Do you ever set your alarm early when you can sleep in, just too have that feeling of hearing the alarm, looking at the clock and knowing you can go back too sleep. That's what i did this morning, but as i lay there looking at the clock i thought how much more productively i could use that time i planned for sleeping, so i dragged myself out much earlier than normally for a thursday.
I saw my friend Ian in the morning, he's been such a blessing to me, i've spent some time with him studying scripture and discussing it, he's got such wisdom and has very graciously passed that on to me. It got me thinking how little i appreciate the knowledge people who care about me try too pass on, i've been blessed with parents and other people from my church or elsewhere who care about my growth both in life and in faith, i take it for granted, so i brought ian a box of chocolates for him and his wife and a card saying thankyou, i guess it being Christmas the exchanging of gifts is seen as normal, why do we neeed a specific time to give? We have so much to be thankful for, gifts should be exchanged on a day to day basis, it doesn't have to cost any money, maybe just time or words.
I then headed off in to nottingham to meet my dear friend ben and do some Christmas shopping, my sister had this lovely idea to do a stocking for my mum, she spent so much time and money making our christmas such an exciting time when we were kids. I remember waking up in the morning and stretching out my leg to feel that pillow case stuffed full of presents and the excitement that brought. Mum was telling us the other day how she used to get such small things in her stocking like an apple and an orange but they were so grateful for that, makes you think, take joy in the simple every day things. Ellie had this lovely idea of putting an apple and orange in her stocking just for memory's as well as some nicer stuff of course.
Me and ben wasted sometime in cd shops before heading off to waterstones, i wanted to find some poetry by rumi and ended up bying a little book of his stuff called whispers of the beloved. I managed to find some nice stuff for my mum's stocking and headed home.
I had the pleasure of nath's company in the evening and we had a little run through of some of the song's for" hope...", i felt it would really help to just go through my parts with guitar to tighten them up and hear them a bit more clearly to check i was singing in tune and the like. We're going in to the studio in a little more than a week to demo songs for the album, i can't wait, it wont be the proper recording but it'll be exciting to hear the songs and should be a good day, we've all got a lot of ideas so it should be an exciting creation process though also hard work.
Before nath went we had a conversation about faith, religion, G-d, Love and the trinity amongst other things, just light topics :P I was quite keen too put forward my views but it was when i stopped talkng and decided to listen that i started to learn, i don't agree with all nath's views but he looks at a lot of stuff very differently to me and that deffinitely opens my eyes, hopefully i made him think about some stuff aswell, it's beautiful how we can learn so much from each other, even though there's so much we don't understand and maybe never will. I continued on the them of philisophical conversations with my mum when she returned home from a prayer meeting and we shared thoughts and feelings on many different subjects, at times disagreeing but always respecting one anothers opinions, praise G-d for fellowship.
So many blessings in one day, so simple, so beautifull.
Be thankful for the love of Christ always.
Shalom