Consolidating Your Beliefs

When I was in high school I preached at one of our lunch-time prayer meetings about a little analogy to go with a revelation I had. The last couple of week the same revelation/analogy has been applicable to a number of aspects of my life.

The Analogy: Consolidating Your Beliefs

Life is like potting up a plant.

If you pot up a plant by putting in some soil, then the plant, then filling up the sides with soil you get a droppy plant with no security for its roots. The plant will fall over, the roots will sometimes stick out the top, and as a general rule you will not have a very happy/healthy plant. You will also end up with lots of leftover soil that doesn’t go anywhere except for heaped up on your pot/plant and sometimes even covering part of the plant up!

The proper way to pot up a plant is to put in some soil, then the plant, then fill up your sides with soil. Then you need to pat it all down, then put some more soil in, then pat it down, then fill it up again. You will end up with a plant that stands up tall, who’s roots are well grounded and able to work through the soil. You won’t have any left over soil, and your plant will be happy and not hidden by anything!

How This is Like Life…

This is like life because if we go through floating around never stopping to think “What DO I think about this?” or re-evaluating our beliefs, ideals, goals or purpose, then we can run into a bit of a problem. Our roots won’t grow, they won’t become extablished. We will be easily picked out of our pots by small children, and we will get covered with all the extra soil which is life.

Life will just HAPPEN to us, and we won’t make a good go of it, we might get overwhelmed or loose direction.

Why Are You Telling Us This Talia?

Lately I have had to consolidate my life a little. Think about why I think what I do. What do I stand for? What do I agree with?

This has mostly had to do with work. What do I believe about eLearning, what do I believe about assessment. Why do we assess the way we do. What is valid assessment, what is best practice for eLearning? etc. etc.

I’ve had to think about it at home too.

What do I think about God, what purpose has he given me, when/how much time should I spend with him etc.

And also with the future. What are our plans, what are our time frames? What do we think about pregnancy, birthing, parental roles etc.  What do we want to do with our lives? Should I continue with my Masters? Should we move overseas, should we move to Tasmania, should we stay here? When should we do all of those things if we do do them? Will we ever be able to buy a house? Is financial security important to us? What is more important- children/our legacy or money/house. What does the future hold? Will all our dreams come true, or will we have to pick? If we do have to pick, which dreams will we choose? Who will have to compromise, and what will we be happy to compromise? What attitude do we need to have to make our marriage and our future together a success?

And as all of you Australia are (hopefully) aware, we have an election happening on the 21st of August, so I have to think about who I want to vote for, who do I want running the country (this is one of the main reasons for the whole moving to Sweden thing…), and which party’s belief’s best align with mine (this is what I’m having the most trouble with).

So yeah… heaps of stuff to think about lately!

My plan is to think through all these things that have risen to the surface in the last few weeks and decide on a bit of a plan for each of them. Do you want me to share them, or keep them to myself? I would love to know what you think about all these different things- it might give me a bit of a broad view so I can make the right decision for me!

All You Need Is Love...

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Tags: analogy, beliefs, consolidate, plants, revelation

Passover

Remember how we celebrated Purim not long ago? Well, it’s the time of year for another Jewish celebration- Passover! It was at Passover that Jesus was crucified and put in the tomb, and rose again three days later.

We’ve gone to two ‘teaching’ passover meals, and learnt SO MUCH about the symbolism involved in Passover. It’s just amazing how much Jesus’ death and resurection is paralled in the Passover traditions. We really love celebrating these Feasts of God that the Jews celebrate- we love jewish people, and Jesus was a jew! The bible and the things Jesus said and do make so much more sense now that we are putting them into context.

Four glasses of wine at Passover, each with their own meaning. Salt water and parsley, Charoset (sweet apple mix), bitter herbs (endive and horseradish), roasted egg. Lamb shank not seen on this plate...

It’s been a big eye opener this last few days about how much I don’t know about my own religion. Being the learning geek that I am, makes me terribly excited- So much more to LEARN!!

Anyway, I took some photos of the first passover meal we went to, for the Seder, but didn’t take any photos of the second one, or the meal I made for my family last night. This is a major bummer, because I was quite proud of what I made!!! Anyway, here are some photos…

I am hankering for a hot cross bun SO BAD, but part of passover is removing all the yeast/leaven from your house, so yep, no bread of any kind for us! Yeast represents sin. God commanded the Isralites to remove it from their houses in Exodus 13:3-7. For Jewish people it’s a reminder of the haste in which they left Egypt, after the plagues, and the very first Passover. For us, removing it is a reminder of what Jesus did for us- removing our sin.

It’s been a constant reminder, and I think I have grown more spiritually, from this passover, and this constant reminder, then I have at any other time of year in my life. I guess because I’m a ‘practical’ and ‘visual’ sort of girl, it makes it easier when there is physical reminder, then just trying to remember…

Passover doesn’t end till Tuesday night. You can be sure that I’ll be making some sort of baked bready delight on Wednesday.

(Dates of Passover, and what to do each day/night here)

The woman of the house lights the candles.

Reading from the Haggadah…

Our Haggadah.

Friends. xo
Aaron & Rachel.

Mmmm… Matzah! *jokes*- this unleavened bread that this crispy like a craker. Tastes quite bland and boring…

Luke- sick of photos probably!

Tags: celebration, feastsofthelord, jewish, passover, photos, reminder, Spiritual, yeast

Purim

I hda mentioned in a previous post that we were celebrating Purim, but hadn’t then shown you the awesome photos from the night!

The story of Purim is this: Mordecai is a bloke who does the King of Persia a favour, and then sits at the city gate. The king’s new Prime-minister, Haman has a bit of a problem with Mordecai because he won’t bown down to him when he walks past. This is because Mordecai is jewish, and yeah, he will only bow down to God. So Haman has this plot to kill Mordecai, which turns into a plot to kill ALL the jews in Persia. Esther is Mordecai’s cousin, and she is the Queen. She’s also jewish.

Haman manges to get the king to agree with his idea to kill them all (not knowing Esther is jewish) and Haman then casts lots to see when the murdering will be done. Mordecai and Esther find out about this plan, and they urge all the Jews to fast and pray for three days, and at the end of the thrid day Esther plans to seek an audience with the King.

Esther has a bit of a feast with the King and invites Haman and Mordecai. The two do not get along… but Esther invites everyone back for a second banquet the next weekend. So they have the next banquet and Esther tells the King that she is jewish, and that Haman is going to kill all her people (including her). Because the decree has already been made he can’t back out on it, but he lets Esther and Mordecai write a new decree, and they make it so that the Jews can fight back. Lots of people die, and Haman is executed by the king. Mordecai because the second in charge now, and creates an annual rememberance of the time the event, so that everyone can remember when the Jews were saved from annihalation.

WOAH. So, that is what Purim is all about. Traditionally the things you do are dress up in fancy dress, give each other gifts, gamble and drink. We did pretty well all of it except our gambling was without money (we played poker), and our drinking was minimal- everyone had to drive home!

It was a really, really fun night, and everyone got really dressed up! We did a ‘secret santa’ (for lack of a better word/phrase), and lots of chocolate went around!

Tags: celebration, feastofthelord, festival, jewish, purim