Keeping on track, with my goal in mind, has been quite difficult over the last six months. Too much stuff in my life has always been an issue, or even a personality trait, but I hadn’t realised how overloaded my life was. The fact that I cut out a major time consumer (heading up youth the 11-14s youth work) and still did not have enough time in my life to keep up with college work, goes to show how I had let things get out of hand. A friend (Iain for those that know him) joked recently that I could always cut out the family, or work to free up more time. I think it was only half a joke, and half a wake up call.

Of course the first part of my life that lost out to this overload, was my time with God. So with that in mind I had another spring clean of my life earlier this month. I have stopped pretending I will continue with some projects that had really ground to halt. I have told some sad looking people, that I can not do what they want me to do. I am trying to be a little smarter with what I do. Where my work can be used twice with a little tweaking, it is used twice. Believe it or not one of the biggest things I am trying to do is to go to bed a little earlier. And finally I re-did my study plan (again), which now looks more scary then it did when I started. Which is why I still need to be ruthless with the No word. Saying no was never a strong point of mine, but going forward, if I am to say yes to God, I will have to be stronger with No to some people.

I’m a little brain dead after a day of discovering that I don’t know very much. I’m probably mangling a famous quote but I believe someone once said that wisdom was moving from ‘believing you know all you could know about a subject to understanding how little you really know about a subject.’ Well if that’s the case I became a very wise man today as I discovered all I really don’t know about theology. But it excites me that there is so much to learn about our God. Is that a little sad? It’s scares me intensely as well. I’m not talking about having to somehow find fifteen hours a week to complete this course within the two years I have set. More about the impact it will have on my relationship with my Father God. I expect to be challenged and I expect my assumptions to be questioned, but what I don’t want to do is to lose my relationship with our mighty creator God. I don’t want to boil down the traditions of ‘church’ and mull over the situations of the New and Old Testament writers, to discover I have some how boxed our Lord into a neat little package. I want to continue to be awed by Him and surprised by Him. Is it possible to seek to know our God in a deeply intellectual way whilst maintaining a relationship with Him? I guess if we are not willing to explore that concept then what is our faith based upon? Of course many have gone before me and come out the other side on fire for their Father. But then many have lost their way on the same journey. So it is with great excitement and a little trepidation that I take another step on the journey.