“Over and over again in the Bible, we see men and women who are given far more than they can handle. The prophet Jeremiah is a great example; he was charged with preaching repentance to the people of Israel, a calling that caused him to be beaten, plotted against and rejected by everyone, even his own family.”
I found this a while back but it has stuck with me and came back in force this week when I found myself overwhelmed by the amount I’d honourably taken on, but then found I could possibly fit in. I usually have to reach breaking point before I recognise I’ve bitten off more than I can chew and I had a proper breaking point this week.
My tendency is to feel guilty about letting people down, and showing myself up for not being strong enough to do everything that *needs* to be done. This is often made worse by me buying into the notion that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle. This blog explains why, actually, he does frequently give us more than we can handle and what we should understand from that.
“And the really controversial point we ought to make is this: Jesus did not hate religion. He was in fact a religious person. We are used to using the words Pharisee or Pharisaical in the pejorative senses, as labels, but in Jesus’ day, the most faithful, biblical religion going, for all its problems, was the religion of the Pharisees. Between Zealots on one side and Sadducees on the other, the Pharisees had carved out a decent niche as the “evangelicals” of the day.”
I’m not suggesting this is something I am going to tomp about, I don’t intend on fighting to reclaim the word religious. I know the connotation of religion is desperately difficult for some, but I think the point in the article about Jesus actually going about his life ‘religiously’ has some important lessons for the modern Christian in how we approach our lives. I don’t want to be ashamed of being diligent, methodical and structured. in how I do my faith. However I also recognise that is what works for my personality type. Many others are much more spontaneous with how they do their faith and so this whole point wouldn’t make much sense to them - which is as it should be.
“Jodie Marsh, as it turns out, is pretty amazing. She was a straight A-student at school, and wanted to be a vet. She was smart enough, hard-working enough, certainly ambitious enough. Then she went to secondary school. And was bullied. For being “ugly.”
Lou’s blog is a very interesting look at an unlikely feminist hero and certainly got me thinking. I was humbled to read Jodie Marsh’s story, as I was badly bullied at school, by teachers and pupils. It never got violent, but I vividly remember when one girl urinated in my lunch box. I reacted to it in a variety of ways, mainly inwardly, developing outward nervous habits that attracted more attention. But it never, thankfully, put me off learning or made me second guess my talents. This doesn’t happen to everyone though. There is a thoguht running my head about the feminist angle of this issue – which I will blog in more detail.
“What do we mean when we say that the church is too feminine? And, why do I care? I care because how the church defines feminization exposes how the church feels towards women in general.”
“[The Bishops] are talked about as rich men with no idea that £26,000 is a fortuner for some, or leftie men being typically obstructive, or naive men who don’t realise the coffers are empty, but never as Christian men who are perhaps just trying to say what they think Jesus would have said.”
An interesting dissection of Former Archbishop Carey’s response to the Bishops’ stance on the ‘benefit cap’.
