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Take the gloomiest thing you have ever ever read multiply that by 999924355.883 and you're not even close to this bhad boy!

Nothing Less than Calvary Love

I came across this beautiful hymn, think I must have sung it before because the words are really familiar but I can't seem to remember the tune! It was written by a man named George Matheson. He was born partially sighted. As he grew older his sight increasingly diminished until eventually he became entirely blind. He was a church of Scotland minister and he was so gifted at communicating the gospel, memorising his sermons and whole sections of scripture, that often people were completely unaware that he was blind. His story goes...that he was engaged to be married, however as his sight faded his young fiance decided that she didn't want to be married to a blind preacher and so left him.

He writes of the night that he composed his great hymn:

"some­thing hap­pened to me, which was known only to my­self, and which caused me the most se­vere men­tal suf­fer­ing. The hymn was the fruit of that suf­fer­ing. It was the quick­est bit of work I ever did in my life. I had the im­press­ion of hav­ing it dic­tat­ed to me by some in­ward voice ra­ther than of work­ing it out my­self. I am quite sure that the whole work was com­plet­ed in five min­utes, and equal­ly sure that it ne­ver re­ceived at my hands any re­touch­ing or cor­rect­ion. I have no na­tur­al gift of rhy­thm. All the other vers­es I have ever writ­ten are man­u­fact­ured ar­ti­cles; this came like a day­spring from on high."

The hymn was titled 'O Love that Wilt not Let Me Go'

O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

O light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.

Recently I have been wrestling a wee bit with the concept of predestination. I decided that I would finally explore the mahoosive issue which seems to scramble christian's brains all o'r the place ...arminian...calvinist...calminian...arminist...cruel calvinist...double-predestination...? Romans 9 caused me many a long moment of confused thought and grief. I couldn't reconcile the God of Romans 9 with the God I want to serve and worship. YET, I have just realised that there is a reason why Romans 8 comes before 9, oh yes (pure slow-case!haha!).

'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?...For i am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present or the future, nor ANY powers...will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.'

God is Love. O Love that Wilt Not Let me Go.

Hats off to George! He got it spot on. Legend of the highest order right there.

<------------------ this is george

A Childhood Ambition

I live in a small town. We have not much more than too many souvenir shops, a couple of food shops, a garden centre and a primary school. It is only recently that we got a library that is not in the back of a traveling van. Yet the most magnificant feature of the town is a tall grey granite tower which spans heavenwards to pierce the clouds. Since I was child I had wanted to climb right up to the very top, to get the glorious view of the boundless landscape below; to see the lights of sleeping towns and cities stretching to the horizon, to be closer to the stars, to have a giant's perspective of the world! I planned to take my camera.

The tower held ancient relics of sorts so it was very well secured against intruders. I determined that the best time to go was at night. I had calculated all the possible entrances to the tower, the numbers of stairs that spiraled between each landing, where the security cameras were placed, the quietest/quickest way to break the locks and open the doors...the areas i would need to crawl...the alarms i would need to disable...the explanation i would give if i was caught. I was ready.

I sat crouched behind a bush near the tower. My black gloves were soggy with perspiration (why did i choose the wool ones). I pulled my balaclava out of my pocket and pulled it over my face. I had cut the eye-holes slightly squint. If i didn't think about it then it couldn't annoy me (i couldn't stop thinking about it and it was increasingly annoying me.) Run through the mental checklist, go alphabetically. A:? (what did i bring beginning with A?) ok move on to B: Balaclava. Got. Check. Wearing it. Eye-holes are squint (rage). Bottle of Water. Got. Check. C: Camera, Co-ordinate chart, Crowbar. What did i bring beginning with A? Forget it, move on. D: Diagrams and tower drawings. What did i bring beginning with A? Move on. E: "Electrics disabling kit for beginners." Got. Check. What did I bring beginning with A?

- Wait a minute! Once I leave this hiding place I will be seen if I use my torch. All of a sudden my crippling fear of the dark grabbed me.

There was very little I could do but return home very disappointed.

superficial happiness

I should be writing my dissertation but an idea for this little story popped into my head so I thought I'd type it up before I forgot it...its a bit scaff and unfinished...part of my dissertation is on Thomas Hobbes's political philosophy,one of the things he says is that a ruler's power depends ultimately on the people's opinion of him...from that wee thought this story grew

Once upon a time, in a place not far from here, there was a very proud king who ruled over his Kingdom with the greatest pride. Like many kings before him – and no doubt many kings since – he wanted to ensure with the utmost certainty that his power would never diminish. Now the king was wise but because of his selfishness his wisdom turned to foolishness; like one bad apple spreading rot to a whole barrel full. He brought into his court a philosopher, a scientist and a poet to ask them this question:
‘What must I do to ensure that I stay strong and powerful, ruling supremely and irrevocably over my kingdom?’
The answer that he saw as most correct according to his wisdom came from a small, twittering poet who proclaimed:

‘Power’s twin is man’s opinion
Win men’s favour and keep dominion.’

‘Yes!’ exclaimed the ruler, ‘My power depends on the people’s opinion. I need the people to like me first before they will revere and obey me…now then how to I win their favour?’
At this point a philosopher spoke up: ‘All men seek happiness, whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end.’
‘Happiness’ said the ruler, ‘yes! The chief end of man is happiness. All men are driven in pursuit of it. But how do I satisfy the happiness of my whole kingdom?’
At this point the scientist spoke up: ‘er well…we..we at the labs have been working on, well have almost certainly completed the engineering of a pill, a drug, a simple powder that when ingested produces the highest outpouring of euphoria known to man, and depending on the dosage, this eh intense happiness can be sustained for hours and hours.’
‘Go on,’ ordered the king
‘Well the powder completely dissolves in water..so..so if added to the city’s water system…which supplies every house-hold in the kingdom…then each citizen will unknowingly be consuming their way to happiness. You will have a society which is full of perfectly content and happy inhabitants.’
‘That’s it!’ said the king. His eyes narrowing and darting from side to side as his mind processed the out-workings of this ingenious plan. ‘Without unhappiness there can be no uprising! Discontent is the fuel of revolution…but with unlimited, controlled and sustained happiness who can challenge me! Who can challenge ME! I am the great unconquerable king whom by his wisdom and deft schemes will have the masses obey him!’

so i am against long blog posts so i'm not going to finish it here but the ending (if i ever write it)will go something like this. The plan works perfectly and induced happiness seeps throughout the city to great effect. Yet not long after the king (who has made sure his water stays pure) receives an ultimatum from a neighboring kingdom, declaring war...the king tries to mobilize his armies and get the people prepared for war...but why would they fight when they are in a perpetual state of happiness?

Something like the most Beautiful Thing

Something like the most beautiful thing I’ve held
Nae use tryin
Something like gold but more precious, delicate
Powerful
there’s nae use
Tender; as much as I brush it with my fingertips it caresses me back
filling my flesh in its warm embrace
There’s nae point knowing, nae use jist gissin wit you cannae know
Knowing is being engulfed by that which escapes all understanding
It’s the moment – now
I see now, glimpse snap-shots of eternity, incoherently yet gloriously
Jist waiting fer wit? A fool.
Cannae build a hing on wishes
I will see your face.
I will see your face.


....to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple
psalm 27:4

Blush Red in the Rain

As the grey glooming sky begins to spit
cold icy drops onto our cheeks and the tips
of our noses; blushed red with the cold.
And homeward we go
and homeward we go
drawn by a force known or unknown.
Footfalls on foreign grounds that lead us to home.
My knuckles blush red with the cold.

a gift from above

Edith lived alone. All her adult life she had lived alone and was very much content with the silence of solitariness which pervaded her cosy bottom-floor flat. She had neither radio nor television, she has neither a phone nor a computer and she had never owned a pet (not even a goldfish.) Edith passed most of her time polishing her very extensive collection of glass ornaments which pleased her very much.

Mr Greenbaum lived in the flat upstairs. Old age had left his legs almost entirely useless, even accomplishing the short trip from his arm-chair to the bathroom and back required much deliberation and strain. Hour after hour he sat in his favourite arm-chair, sometimes just thinking, sometimes trying to remember people's names, places he had visited or things he used to know. Yet most of his time was spent sleeping. Sometimes day would roll into night and then turn to day again and Greenbaum would sleep right through the transition. On one fateful occasion Greenbaum fell into one of his deepest sleeps unaware that he has left the kitchen tap running.

Edith had just finished polishing her most favourite glass elephant. She had been extra cautious to make sure she got into all the nooks and crannies round is beautiful retroflexed trunk. On finishing she took an upwards glance at her ceiling, ‘that’s funny,’ she thought on noticing an extremely ominous shadow spanning almost the whole length and breadth of her ceiling. Then she heard a crack followed by a lot of creaking. Edith began to panic, ‘by gum what on earth is happening.’ Before she could gather her thoughts any further a colossal smash resonated and water, dust and a Mr Greenbaum fell down from above. Greenbaum’s arm-chair crashed through the plaster and landed squarely in the centre of Edith’s sitting-room floor. Edith removed her dust coated glasses in disbelief, ‘Good gracious’ she said aloud. At that moment Mr Greenbaum woke up and timidly introduced himself.

After a while Edith got used to this new arrangement and was content to allow Greenbaum and his arm-chair to remain where they had landed, in the centre of her front-room.

On the bus everyday to uni I pass a block of sheltered-housing flats for old people. I was thinking how lonely it could be in those wee one person-flats and that's when this little story came into my head.

Happy Days

Sometime one day I lost my tomorrow. I bet Frank £200 that I could run up the stairs to level eight faster than he could get there in the lift. Turned out the lift was functioning uncharacteristically fast that day and Frank beat me there.
‘£200 please? He said.
In hindsight the bet was a thoroughly ridiculous idea. It was Frank who had initiated it. ‘But I don’t have £200 Frank. The rent’s due this week and it’s my mum’s birthday. I just can’t pay that.’
‘Well time is money,’ said Frank, ‘you’ll have to pay me with your time.’
‘How much of it do you want?’
‘Your tomorrow.’
‘All of it?’
‘Yes’
‘Well can’t I give you my yesterday, it was really good me, Gareth and Sue had a picnic in the park then fed the leftovers to the ducks.’
‘No, I don’t want your yesterday. That’s been used already. I want your fresh, untouched tomorrow.’
Frank is good at arguing his point, he has very persuasive eyes and he clasps his hands together when he is talking with the sincerity of a priest in prayer.
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I suppose you can have my tomorrow, but don’t waste it.’
‘Excellent!’ said Frank. And that is how I lost my tomorrow. At the time I didn’t realise that there are always tomorrows. Every day has one and every day becomes one. We never specified which tomorrow I would lose to Frank so since then I have been in a perpetual today. I’m poised somewhere unsettling in time where nothing progresses, nothing changes, everything is now. I am now. Concepts are growing hazy, words like "seconds," "minutes," "hours" rest on my tongue like foreign words; merely sounds with the meaning behind them fading. Soon there will be nothing.



started out as funny story but by the time i got to the last wee bit things became a tad bleak...i can't really think of a way to give it a happy ending...so i will just leave it with its grim gloomy end :)

Examerama

I walked into my exam hall today and found my way to a seat that looked most pleasing to me. Near enough to the back that I felt far enough over the door threshold to have fully committed myself to this exam, yet not too far as to feel peripheral. On settling myself down I noticed that everyone else in the exam-hall was me. Calculating that if the probability of a given outcome to an event is P and the event is repeated N times, then the larger N becomes, the likelihood increases that the closer, in proportion, will be the occurrence of the given outcome to N*P, then the probability of one of me passing was pretty good. On looking down at the paper I realised that the questions were all written in my hand-writing and on closer inspection all the answers were in fact filled in as well. Well that’s convenient I thought. Reading over what was written confirmed that these were my practice essays that I had written the day before; all perfectly transferred into the exam booklet. However, on reaching the end of the paper I realised that there was still a question left incomplete. Pfft I thought, the last one is always the toughy. I braced myself and read over the question:
Robert Burns was situated at a pivotal time in Scottish history both politically and linguistically, being profoundly influenced by the vernacular revival of his predecessors Fergusson and Ramsay yet also foreshadowing the lallans ‘plastic Scots’ movement of MacDiarmid; while also writing after the 1707 Union of the Crowns. Please colour-in the picture of Burns, Ramsay and Fergusson below, keeping within the lines....


if ONLY my exam had actually been like this!!!!