Old Testament time

For some reason, on the way back from London I started reading the book of 2 Chronicles.

It was fascinating. I must have been in the mood for taking in all of the different names and information therein, as I continued reading it yesterday and this morning finished it, read all of 1 and 2 Kings and drew lots of pretty charts listing who was king of Judah and Israel at each moment and which prophets (major and minor) go where...

And when you start looking into it, a lot of things click into place. It's clear that God was quite obvious when he gave out laws and rules and yet the Israelites seem to fail on the first one before even looking at the rest of the commandments. The Kings went from a good one who set up the temple, sought God's face and followed his laws through a variety of less good kings who allowed, encouraged or tolerated idolatry and then along comes another good king who sets things right, and then he's followed by an even more evil one who destroys all of that and sets up idols again. Is it any wonder that God might get a bit tired of all of this, after he sets up a clear covenant and mandate and then people just do their own thing?!?

And then suddenly all the doom and gloom, and yet also the hope, in the minor prophets makes more sense. There are some great stories in these books, I suppose with hindsight we can see how stupid some individuals were and also how clever God is in dealing with them. And yet throughout it, God maintains His promise to have an heir to David on the throne and so he allows crazy and evil kings to continue so that they produce an heir until eventually we get the exile, which I guess had to happen sooner or later given the circumstances.

Fascinating stuff, why has no-one made a movie, or epic tv series of all of this?

Anyway, I wonder if we're not so much different today. God sets out clearly what we are supposed to do. Loving the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength; loving our neighbours as ourselves. Fixing our eyes on Jesus and living for him. Being transformed by the renewing of our minds; Healing the sick, raising the dead etc etc. And yet so often we get distracted or we rebel, like those early Old Testament Kings, into following 'other gods', and then we wonder why we end up in a pickle.

Thank goodness for grace. That God is patient and tries to correct us when we fall down or run away. But the challenge remains in our lives to 'destroy the high places' and commit ourselves to follow wholeheartedly the way of the Lord. To have a heart like Josiah (who gets very little press really, despite being quite cool!)

2 Chron 34v2-3

'He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD and walked in the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left. In the eighth year of his reign, WHILE HE WAS STILL YOUNG, he began to seek the God of his father David... '

And all of that was fulfilling a prophecy spoken about him about 300 years previously, when the Israelites were rebelling and breaking away from Judah. 1 Kings 13v2

God's always got a plan. There's no fooling Him. And that's the best bit about being in the Kingdom of God. (well maybe not THE best bit, but it's pretty good all the same.)

work update

On the days when I am not being a supermodel (see previous post), I've been busy looking for more jobs...

I'm now officially registered unemployed. Its so odd to go to the jobcentre and pass the bouncers to sign on, but the characters one comes across in the jobcentre could provide inspiration for a number of best-selling novels...

Since signing on, I've been head-hunted by 2 supply agencies and also have a job interview on Wed for a completely different job, working with people affected by HIV. It could be very interesting, despite the commute to work, it's a fair way away. Anyway, we'll see what happens.

It's funny though because people say you should take time to adjust to being back in the country after working and living abroad. The official stance is that it takes half as long to recover as the time you spent abroad, which means normal service will resume for me in October... I didn't really relax when I came home from Africa and my recent stay in hospital and sick leave gave me the opportunity to chillax and that's what I've done. All worries about needing to rush into a job have vanished. I know that God will provide and I don't need to get anxious or guilty about enjoying some free time. For goodness sake, I worked loads of 'overtime' in S.Africa and need to recover from that... I'm doing ok at adjusting though, sometimes there are good and bad days.

The strangest thing is that I seem to have lots of friends around here, but my social life has become family-orientated... This needs some attention I think. It's always hard to return to your old town, people move on. It's even harder when you have a long-distance relationship going on at the same time, thankfully it will become a closer-distance relationship very soon when J moves to Leam in September, then we have to negotiate the new game of couple-dom....

On being a model....

When you have hours to spare each day you sometimes enter competitions. In this case I won a make-over and photoshoot day in London and went this Saturday with my good friend Natalie because it was her Birthday last week.

So I set off down to London on Saturday morning, braving a migraine and the Chiltern Line crowdedness of their Saturday run to London (why don't they ever put extra carriages on - there are always people standing!!?!?) We had a brief stop in Banbury whilst the paramedics pulled an unconscious man off the train (possibly collapsed from sheer numbers of people???). The guy sitting next to me on the train was extremely anxious because he'd already had to switch to this train cos Euston line not running and was due to be at an important meeting at 11 when we were due to arrive in London at 11.06. He was frantically phoning various people to work out the best way to get there, before settling into listening to his i-pod at an extremely high volume. Now, I have a reasonable volume of hair covering my ears and I also think I might be a little deaf (cos I always have to turn the TV up) but I could still hear every word of his selection of indie tunes as he tried to forget his impending disaster of a meeting... I must be getting old not to appreciate that...

In any case, because I'd loaded up on codeine I managed to sleep the rest of the way to London and on arrival the adrenalin set in because of the sheer number of people at Marylebone. I just had to grit my teeth and push through, no time for a bad head...

Thanks to my humble Oyster card I didn't have to queue for several hours to get a tube ticket. The nice people of London Transport had decided to close both the Jubilee AND Victoria lines for all of this sunny summer weekend in London, causing widespread confusion amongst the tourists who had carefully planned their journeys around town. But I made it to meet Nats ok at Oxford St and then we soon left the main crazy streets for the more tranquil side streets. This is what I like about London, the bits behind the scenes.

Anyway, we arrived at 'Covergirl - London's premier photographic studios' (apparently) in good time and then our pampering session could begin. We had hair and make up done before a session in various outfits and poses in the studio. It did seem that every photographer was Eastern European, but they were all very friendly nonetheless. Apparently I am very photogenic and take great photos first time... (I knew I should have picked super-modelling as a career!!!) Afterwards we got to edit out the photos we didn't like. There was opportunity for air-brushing but none of that for us... oh no, we are naturals!

In any case, despite the ridiculous cost of buying photos, we managed to get 3 out of them. Result. To give you an idea, a set of 10 photos comes out at £600! However, I have to say that the guy was really nice and when I spun him my jobseekers allowance story, he didn't put any pressure on at all to buy any. So I did well to get some photos for free!

Later on, the big curls in my hair fell out leaving me with oddly straight hair, the make up took a lot of cleanser to remove and we were both totally exhausted from all that sitting around all day between shots. It must be hectic to be a real model, and you never realise how tiring it can be just to be so gorgeous!

On being creative

Finally, after a few days of unemployment and a brief moment of inspiration, I've managed to complete draft 1 of my novel.

This is the novel that was conceived back in the year 2000 when I was stuck for cash in Italy. Better late than never I suppose. I wrote chapter one back then as an introduction and practice to see if I could do it and it was fairly well received by those who I allowed to read it. So we'll see.

I'm just printing it out, then the process of editing and re-working a lot of it begins. So the first draft will probably be far from the final product (if indeed, anyone wants to print it!)

This creative splurge comes after preparing a very visual and exciting sermon for this evening on Psalm 145. The talky bit will be available on the internet from tomorrow I think, but the visuals are not - unless I upload them onto here... we'll see.

There are at least 2 other writing projects in progress at the moment and so I reckon I might as well get on with that. I've registered with Jobseekers, but have to wait a week before interview. In the meantime the internet is not leading me towards any particular jobs and it's raining so wandering round town window shopping has to be put on hold for a few days...

Back to my laptop...