Reflecting...

One of the things that gets drummed into you as a teacher is the necessity to be always "reflecting"... It's a pretty good tool for life to be honest... To stop and think about what you're doing, how its going, what you could do differently...

Recently I've been reflecting on my blog.

There have been a few triggers. A challenging sermon. A friend's questions. My own conscience. It's good practice, after all, to stop once in a while and ask yourself those big questions...

Why do I blog?

What's the purpose of my blog?

What do I hope other people will get from it?

Big questions. Loaded questions. Challenging questions.

Every single one of those questions has a genuine answer - a noble motive. But they are also all tinged with pride and my instinctive desire to be admired and recognised. Its what comes naturally, but that doesn't make it right. I do battle with those motives every single day. Recently, I've not been looking at my "stats". Knowing the numbers reading my blog can puff you up with pride, and bring you crashing down when one day you get less. I find it easier just not even to look these days.

So why do I write this blog?

I don't even know where to begin, but if I had to boil it down to one thing, it would be this...

This is a place where I want people to see how life and faith collide. Yes, collide is the right word. Because living life with Jesus is revolutionary, life-changing and soul-searching. Because life is messy and complicated and beautiful all at once. And when you throw those things into one mixing bowl of a life, it can sometimes cause an almighty collision.

But it's a beautiful, messy, Christ-exalting one.

This blog is meant to be real. Perhaps sometimes I haven't always been the best at showing the real, and I'm sorry about that. Sometimes the temptation to paint the "perfect life" is just dangling there in front of your screen-staring, square eyes, and sometimes I have been guilty of doing something because it would make a "great blog post" and that's the bit of my blogging self I don't like. Because that's not real.

So thats where I'm at. Imperfect. But trying, in my imperfect, messed up, mistake ridden way to somehow show that being a Christian is not just a Sunday thing, but an all-day, everyday, in-everything relationship with my heavenly Father, that makes everything make sense: the good, the bad and the ugly. I make mistakes, I get proud, I do things out of false motives... But I have a Saviour who wipes my slate clean, not because of anything I've done, but because of his incredible and undeserved love for me. That blows my mind. 

And it grabs every ounce of my life.