Note to self: remember to appreciate these things (for more than a day!) when I get back to the UK...

• friends and family
• being able to go through a whole day without sweating
• being able to understand more than 70% of what people say to me
• being able to read without the pages of the book being blown around by a fan
• bread for sandwiches which isn't sweet!
• church in English
• carpets and socks
• being able to walk places
• recognising most of the foods that I see in the supermarket
• baths

Happy New Year...(again!)

We've had the Western New Year and Chinese Year...now it's time for Thai New Year - Songkran!

This is one of the most interesting festivals in Thailand for foreigners, aside from all the deeper meaning (which is pretty much, as Christmas in the UK, hidden beneath the commercial and social aspect of the festival these days).

During these 3 days, you basically have 3 options:

1) Set up camp at the side of the road with a hose, water pistols or big tank of water (or all 3!) and throw water at passers by. Buy and mix up some lovely greyish paste to plaster on people's faces as they walk past (a sign of blessing...)

2) Get together with your mates and spend the days driving round in a pick up truck, with a big tank of water and water pistols and soak unsuspecting people on the roads, pedestrians, people on motorbikes etc.

3) Pretend the festival is not happening and try to get on with normal life without getting wet.

Last year I went out and played - and it was fun! This year however, I thought I would go for the the third option and try to avoid getting wet....it didn't work. This is what happened when Heather and I 'popped out' to find some food at lunchtime:

Reason to rejoice with ALL your heart!

  'Sing, O Daughter of Zion;

       shout aloud, O Israel!

       Be glad and rejoice with all your heart,

       O Daughter of Jerusalem!

  The LORD has taken away your punishment,

       he has turned back your enemy.

       The LORD, the King of Israel, is with you;

       never again will you fear any harm.'

Zephaniah 3:14-15

I read Zephaniah recently and was just blown away by the grace and mercy that spill out of its pages. It is a story of Judah's rebellion and deserved judgment. Of Jerusalem's mess and corruption and God's just anger against them. And yet it doesn't end like that. Because much more importantly, it is about God. It is about a merciful God who does not treat us as our sins deserve. It is about a God who delights to save and who is mighty to save. And so even though things looked bleak for God's people at the beginning of Zephaniah, we see that God Himself provided the way for them to be saved: 'The Lord has taken away your punishment' (3:15)

The best thing about this book, is the way that it points forward to Jesus. In fact Jesus shines out of every chapter and floods the whole book with glorious hope and joy. There WILL be a day of judgment - and it is what we deserve, Zephaniah makes this plain, but on that day, if we are in Jesus, who is our righteousness,we will be sheltered from the LORD's just anger (2:3). Let us now make sure we are seeking Jesus and His righteousness, for this is all this is all that will matter on that day.

'The LORD has taken away your punishment' (3:15) - shadows that were received joyfully by God's people in the Old Testament give way to the reality as Jesus gloriously secured this for eternity. When Jesus took the judgment we deserve for our sin on Himself on the cross, sinless as He was,  the LORD took away our punishment. If we trust in Jesus, if we are in Him, sheltering in Him, then our punishment has been taken away. And so the promise applies to us:

"The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing" (3:17)

And so, because we have such security in our forgiveness and acceptance from God, security that rests not on us or anything we have done or even how secure we feel, but in all that Jesus has done on our behalf - we have great reason to rejoice! And we can rejoice with ALL our heart (3:14) because our greatest problem is dealt with for all time, because this can never be taken away from us. Whatever else is happening in our lives, we can rejoice with ALL our hearts because our punishment has been taken away and God delights in us. And this is something that will never change.

 ' Be glad and rejoice with all your heart,

       O Daughter of Jerusalem!

  The LORD has taken away your punishment' (3:14-15)

"I have a shelter in the storm

When all my sins accuse me

Though justice charges me with guilt

Your grace will not refuse me

O Jesus, I will hide in You

Who bore my condemnation

I find my refuge in Your wounds

For there I find salvation"
('I Have a Shelter' - Sovereign Grace Music)

“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”-

2 Corinthians 5:21

The year of.....

So things have been a bit quiet from my end recently...but that doesn't mean my thoughts have been quiet! Just that somewhere between my mind and my fingertips those thoughts have got lost or muddled. I am starting this post not entirely sure what I will write. And as I am starting to write a whole load of things are coming to my mind, so this could be the opening of the blogging flood-gates - the start of a blogging frenzy?

But anyway, as tomorrow is the beginning of the Chinese new year, and i have some thoughts I have been meaning to post something since our new year, i thought this might be the most appropriate opportunity to write about 'year naming'. This is an idea that came from Ann Voskamp, who likes to name her year before it begins. To set the scene, here is part of a conversation I had on skype with my friend Sophie a while back:

[11/01/2010 19:10:08] Alison Young: so, you know Ann has made this her year of YES! Have you named your year?
[11/01/2010 19:10:55] Sophie: ironically no!
[11/01/2010 19:11:00] Sophie: I like the idea tho.
[11/01/2010 19:11:20] Alison Young: me too....but i sort of think its easier to name something after its happened..
[11/01/2010 19:11:44] Sophie: yes i know what you mean. i don't feel very prophetic!
[11/01/2010 19:12:34] Sophie: i suppose it's just the same idea as a resolution because it means you set out to have a certain approach to stuff and that's good - well, depending on the name!
[11/01/2010 19:13:06] Alison Young: yeah....you'd have to be more of a positive thinker than me i think.
[11/01/2010 19:12:52] Sophie: what would you name your last year?

So I decided that 2009 could be called the year of hope. There were lots of reasons for this, but top on the list was the fact that 2009 saw me becoming more and more convinced of the wonderful and certain hope of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Hope that has nothing to do with how I feel or how circumstances look. Hope that says that I am in Jesus Christ and brought into the glorious community of the Happy Trinity. Hope that tells me that all my righteousness and salvation is in Jesus, and so couldn't be more secure! 2009 - the Year of HOPE!

And that led me to thinking about this verse from Romans 12, verse 12:

'Be joyful in hope...'

So if 2009 was the year of hope, then 2010 can be the year of joy. Not because I 'have a feeling I will be in a good mood for 365 days', but because if I have hope then joy is possible in all circumstances. If I feel I have nothing else to be joyful in, I still have hope. And it is not a momentary hope, that changes with my feelings, but a sure and certain hope, that depends only on Jesus and not at all on me.

2010 - the Year of JOY

"By faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope" Galatians 5:5

The Valley of Vision

Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly, Thou hast brought me to the valley of vision, where I live in the depths but see Thee in the heights; hemmed in by mountains of sin I behold Thy glory.

Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up, that to be low is to be high, that the broken heart is the healed heart, that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit, that the repenting soul is the victorious soul, that to have nothing is to possess all, that to bear the cross is to wear the crown, that to give is to receive, that the valley is the place of vision. 

Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells, and the deeper the wells the brighter Thy stars shine; let me find Thy light in my darkness, Thy life in my death, Thy joy in my sorrow, Thy grace in my sin, Thy riches in my poverty, Thy glory in my valley.

- Valley of Vision, Puritan Prayers

Waiting for that day...

"There is no escape from an aching soul, only denial of it. The promise of one day being with Jesus in a perfect world is the Christian's only hope for complete relief. Until then we either groan, or pretend we don't"
Larry Crabb, Inside Out.

In some ways I would love for this to not be true. I would love to be able to say that perfect joy is available now, that aches can be removed, that frustrations can be alleviated fully; that we can trust perfectly, love completely and await our Saviour with dry eyes. I wish we could promise a pain-free existence in this life with perfect relationships and no disappointments. But the truth is, some things are reserved for a day that hasn't arrived yet.

There are lots of things that are meant for today - forgiveness, justification and union with the Lord Jesus to name but a few. But we live in a twilight zone where God's promises are real but not all of them consummated, and some only partly realised but not fully. And so that's why we groan, aching for the day when promises become reality. The day when groaning gives way to shouts of joy.

Until that day we ache and hurt, and it is messy. But He who is eternally faithful has promised the better day, the day when tears will be wiped away, the day when our thirst will be truly quenched, the day when joy will be the very air that we breathe. So we can wait in confidence and hope, and we are free to acknowledge that an aching soul is the norm; it is part of this present age. The ache is there because we were made for more - and the 'more' is coming! So there is much joy, be it through tears.

²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? ²⁵But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

 ²⁶In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. ²⁷And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.

Romans 8:22-27

Christmas Hymn

Thou who wast rich beyond all splendour,
All for love's sake becamest poor;
Thrones for a manger didst surrender,
Sapphire-paved courts for stable floor.
Thou who wast rich beyond all splendour,
All for love's sake becomes poor.

Thou who art God beyond all praising,
All for love's sake becamest man;
Stooping so low, but sinners raising
Heavenwards by thine eternal plan.
Thou who art God beyond all praising,
All for love's sake becamest man.

Thou who art love beyond all telling,

Saviour and King, we worship thee.
Emmanuel, within us dwelling,
Make us what thou wouldst have us be.
Thou who art love beyond all telling,
Saviour and King, we worship thee.

- Frank Houghton (1894-1972)