Well, this is it. Easter has arrived and we, Aardvark, have come to the end of our blog run.

I hope you all managed stay away from the thing you gave up.

Here is a summary of the topics we covered this lent:

Spreading the word of God

Autism

Lent

Purity

Consumerism

Destiny

Words

Virals

Perspective

Self-worth

Big corporations

Tents

Hearing God

Global Warming

Music

Wealth

Sarah McLachlan’s Crap Video

Self-Denial

Romance

Dawkins

Getting To Know Eachother

Putting Things Off

Challenge

God

Local Action

Weekend Away

Technology

Eating Disorder

Encouragement

Rest

Modern Life

Scientific Knowledge

April Fools

Self-Involvedness

Easter

Amazing Grace

Summarising

Well. I think we’ve done pretty well to cover these topics. Please comment if you feel we missed and important subjects or to express which particular posts spoke alot to you.

If I had to choose one person who really abused the use of the lent blog, it would be Ros. She missed 18 of her post days amd when I asked her about it she said ‘i don’t care about the aardvark guys. They’re all a bunch of losers’

Congratulations everybody. Happy Easter

Ros and I went and saw the film Amazing Grace last night.  To be honest I was hardly blown away it, but I found it interesting how they portrade John Newton, the guy who wrote this amazing hymn.  After his years of being a slave trader he came to know Jesus and wrote this amazing hymn as a response.  He was portrayed as somebody who was well aware of the redeeming love of God, but who still battled daily with demons of his past.

It’s never a bad thing to be reminded of how gracious God is, and what better time than Good Friday to use these famous words to reflect on how true it is Amazing Grace…that saves a wretch like me.

33At the sixth hour [11am] darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour [2pm]. 34And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 35When some of those standing near heard this, they said, “Listen, he’s calling Elijah.” 36One man ran, filled a sponge with wine vinegar, put it on a stick, and offered it to Jesus to drink. “Now leave him alone. Let’s see if Elijah comes to take him down,” he said.

37With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.

NIV

After the last supper:

32 Then they came to a place which was named Gethsemane; and He said to His disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” 33 And He took Peter, James, and John with Him, and He began to be troubled and deeply distressed. 34 Then He said to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch.” NKJV

I owe aardv:ark one brilliant and original blog post.

Thin Air

While we were talking
I noticed a cobweb laughing from the ceiling,
Blown through by invisible, unfelt draughts.

You spoke of the political policies
Of public servants and I nodded,
and wondered if and when the room had last been dusted.

You called upon examples
And supported your case admirably,
And I considered how,
If blown so much so often every day,
It still clung to its perch on the picture rail.

You tied in a great many
Damning, incontrovertible
Statistical surveys
And wound up each auxiliary
Section of verbiage with compelling emphasis!

Suddenly, as if because I had seen it,
The cobweb floated down.

I looked at you.
You weren’t watching me either.

Im sat here listening to bluegrass trying to work out what to type when I realised that I finally have an excuse to insert one of these. not my own work sadly enough but interesting to ponder on.

Let’s do some more encouraging.

I will be very angry if the following is not complete by all of you.

Here is a list of all the names I know who regularly attend aardvark. By lent, ALL names MUST be given an honest compliment. I don’t want any of this. ‘you’re lovely’ unless you actually think that despite of this post. so here goes:

Martin Parkes                                   Ros Parkes

Ben Payne                                          Neil Edbrooke

Zoe Edbrooke                                    Josh Edbrooke

Jesse Edbrooke                                 Julianne Edbrooke

Jordan Neinan                                   Chloe

Simon Roberts                                   Paul Banks

Niall Dunne                                         Hannah Dunne

Andrew Price                                     Ruth Price

Roanna Price                                      Eilis Dunne

Joe                                                       Jenny

Jen                                                       Sarah

Katie (cornwall)                                 Katie (up north)

Pete Newton-Smith                          Ruth McConnell

Dan Stayley                                        Lizzie

Sarah Harvey                                     Abbie Lloyd

Rob Salter                                           Emma Duncan

Pete Osborne                                     Lindsay Osborne

I’m guessing i’ve missed some ridiculously regurly obvious people and i know there’s a couple that i might not know the name of so please add to this list. But bear in mind, these extra people may need extra compliments. i’ve already hurt them. sorry

the other week when a few of us were going round introducing ourselves to some of the people who lived round the ark, we met one lady who said to us that she didn’t like christians and religious people because they were always arguing and didn’t seem to care about important issues like iraq and fair trade. my immediate reaction was: ‘brilliant, if you found out about bcf you’d be pleasantly surprised at how friendly and progressive we are, and how much we care about important worldly issues’. i have since wondered about a few things…

 how have we let it get so bad that this is what people think about christianity and ‘religion’ as a whole?

how come i’m not more determined to show people what following Jesus should really look like?

why do we still argue amongst ourselves? surely if we are ’more mature’ followers of Jesus we shouldn’t be so quick to belittle  other christian groups who we don’t agree with.

i believe very strongly that we have a special understanding of our God, we just need to get on communicating it to people around us. easier said than done i know, perhaps that’s another thing we should be encouraging each other in more.

Just a story for you to ponder on…

Once upon a time, a long time ago and far away there was a little girl. She wanted nothing more than to be a dancer; it was all she dreamed of all day, every day and she practiced harder than anybody else to try and be the best dancer in the world. As she got a bit older she looked around at all the other dancers and thought to herself “To be a real dancer you have to be very beautiful and to be beautiful it appears you have to be very thin”. So from that day she decided to eat less and less until she too was the most beautiful dancer in the world. Thrilled with this new plan she told her best friend all about it and would boast to her every day about how little she could eat.

After a while however this little girl realised something. She realised that she no longer had the energy to dance, she felt tired and irritable all the time and her head always hurt. Just before the point of no return she realised what she was doing and began to eat normally again. But to her horror a few weeks later she began to notice her best friend was very thin and looked very tired and ill. It was obvious that her best friend had stopped eating. Wracked with guilt the little girl tried to talk to her friend but she didn’t want to listen, she didn’t want to do anything anymore except dance and not eat. After several months of desperation the little girl knelt in bed one night in floods of tears and made a bargain with God. “Lord,” she cried, “you can take anything you want from me,; you can make it so no matter how hard I work I’ll never be good at dancing, you can break my heart and destroy my dreams – just please let her eat again. Please help her.”

From that day on the little girl worked harder than ever to dance but always she was indeed plagued with misfortune and injury and she never fulfilled her potential but was left devastated and broken-hearted time and again. Her best friend however not only started to eat again but became a strong and respected dancer. Years later in frustration and anguish the disillusioned and hurt not-so-little girl came before God and said “Abba, I was very young and foolish when I made that promise. Please don’t destroy me any more, please let me dance, please release me, don’t hold me to ransom anymore.”

But no one was listening. She never became the dancer she should have been.

So…was it all just coincidence and God listened to neither prayer or does he indeed hold people to ransom over bargains they make with him no matter how young and foolish they are? Is it indeed possible to bargain with God?