Old Thoughts and Stuff

It's late - almost 1am - and I'm on my laptop in bed, with Fifi beside me in her bedsite cot, and I'm reading my oldest posts. If you have a look at my archives to the right, you'll see that a) they aren't up to date and b) the old ones aren't linked correctly. Blogger moved all my old posts from the original superlori.blogspot.com and scottandlori.blogspot.com to our personal domain and gave the latter blogspot address away to someone else. And also my rss feed doesn't work. But the posts are still there, both in Blogger and in my web folder.

Aside from the fact that I posted about really weird things that seem like they were written by a completely different Lori (that would've been been Lori of the Arnold fame, not the McFarlane Lori), reading my old posts is an interesting way of seeing where I once was and where I've come. Sometimes it's for the better, sometimes for the worst. Sometimes it seems I've gone nowhere at all.

I wrote on the 20th May 2003 about how much I was learning about the Bible. I wrote about how I was struggling to stand up in faith to the world. I wrote about how God would never let me waiver too far - and this is pre-Calvinist Lori, I might add. (I was always a three-pointer, to be fair.) I ended with this wonderful quote:

"The Word of God well understood and religiously obeyed is the shortest route to spiritual perfection. We must not select a few favourite passages to the exclusion of others. Nothing less than a whole Bible can make a whole Christian."- A.W. Tozer

I've been thinking how much I'd like to read the New Testament again. I've never read the whole Bible through, though I've read most of the books separately. (I can't say I've ever gotten through Leviticus or Isaiah or the like, but most of the books I've read.) However, I've read through the New Testament many times, and it's a wonderful read. I want to do it again. Johnny Cash says in his book Cash how he's learned just enough about theology to realise he knows just about nothing there is to know. I think I sometimes think I know tons and tons about the Bible. I'd like to finally realise just how much I don't know.

(That being said, I can and will stand by my assertion that you won't find any verse in the Bible saying that we have free will to choose God, and though I already admitted there are some books I haven't read, I still challenge you to find me one. *wink*)

The other side of that quote is that the Word of God must be religiously obeyed. Do I manage that? Of course not. But, I mean, do I even come close? That's a hard one for me too. I suppose reading the New Testament again can only help in that area as well.

These past few weeks have been immensely tough. Lots of things are coming crashing down on me - things I'd never, ever blog about - that make me feel like giving up. Not giving up on God, but on life altogether. On myself. On everything. I've felt too overcome to even move or feel or try. I get this way sometimes, and it's never anything so serious that I won't recover. I'm not going to throw myself off a bridge or anything outrageous like that. But I do come awfully close to this point of no return - this point that, if I were to cross it, I'd have one hell of a time trying to come back. It's that giving up point - and I've been here many a time.

I've never crossed it though, and that's where glory to God is due. Before I became a sincere Christian (for lack of a better description), I crossed that line several times. I don't ever want to go there again. And it seems God, in His unimaginable mercy and love, has and continues to hold onto me. In May 2003, I was only waivering. In other times (and posts) I'm more than waivering. These days I'm holding on with baited breath. But I have no fear. I won't let go, I can't let go. It wouldn't even matter if I did let go. Because God hasn't and He isn't going to let go of me.

That makes me smile.

I'm just so happy I have a Saviuor I can trust even when I can't trust myself.