Life's A Beach

My life of late has mainly consisted of beaches. Here are some favourite moments... 

1) The Albino Debate: last Sunday afternoon we plodded down to the beach for some swimming joy. There was also an Albino lady down there, splashing around having a great afternoon with her children. My two friends got in to an almighty argument about whether or not Albinos existed... which involved them plodding down the beach to go and ask the lady! Thankfully they didn't follow through on this, but it was pretty funny! 

2) The Lobster Incident: I lobsterised myself when I was hanging out in the sunshine with Kristine. As I fried I said to her, "you know, I think the sun is taking away my tan." I wasn't wrong. It took away my tan and made me look like a red smurf instead. (I think maybe I need to work on my imagery... )

3) The Lost Beach: oh yes, I started watching Lost. Never have so many thoroughly exciting thoroughly messed up people congregated together in one place... I'm not sure whether I like it. However, some particularly amusing moments include the BADLY CGI-d polar bears (for which I assume there's a semi-rational explanation... even by Lost's standards), and Hurley falling over in the jungle. Maybe I've been watching the failblog too much, but that really should have happened in slow- mo. Oh, and I LOVE Hurley by the way! He's pure comedy. 

4) The Lone Bather: those of you who know me well, will know that my lifetime ambition was to go to the cinema by myself. Maybe I should've set my sights higher, for this ambition was achieved during a matinee showing of Die Hard 4 in Nottingham sometime in my 22nd year... but I may have equalled or surpassed this lifelong goal... I went to the beach and swam and sunbathed all by myself. In fact, I do a lot of things by myself at the moment, because everyone left Nice, and sadly they didn't leave their French speaking abilities with me! Maybe my new lifetime ambition should be to make some friends. 

(I'm only kidding, it's not that bad.) 

5) The "this isn't a beach, this is a pile of rocks" incident. This is actually just the Nice beach experience... Rocky. And Stoney. And pebbly. And... I'm out of rock synonyms, but you get the picture.  I was on the beach today having a Bible study. It was good. It was very good. I got very frustrated because there was something I really, really wanted to say- and when I finally spat it out, I didn't really feel like I succeeded in communicating. So, you, lucky bloggers will be treated to it instead. 

 It's from 1 John, where John writes, "if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just and will forgive our sins." What I love about this verse is that the promise of forgiveness is not based on his mercy or his feeling sorry for us, but on his JUSTICE. In what sense is it JUST for God to forgive us just because we say we're sorry? Can our sorrow make up for the sufferings we've caused? Is it JUST for God to say to a mass murderer, or a thief, or a black mailer or a rapist "just because you're sorry, I'll let it go"? Of course it isn't! 

God forgives us because of His justice because the price for our sin has already been paid. If we admit it- we're standing in the light- we're seeing things as they really are. And God, in his justice, says- the price has already been paid. You have a Mediator- a faithful representative who lived and died and suffered in your place- Jesus Christ, my Son. I forgive you because I am just. It would be unfair if I punished you when someone else already took that punishment in your place. It would be unjust for the same sin to be punished twice. (Ok, I am sorry but I have to share this- I just made a hilarious Freudian slip in which I wrote "married" instead of punished. Oh, that's brilliant!) But that's all I wanted to say. God is JUST. God is FAITHFUL to his covenant that he has made with us in Christ. According to His justice he forgives us. In our sin, we come to Him trembling because we know he is just. But it's his justice that guarantees our freedom. 

I think this is really cool... 

(P.S I wrote this post in a hurry... so if it makes no sense or is heretical or something like that, you'll have to tell me. Nicely. Please... this is the All Things Nice blog after all.)