
Don't you just love it when God just gives you great things for no real reason!?! Well...i'm just gettin all excited about my research at the moment, and it's just great! So thought I'd share a little!

Last week I hit a bit of a brick wall, asking all the typical researchers questions...like why on earth am I doing this to myself, is this really what God wants me to be doin, will it ever be over...and most importantly...am I really furthering the Kingdom of God by doin what I am?? Well i'm not sure I answered any of the questions, but my most recent reading has really given me a buzz about my writing, so have kinda forgotten those worries and now have regained a passion to want to answer my question...why is music so important to God?!

The text in question is a small 20 page booklet by Jeremy Begbie called Music in God's Purposes. This has been and I think will continue to be a great source of raw questioning for me over the next few years. Not so succinctly has anyone else addressed the issues of musicianship and Christian music in a way that I completely identify with! He asks the questions that I am asking (luckily without fully answering them either...so it leave me a little room to work!).

He writes: ‘In general, a glance at church history confirms that music has usually been seen as a vital component in worship. Is it not worth asking why this is so, and just how it is that music can glorify God?’ This is precisely the question I want to answer!

So how do I react to this? Well, Begbie has revealed a great truth that I guess I already knew. Music is about engaging with God's creation, it's about how we relate to God, the world and each other: it's about community. We well know, as was Calvin's concern about the manipulative ability of music. As with all things, this power in the wrong hands is a dangerous thing (without meaning to sound too much like a certain Tolkien novel!), but the raw beauty of music can be liberating, healing, exhilarating, it can bring us to an unspoken experience of God, and we can do the most high priestly of all things, it can bring great glory to God. Not only of course through 'Christian' music, but all music that is not clearly against God may be used to glorify him. (ooo...I may be hearing some fellow students cry...if it's black and white, it's art not porn! Maybe we could have the same debate with regards to music!)

However...yet again I fear that I've not talked about what I said I would the last time I blogged! I can't even remember what that was! Ah well...this feels very unfinished but as I need my bed I'm going to leave things on a very unanswered knife edge!
God bless you all

R x