Should left-handed gladiators be rulers of Rome?

I'm finished!! I just had my last exam (Classics, which was a heck of lot better than History!!). By 'last' I should clarify that that's the last one of two, both strangely scheduled to be in the last possible week of exams - today's even the last day of the exam period! Underground plot by faculty staff to delay our holidays? All gut instincts lead me to 'yes'. (and by 'yes' I mean 'no, how ridiculous').



Not that I'm complaining - I've been filling up my pre-exam time with a kind of pseuso-pre-holidays. Been doing lots of work to fill the time, as well as doing whatever miscellanious and various 'things' need to be done to prepare for the pilgrimage next year, which I'm helping lead on... and which is scarily starting to really happen!

Random question/opinion poll - has anyone been watching Torchwood? It's a new show, I think it's spin off of Dr Who, been on the last couple of weeks. I've been watching it and think it's pretty good - it's got the whacky, random, out of this world (haha, literally!) storylines like Dr Who, but contained to this time and world.... Entertaining, buuut I'm not sure I'll be clutching at the remote to turn it on each week.

Something else I've been filling my time with is reading (yay! note the neat seguay?) - this week I'm reading 'A Love Worth Giving' by Max Lucado. I used to read a lot of his stuff, and it was pretty influential particularly when I was a new (or newly re-committed) Christian in high-school. It's been a while since I've read the more inspirational type of Christian book, and it's pretty refreshing. I don't know how he does it, but he manages to take one small phrase and unlock all these deeper meanings and relevances that I hadn't seen before.



Take this example, in the chapter about that sometimes underrated verse/phrase 'love is kind', talking about God's kindness:



'I wonder, how many burdens is Jesus carrying for us that we know nothing about? We're aware of some. He carries our sin. He carries our shame. He carries our eternal debt. But are there others? Has he lifted fears before we felt them? Has he carried our confusion so we wouldn't have to? Those times when we have been surprised by our own sense of peace? Could it be that Jesus has lifted our anxiety onto his shoulders and placed a yoke of kindness on ours?'



Dad's in England for a couple of weeks at the moment, and this week has been in London. Yesterday police found (and disabled) a couple of cars filled with explosives that were in the area where Dad was going to go to the theatre tonight - one only a hundred metres away from the theatre where he would have been! Eep! An example of what could have happened, in a way like it talks about in that ^. So with God's kindness in mind, I'm thanking Him for that!!


Just to add some colour, here's a pic from the youth bonfire we had up in Norton Summit last week. The more I look at it - the movement, the lines, the swirls, the straights - the more I love it! I was going to put up more, but I think this post is long enough for now! :)