Holy Sonnets 4

HOLY SONNETS.

IV.

O, my black soul, now thou art summoned
By sickness, Death's herald and champion ;
Thou'rt like a pilgrim, which abroad hath done
Treason, and durst not turn to whence he's fled ;
Or like a thief, which till death's doom be read,
Wisheth himself deliver'd from prison,
But damn'd and haled to execution,
Wisheth that still he might be imprisoned.
Yet grace, if thou repent, thou canst not lack ;
But who shall give thee that grace to begin ?
O, make thyself with holy mourning black,
And red with blushing, as thou art with sin ;
Or wash thee in Christ's blood, which hath this might,
That being red, it dyes red souls to white.

It is ok to steal, you just have to wait for a while.

Peter Adam, principal of Ridley College, delivered what appears to be a rather provocative lecture at Morling College last night.

You can read a report here at the herald.

The basic premise seems to be, if you steal something, as christians you should repent and make recompense.

I wonder if standing committee will pay someone to look into redistributing Anglican property to indigenous Australians; for the sake of the mission of course. Wow, imagine what a witness that would be.

Belief You Can Change In

I'm all for change you can believe in.
I love to think of the future and how it might be made better.
Better for the poor, better for the environment, better for the church, better for me.
And then I realize how complicit I am in all these problems and the audacity of my hope is dashed.
I'm a terribly impulsive consumer, I don't know how to organise my life to be more envirnmentally friendly, and if I did know, I probably wouldn't want to do it. A quick glance around the church and its history doesn't fill me with confidence either.
More than that, I'm only really happy to admit this failure in a blog, where it won't have much effect on what I do tomorrow.
My worries are amplified 6 billion times over when I think most people are probably the same as me.

Back in September Byron reflected on the freedom of repentance, using an Oliver O'Donovan quote

"... the freedom at the root of all freedoms [is] the freedom to repent" The Desire of the Nations.
If we are totally conditioned and determined by our past (and present) failures, then, we are stuffed.
If we can only be who we were yesterday and today, then there is no hope for tomorrow.
To be free is to be able to turn from behaviour that diminishes us, to behaviour that is life.

It is faith in Jesus Christ that gives us this freedom, to look squarely at our character, to own it with all its warts, and then act out of character.

"There is no need for us to save the faces of our past selves, for they are saved through what God is doing for our present selves." O'Donovan again, Resurrection and Moral Order, p256

So, as much as we need Change you can believe in,
far more we need Belief you can change in.


(If anyone who knows how to manipulate images wants to make me a nice red and blue "Belief You Can Change In" poster with a picture of Jesus, feel free")