living Christ's values

Well we are into the new year and we are dying of the heat. It is so hot the dogs are over heating!

I gave Jeff a bonsai for Christmas and its struggling in the heat. I now need to get him a book on how to look after a Bonsai tree. I hope this one does well!! Its been around since 2004 I hope it outlasts us.

Our new territorial Commander has made 2009's theme Living Christ's Values. What an amazing open theme. I had to go back and look at the life of Christ to understand the secret to living like him is behaving like he did to the Father.

He says things like "nothing I do I do without consulting my Father". He put God's agenda ahead of his own, God's love for mankind in place of God's love for him. I am amazed and a little scared to really get down to the nitty gritty on this theme. I have realised that I have to change some of the "accepted" things I do and say.

Its so much easier to live your life in a bubble where everything is predictable. who would have known there would be a storm and the disciples would be fighting for their lives and Jesus would be sleeping - who knew that if you actually get out of the boat you could walk on water. Who would have known that saying "yes I want to be healed" would mean that you would be.

Jesus did not do the expected. he turned the values of the official religious leaders on their heads and they didn't like it. I wonder sometimes if I haven't become an official leader???? do I do the right things because they are valuable or because they are right in my sight??? I'm a little retrospective at the moment so indulge me. I'm second guessing everything I do to make sure my values really do work with Christ's. I'm finding that some of them are really a security blanket that stops me from getting too involved with the "wrong sort".

As an Army Officer I get drained or sapped of energy really quickly when I have to deal with the broken and desperate in life. So often the root of their problem is so easy for me to see but difficult to make them see or even want to fix. How much more annoying must we have been to God in the form of Christ. He must have wanted to shake us sometimes when we didn't get it or we didn't change or we didn't believe cos we didn't see!!

I am determined that this is going to be God's year to act in the Corps, in my family and in me. I am expecting great things. Maybe some of my value systems may just be turned on their heads a little.

till next time. see ya