Wednesday, December 24, 2003

W.R.T the last post I made...
That's early morning thoughts for you.. I wasn't particularly sleeping well but heh.

That was a pretty stupid thing to start thinking.

Off Back t' Stoke

That's right- I'm off back home for a week. Maybe longer. ultimately it all depends on when I come back, which is as yet undecided.

So don't be too disturbed by a lack of my presence on OB, AIM or this home page.

I remain hopeful for you all, particularly those who need hope.
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Tuesday, December 23, 2003

I made a decision long ago...
I kind of.. decided to take a certain action plan, about six-- maybe seven months ago. It was just between me and God. I had three choices (at least that was the way I saw it at the time), and I chose a particular one.

Now I consider all three not to be for me.. but lately I've been wondering.. am I being held to the choice I made..?.

If so this may entail some waiting..

Gaargh..

if you even knew what I mean here, you'd understand why I can't believe I'm even suggesting this..

but at the same time.. heh.

Best leave it at that.. "heh"
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Life is like a hole
Mitch's hole

My interpretation (on AIM to Mitch)

Dan C Lucking (12:02:58 AM): For a start, the hole is life- when you really get a clue about what's going on you realise that you're surrounded by death all the way through. The fallen angel, to me, is Satan- pretty obvious there.. but the reason he's in the hole with you is that he thrives on the destruction -and often is the cause of it- in life. His gun to your head is there for fear- if you know he's there, he wants you to fear him above all (will continue in a sec)
Dan C Lucking (12:04:45 AM): he says "Life" because that's what he encourages- to live. Despite the fact that it gets you nowhere and that in the end you die- he encourages you to live as though you are alive and always will be. He is the source of life in yourself, the experiential and the concept of getting all you can out of life. (tbc)
Dan C Lucking (12:08:43 AM): The light at the top of the hole- some form of hope but seemingly unreachable. The cross (which I take to be horizontal in the wall of the hole) is between the light and the bottom of the hole- a kind of intermediary or a bridge between the light and those living in the hole- a way of reaching it, I suppose. And the blood dripping down is to do with the covenant blood that was shed on the cross- ie a covenant ritual (these used to be ceremonies between humans in way ancient times) between God and man to become one via the shedding of the blood of his son on the cross (again tbc)
Dan C Lucking (12:11:42 AM): The angel is worried by the blood not out of compassion but fear- that you might understand what the blood is about. It is ultimately to do with the power which you can have over him- and the last thing he wants is for you to know that- to the point which he fears it, but he will try to put on a strong face, to try not to let you suspect that he actually fears you. He forces you through the small passage into the other hole in order to lead you away from the blood and the hole. Also to give hope that you're actually going somewhere even if things don't really change- to keep you complacent (tbc)
Dan C Lucking (12:15:32 AM): the large hand is the hand of God pulling you out of the hole- out of the control of the angel. It exposes the lack of control the angel actually has by shielding you from it's attacks and taking you out of the reality that the angel has crafted for you. You might even argue that the hole is less to do with life, but perspective, or your mind. You get drawn out of the mindset of death put in you by the angel- that which he is so adamant to keep you in. The angel fears the hand because the hand has no misconceptions about the power it has over the angel. Not only is it strong, but it knows it. (tbc)
Dan C Lucking (12:18:38 AM): It has no reasons or intentions to harm but only to comfort, despite it's beauty and grace it has no problems in going into the rankness of the hole in order to lift out one seemingly insignificant being. When you are taken up by the hand, the angel can not take you from it- you are held firmly within it. Completely protected, as if from the Devil by God.
Dan C Lucking (12:19:32 AM): and when you finally get out of the hole all you feel is the warm that comes from the being that controlled the hand- god. You are aware of the presence of the angel, ie the devil, but you don't fear it because it's lack of power has been demonstrated to you
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Stuff

What's your Battle-Cry?

this quiz was made by Aroihkin of PlanetKulitron

Yes I stole this. How else do quizzes make their way through the internet..? :p

aaaanyway..

The lie that is "Jesus"

You heard me.

And you'd be surprised how little I've actually changed.

As a matter of fact this is something I've been thinking about a fair bit over the last two weeks, and a little bit before that.

Actually a more accurate title would be "the lie that is 'J'"

I don't know what exactly was going through the minds of the Bible transliterators of old times, but rest assured that the following names are completely wrong:

Jesus, Jehovah, Jacob, Jeremiah (and many more beginning with or including "J".

They're all wrong. There isn't even a letter J in either hebrew or Greek- and these are the two languages in which the original scriptures were written.

Jehovah is in fact "Yehowah"
Jacob is Ya'aqov, believe it or not
Jeremiah - Yiremeyah
Jesus (Greek) - Yay-soos - actually Greek has no "y", so it is spelt "Iesous" (ee-ay-soos)
Jesus (Hebrew) - Yesha'eyah - also Yeshua, another form of Yoshua, the hebrew of Joshua

I guess my actual point here is that it's all good and well to use the names that are currently in the Bible- for the simple reason that they are the modern day equivalents, and thus they make more sense to us.

But don't fall into the illusion that they are the actual names that were used at the time, because that's completely untrue.

The Random Things of Life

Recieved a text message on my phone at 1:30 in the morning. Well, I would have don, but my phone wasn't actually on. I actually recieved it at about 11:00 when I turned my phone on.

It was from Becky- one of the old staff from Sports soccer (This place where I worked, stole, got sacked, and then became a Christian. I'll put the full story on my website when it's done).

"Hey up Dan it's Becky only jus got hold of your no from danny chalinor hope u r keepin well! Long time no see!"

I'd thought briefly about Becky a few times since moving up to Sheffield.

I mean, we got on really well at Sports Soccer. She was the only one who rang me up soon after what happened there, and that meant a lot to me too.

But things being as life is, within a few months we pretty much stopped being in contact.

It can be a great burden at times, being of the Christian faith. Particularly when there are friends you had but you have no contact with, or means of contacting them, any more.

It scares me at times to realise the array of friends I've had over the years.. and you know what I have left..?

I have my friends back at my church in Stoke, and I have my new friends in Sheffield. That's it. Everyone else I know I either know over the internet or I don't really consider to be a friend as such.

It just bugs me in a way that I've lost so many friends over the years. Not through falling out, but through lack of contact.

Take Adam Warrilow. This guy I knew when I was in primary school- and in the last few years we were inseperable.

Then came high school- we still saw each other quite regularly, but we weren't quite inseperable, particularly cos we were at different high schools.

Then came college- I saw him about once through my two years at college- and that was pure chance- we just both happened to be in the same bar and both knew one particular person.

I never saw him during my time at uni at all.

It's a similar story with practically every friend I've had, close or not so close. I have no problem being close to people and making great friends. Even now, after having lost so many, I have no difficulty making new ones.. it just kind of feels bad thinking of how many I've lost.

What was I getting at before this random rant..? Oh yeah.. Becky sent me a message. Hopefully I might see her at some point in the next week while I'm back at Stoke.

Which reminds me. Tomorrow night I'm going back to Stoke for a week, so there'll be no posts here and no Dan on AIM.

Keep yourselves busy, won't you? :p
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Monday, December 22, 2003

....
The best way I can describe it is "What the **** was that??!?!"

Something just felt incredibly evil.. dark, hopeless, as though something was just torn away from the light. Everything just seemed.. I dunno. For a moment all truth just seemed wrong. Everything I knew seemed to be in question. And I don't mean in a good way- this was just damn evil.

imagine the hope that must come from knowing the one true and living God- the only thing I can adequately describe that feeling as is the hopelessness that comes from losing that knowledge.

It was just.. for one moment in my mind the thought that God was somehow formed by men just.. made sense. It's as though for that second or so my faith was hanging on a needle point.

I can't even describe the vastness of the hopelessness I felt just now- it's not something words can really convey. I chose to pray to God and break the darkness, and now it's gone..

..am I glad that's over. My only fear at the moment is the thought that it was someone else's experience I was feeling- that someone just got a lot further from the faith.

I mean, it won't be the first time I've experienced what someone else is feeling... but man, that hasn't happened in a long time.. I'd only believed for about a month at the time, about a year and a half ago.

I seriously hope I'm just crazy, or under some personal spiritual attack.
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Hebrew's coming along nicely
I'm beginning to get the hang of the alphabet to the point that I need to lok at my sheet far less each time.

I don't know what a lot of the words mean yet- but I'm getting a general feel for the language as I read familiar verses in their hebrew form (which can sometimes be a bit of an effort because the chapters aren't in numbers but hebrew letters- and the books all have hebrew names. The only thing that any random english speaker would understand in this book is the verse numbers, at the side of the text.

I've pretty much sussed what a full stop/period/end of sentence mark is, by process of elimination.

We'eleh Shemot (Exodus), Gimel (chapt. 3) 14

Wayi'mel Elohiym el-Moseh ehiyeh asher ehiyeh

God said to Moses "I am who I am".

I'm picking the alphabet up quite well now, and I'm learning a few phrases as I go, but it'll be a while before I consider myself anywhere near able to read hebrew and understand it.
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Sunday, December 21, 2003

Dammit
I can't sleep. At all. May as well enter something in here instead.

The book of Bere'shiyt

Bere'shiyt bara' 'elhiym 'et hashamayim we'et ha'arets

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth"

The hebrew "Bere'shiyt" means "in the beginning". Not only is this the start of the book, but also it's name. The reason for this being that all five of the books of moses, in the original hebrew, are simply named by the first word in the book. In the case of genesis, this is "bere'shiyt", pronounced "be-ray sheeyt".

Not a particularly important point, but I don't know any hebrew to actually make any important points. I can read hebrew words, ie I can read the hebrew alphabet (with some occasional help from my sheet o' letters), but I can't tell you what any of them mean. I only know what these ones say because I know them in English :p.

Anyway..

More Random Life

Life as usual is pretty Random. Today I pretty much figured out what it is that I've been feeling a lack of.

For some time now something's just been missing. Something I know I used to have. I've been trying to find it by growing in new areas, but today it just came. I lost the love I once had. I need it back.

These days I'm just some moaning Christian that I'm sure most people find endlessly irritating. That's not what I want to be- it's just a matter of.... well.. loving rather than trying to reach goals or fulfill laws. That's all stupid.

I refer you to my earlier post.
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Rantings of an Ex-300ft potato
So much to say, but where to start..?

Over the last year and a bit I've gone through stages. Stage 1, I started stealing from work. This was something of the world's last attempt to contain me. When God began to reach out to me the world close in and encapsulated me within it's ugly self. There it wanted to keep me as a slave in the chains of separation. As God drew closer these chains tightened- my urge to steal, which appeared to come from no-where, only got stronger. Then came the breaking point. I was sacked from work. Not only was I integrated into this world but I was a victim of it- and it would do with what it wanted.

But the world, as foolish as it was, could not contain me when God was on my case. Whether the ordeal was planned or not, God broke me free of it.

And since then I've been on pretty much a non stop journey of seeming randomness. I've grown from someone with a simple faith to one he understands.. but what have I become?.. I am Dan. But what was I before?.. I was Dan. Nothing has really changed. I still have the same strengths, but I apply them better. I still have the same weaknesses, but I control them better. I am no more perfect than I used to be, I am only better at controlling my imperfect areas. In fact I may even be considered less perfect due to the notion that I have somehow become more in some way, whereas before I was certain of my lack of perfection.

Here's a notion for you: God loves me. He loves me no more now than he did when I was first saved, and he loves me no less. He loves me no more than when I was stealing from work- despite the array of commandments I was breaking on a daily basis.


He loves me no more than you- and he loves Saddam Hussein no less than me. He probably doesn't particularly enjoy knowing what Saddam has done, but like I said we don't really get very far just by what we've done.

In fact we get no-where by what we do. Saddam killed millions, maybe not by his own hands, but it happened. I once stole a little one pence bubblegum from the corner shop where I used to live. the rediculous thing is that neither one of those two things was really any less sin. Neither was any less of a stray from perfection. You could argue that the magnitude was rediculously different- and then you can tell me later that all things are relative and nothing is really any less right or wrong from an objective viewpoint.

So what exactly is true? what exactly does an objective viewpoint consist of? Subjectively I am better than Saddam- I know this because I stick to more of what I know is good- but then what. Then I die, I rot, I become food for some generation far in the future and no-one knows of either of the two of us, so really I end up with nothing for my effort. From an objective viewpoint, what do you really gain other than what you have in the end? If you end up with nothing, then you can't really have gained anything. I had nothing to start with and I will end with nothing, therefore you could argue that the net result of my life is that nothing happened.

Given that this is the case for everybody, and given that there is a God (hey. My thoughts, my assumptions, buddy :p) how can he love anyone any less when they all come from and go to nothing. No-one really achieves anything, because we are still only as much as what we are when we are at our least, and none of us is any more than any other when we all lose that which makes us live.

Depressing, eh?

Well I'm not depressed.. because this proves a bigger point to me. A bigger point that can only be understood by one small addition to the above logic, the concept of Grace. God's grace, to be specific. The concept of grace has many levels of theologicval difference. If you want to hear more leave a comment, but I'm not expecting that so I'm going to keep it quick and easy to understand. Here goes:

You are nothing
You deserve nothing
But God loves you
and considers you everything

It's a foolish notion on such a shallow level- but go too deep and you lose some of the wonder of it.

You see, we are all nothing. The reason for that is that we are all becoming nothing. Thus objectively we are nothing, because we can not be more than what we will become.

But the thing is, God loves us. He actually wants to see us live our lives, our seemingly worthless lives, to the fullest extent that we can.

What have I gained over the last year..?.. in all reality I have gained nothing. I have sought wisdom, but in doing so I have lost love, and in losing love I lost the means by which wisdom is at it's most effective.

You can be as objective as you want, but you can never explain the impact of love through that means. The silent impact of one who submits to another not to prove a point, but to show his own weakness, out of love.

The hidden love of one who secretly supports another and still asks nothing in return- doesn't make a public show of it so as to appear good. And then still bears the scorn of others without looking to justify himself through earlier actions of love, but knows that the crowd is loved as well.

These are the things that I've lost, and it's about time that they became important to me again.

You see, objectiveness is all well and good, but it gets you no-where. If you think it through to it's conclusion you realise that you were nothing, you are nothing and you are going no-where.

Love may be foolish. Love may not even be that objective. But it does more in the hearts of men than the statement "you are nothing". People are so used to being overlooked as yet another insignificant member of the whole. Another random face in an array. Yet random acts of kindness impact a heart far more than the objective truth ever did.

The thought of nothingness is worth nothing. It may be true, but anything that so boldly states that everything is, was, and will be as nothing surely is worth nothing in itself?.. what does it lead you to?.. what can it possibly inspire you to? It can provoke a multitude of thoughts, but what impacts are had by thoughts alone?

I may be foolish, but I'm not looking to gain anything. I am who I am, and I can never change who I am. I can change what I do, where I go, what I think, where I worship, how I live, but who I am will always be "Daniel Christopher Lucking".

I give up on trying to change people. Everyone who reads this, I don't want to change you. I don't want to make you more holy- I don't want to change your lifestyle. I don't want to get you into following the laws of the Bible.

You are who you are and you are loved for who you are, not what you are.

who you are is an unchanging fact. What you are, ie. what you do, etc., varies through life.

You are the one who is loved, not your lifestyle.

I fast once a week, I read my Bible, I pray practically everyday at random points during work, and yet my lifestyle is not what God loves.. nor is it the reason God loves me. God loves me because of who I am. I am Dan, one of 6 billion of God's children, not one of which is valued more or less than another.

It's all about you, it's not about what you do.

There's only one simple change that I'd love to see in everyone I know. And it's not a lifestyle change, it's a realisation. A realisation that God does love you, and a want to love him in return, a faith in him.

To quote the literal words of Paul in greek, besides that "I consider everything else as shit"
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Friday, December 19, 2003

*yawns*
Man I'm tired...

and it's only.. what.. 8:30 pm?..

I may go to bed soon. It's a bit out of character for me but I think I may need it. Today was good. I was on Goods In.

Usual stuff.. I won't bore you.

This is probably goodnight.
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Thursday, December 18, 2003

Kind of a crap day
Eh. I hated most of today.

I got up at 10:30.

I was supposed to be up at 9 at the latest- not for work, but for a TT social day.

My three housemates stopped to think "oh wait... Dan isn't up and about" but didn't carry that on to "Let's get him up and see if he's actually intending on going today". In all fairness, they did actually think I was at work- I just kind of didn't particularly appreciate their lack of checking.

So what.. I pretty much stayed in the house all day. Browsed the net, read, ate, felt like crap.

I hate doing nothing. Or I hate doing lots of useless things. It's useless.. All I get out of it is feeling utterly crap at the end of the day. Whereas when I'm out with the TT guys (today they were off ice skating), I may not be achieving anything of importance, but I'm interacting.. I'm doing something.. having fun with others. Maybe what hurt most was the knowledge that they were off doing that while I'd missed the meeting time.

Then Jude got back at about 4 pm. He said that they went back to the TT centre and had lunch. The TT Centre was 5 minutes down the road.. and I was awake at lunch time.. Why they didn't bother to phone me to see if I would come down... ...That's just the way I think. When something's going on and someone's not there (who should be) I tend to check on two things- 1- if they know it's going on, 2- if they're OK. The thought that "your absence was noted" as Jude put it, but no-one does anything about it, just seems wrong to me. But at the same time, not everyone thinks in that way.

After lunch a few of them went to see LoTR3. Again, which I had no idea about. And I yet again had no idea why they couldn't have- and didn't- ring me. It's not like I don't have a phone or I rarely have it on me. I rarely turn the damn thing off- even at work it's on silent mode, but it's on.

I had a greek and hebrew lesson tonight at 7. I so did Not want to go. Half way up the first stretch of hill up to Crookes I turned back on the grounds that I felt absolutely crap and hadn't seen much of my housemates all day, thus would rather spend the night in with them.

But Greg wouldn't have it. It's good to live with/next door to someone like him because he's irritatingly right on a lot of things. In this case his argument was pretty much "You said you'd go to this group and you're even meant to be having dinner up there. You can't just randomly not go without reason. GO!"

So I went, and felt a lot better. We actually learned some hebrew in tonight's lesson, which was quite interesting. But it just generally was good to actually do something, despite the fact that I didn't really want to go because I'd had a pretty awfully crap day.

When I got back I was in a much better frame of mind to talk to Nick about my issues with being left in bed when I should be doing something. I explained that understand that others don't always think in that way- Nick has kind of a thing with cleanliness- he can't stand the house being the slightest bit unclean. I have a thing with community. I can't stand it when we don't do things like get each other up when we really need to be up and aren't and that kind of thing- and when we generally do things without thinking how it will affect the others.

And well.. it wasn't easy. I felt petty. I felt stupid for being selfish and expecting people to do the same for me as I would for them, and actually telling them how I felt about it.

But if I didn't say something I would have only ended up getting bitter about it. Eh.. scrap that, I was already bitter.. but I would've ended up more so and wouldn't have ended up released from it.
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