A 'marking stone'

When life goes at a pace, your children are sprouting up before your eyes, and you barely have time to sit down, it's easy to lose sight of even the spectacular things that God does, let alone the day-to-day mercies.

With that in mind, it's helpful to mark down the things which God has done, to encourage you when things get harder, and the fog of doubt clouds about you. So, I'm registering on my blog, something which happened in the past couple of weeks that highlights the care and real concern of our Living God.

As most readers of this blog are aware, I do not enjoy the best of health. At least one of my children is a traveller with me on that particular journey, so I don't get to church as often as I desperately want to. I do pray about better health, but so far it seems it's just something I'm having to go on with - with little travelling mercies on the way, like effective medication and so on.

That given, I did experience a stunning answer to prayer in the last week, which is well worth setting up as a marking stone. I was filling a hot water bottle for my youngest daughter, Aurelia. She's a little slip of a girl, and has enjoyed having a cuddly hot cow at night recently.

Trouble is, the rubber water bottle isn't holding up to the ravages of time and kettle, and it sometimes 'burps' at inopportune moments. Like, when I'm filling it from the kettle, with Aurelia standing beside me. It overflowed like a volcano, onto my left hand, and while the initial instinct is to remove the hand from the source of pain - I couldn't. Little Beenie was standing there, and I couldn't risk splashing her with scalding water, so I had to let it pour over my hand until I could safely put it down.

I told her not to touch it, and called for Ant while I ran my hand under the cold tap. He came in, moved the kettle, and organized the girls to pray. My hand was a livid, painful red and swelling up so much I removed my wedding ring. I wrapped it in a damp teatowel, and one-handedly asked some online friends for prayer too.

About half and hour later, Ant asked how it was feeling. It didn't feel of anything much, which I presumed was numbness from the cool teatowel. I peeled it off to have a look.

I looked. At my completely healthy hand. Not a mark on it - no redness, no swelling, no blistering, no pain. It looked no different to my right hand (well, you know, apart from having the thumb on the other side and all that...)

I'm no doctor, and I know the course of treatment I took was the correct way to deal with a scald or burn. But I'm fairly confident that even doing the right medical thing won't restore a significantly scalded hand completely within half an hour.

You know, I'd give Him thanks if it had taken a few days to feel a bit better - simply because He gave me the presence of mind to protect Aurelia. I shall give Him thanks in a few days when hopefully the current round of heavy, chesty colds has left this house for a bit. I give Him thanks in the ongoing day-to-day, in which He helps me function.

So it would be greatly remiss of me not to give Him thanks when He heals me, in answer to the prayers of His people, in a quite remarkable way.

Another reason I'm glad I home educate..

Right here.

And the stuff about the private asking-for-prayer e-mail leading to disciplinary action? Wow. Just proper wow. If I made it up, I'd be accused of scaremongering. Because it's ok, isn't it? Church attendance in comfy, cosy places is rising, and so everything in the Christian UK house is just fine. Isn't it?

You can have an update, now the school have responded. Mentioning hell is 'religiously intolerant', of course. Give us the fluffy, cuddly version of religion, please, and keep your sharp edges carefully sheathed.

Jesus is my stylist.

Yuck.

I just can't quite articulate how utterly depressed such superficial Christianity makes me feel. And how I feel is the most important, thing, isn't it? God is there to help me solve my problems and issues, and I don't actually have to change a thing - I can still be as worldly as I like. Hey, I can even go to a church that fits me perfectly. I'm being a much nicer person too, and I can even pray about which flash party dress to buy.

What's that song? "It's all about me, Jesus..." Yeah, I know, I'm being terribly judgey and that's what those straight-laced Christians do. Shouldn't I be glad that people are going to church and feeling comforted by it in uncertain times? Well, no, not really. Church as community is lovely, up to a very clearly defined line.

If uncertain times are driving people into church because of the 'friendships' or the chance to make themselves feel fulfilled by giving money away instead of spending it on ridiculously over-pried shoes, then I'm going to have to direct them to the Jesus in Luke 18, who emphasizes to the self-satisfied rich young ruler that following Him is all about Him.

Jesus is not your stylist. Jesus is Lord, and everyone has to acknowledge that one day.

on Christian writing and ideas.

I appear to be ridiculously busy. Four children walking, talking and needing different sorts of attention will do that for you. I haven't started driving lessons yet, we're waiting for the cash to become available, which should be the end of the month - but I am reading a book on it! The theory test is probably the bit I'm looking forward to least. Well, I say that, but actually it's the whole 'going-on-the-motorway-and-being-stared-down-by-big-lorries' thing that probably beats the theory in terms of worry.

The two eldest are eagerly ploughing through workbooks, and memorizing the books of the New Testament. My son is enjoying his birthday train set (he's two years old, can you believe it? Me neither) and I have finally perfected the art of pastry. That's topical, actually, because the key to good pastry, in my opinion, is COLD. It's very cold here, we have a snow man lounging about, lopsided, in the garden.

I don't quite know why everyone in this country gets in a tizzy-fit when a bit of rain freezes as it falls, and why two measly inches of it would create bedlam, but that's the English for you. Nothing is as nice as being able to complain about something related to the weather. Even if it's the buses.

I am busy writing, on my fancy-pants laptop. One story is an ongoing project, a childrens book about the shepherds in a Nativity set coming to life. I've done quite a bit of it this week, the snow has helped me conjure up the 'Christmas' atmosphere in my head.

The other main project is an experiment. Ant and I saw a Christian film the other day, and while we could see clearly what it was trying to do, it fell into a trap that a lot of Christian entertainment does. It wanted to preach. The characters were stuffed full of wordy speeches, and every single one of them, had they been a real person, would have been the person you avoid because they are so incredibly dull.

Don't get me wrong, I love preachers. But they aren't, despite the theories of the pomo crowd, storytellers. Preaching is a specific, God-ordained task, and I value it enormously. But some Christian artists, be they making movies, or writing books, can't help thinking that because they're Christians, they need to pretend to be preachers too. But one of the better cliches about writing is that it's always better to show, rather than to tell.

With that in mind, there's a new programme started on the BBC this past fortnight, and it's very good, if you like fantasy/sci-fi. There are a few moments my delicate conscience tells me make this innappropriate to properly get into, but the premise is fascinating. It's called Being Human, and it follows the lives of three people sharing a house - who happen to be a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost. What makes it interesting from a Christian point of view is that they're aren't happy with their situations. The vampire is desperate to stop biting people, the werewolf is terrified of his wolf nature, and the ghost isn't really facing up to what brought her there.

The vampire and the wolf especially are being hounded by people who want them to fully embrace their 'identity', but they want to fight it. I think there's a lot there that explores the reality of sin in human nature, and, barring certain 'adult' elements, I genuinely think it's a story that has a lot of Christian ideas in it.

Dan Phillips has blogged before about whether it's possible to 'redeem' horror as a genre. I know that part of me recoils from the ideas involved, and that is probably the part I should listen to. But I do have an idea for a story that tries to communicate certain Christian realities through story-telling, in the same sort of way that CS Lewis tried to communicate certain Christian ideas in The Chronicles of Narnia.

The starting point is the idea of a main character who wakes up one morning and realizes she is dead. And nobody seems to notice. Not quite sure where to take it, and I'm wondering if I should just drop it entirely. But it is an interesting question. What should a Christian fiction writer write about?