Had coffee with Kevin today. He's a top bloke, and possibly my closest friend, simply by virtue of the fact that we have a coffee together for an hour most weeks. Just spending this kind of time with someone is what I find I need to foster a really good kind of depth of friendship. It gives us time to talk about big things and little things, spiritual and profane, programming and accountancy. What annoys me is that I don't get to do this with anyone else. The closest I come is with Rich & Dunc, where we meet every other week. That's cool, and I hope it will develop into a similar sort of thing, especially as we meet over food before doing the "spiritual" thing.

Anyway, one of the things we were talking about over coffee today was making some kind of notes while reading through the bible, so that you don't get into the slightly embarassing situation (as one of us did) of saying "I've just read Joshua, and some bits of it really spoke to me, but now I can't remember any of them."

My solution has been to blog about my daily readings. That is to say, my _ideal_ solution is to blog. I actually managed to do this in practice for a couple of days in 2002. I must press on and make this happen. (I actually enjoy blogging - and reading blogs - it's just on my level).

There's no time like the present...

I didn't actually read the bible on the train up this morning. I was praying (or at least trying to). However, I managed to get in Revelation 4 while waiting for Kevin. Rev 4 is where John is transported to Heaven and sees the throne of God. It's a visual description of what he sees - not a very clear description, though: he obviously struggles to put the vision into words. There's lots of use of phrases of the type "something that looks like xxx." - ie. it's not xxx, but xxx is the closest thing I can think of that looks like it. There's a fair bit of that in Revelation (and apocalyptic writing in general, I think), and it helps to bear in mind that the writer is trying (and possibly failing) to describe something really very very _wierd_.

So what can we say about what John sees in heaven? The creatures near the throne are endlessly saying:

"Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!"

Endlessly. All the time, they are declaring God's holiness, acknowledging that he is The Almighty. That's what happens in God's presence. There's nothing else you can do. I am, frankly, very unhappy about what this shows about my life. I do not live as if God is Holy and Almighty. I must change. I will change. I will live as though God is Holy and Almighty and as though I am in his presence. Will you?