Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Survival or 'Thrival'?

Can't believe it's been over a month! This term was supposed to be an easier one... but I find that having more time allows more time for procrastination and plain time-wasting, as well as work expanding to fill the available (space-)time. Then of course I have tried to prioritise my family (still getting used to thinking of my wife and son under that heading instead of my mum and sisters!) - not always successfully - and there was a cold in there somewhere as well (or a series of 2 or 3 of them for spouse & sprog :-( )

Anyway, in the midst of 'end-of-term' stuff - despite lack of decent preparation, did quite well in my final Hebrew test of term, and think I've done an ok exam paper (2 hours) for Greek Text: Philippians. Now I just have to write a few thousand words about some children's songs, mostly before Friday, and I'll be fine!

But I've just been wondering - am I surviving this week (which also included a 'Personal Development Interview' as part of my C of S Ministry application) or thriving on it. I feel like I've 'survived' the two language modules rather than thrived (thriven?) as perhaps I did last term (at least in Greek - or that's how my revisionist memory records it...) but at the same time, I've been trying to depend utterly on God. I'm a long way off yet, but feel it ties in with Brother Lawrence's 'Practising the Presence of God', and have made some progress in small ways. What I wonder is, has this intention to depend on God, led to an actual 'thrival' in terms of my studies? I certainly seem to be a bit better at not being anxious in these last few weeks.

The proof of the pudding will probably be if I get this independent study work completed reasonably well. I also recently decided that perhaps I should embrace the fact that I work in what my placement supervisor calls an 'exponential' fashion - the graph of work against time shoots up as the deadline approaches! As long as I time things right, there isn't a problem!

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