For the past couple of years I’ve been reading the Blog of a guy called Marko. He lives in San Diego and used to work for an organisation called Youth Specialities. I’ve had a bit of an on/off relationship with the guy, not really knowing where to place him on my spectrum of people I read. Sometimes I thought he was really good, sometimes I thought his ambitions were really good but the reality was pretty average, sometimes I just thought he was an idiot. The conclusion from that should probably be that he’s the kind of guy I’d get on well with. He’s just a bloke getting through life the best he knows how, trying to serve God, do the right thing, but getting it wrong/right but mostly a bit of both.

Anyway, a few months ago he stopped blogging, it was becoming too much of a focus for him. Now he’s back, but he’s been made redundant from Youth Specialities (I think there was a taand is trying to work out what’s going on.

That’s the summary for those of you who don’t have time to read back over his recent posts. Now, the bit today that struck me, as he posted about preaching recently about emotions…

i did something completely different than i’ve ever done in a sermon before. i had five of david’s more emotional psalms (5 that i chose because they seemed to capture, or be written with, the 5 emotions i wrestled to the ground on my time in the desert). then i interspersed that with selections from my own journal, on those same emotions, which i framed as my own prayer-psalms.

Read the full post here

Emotions are pretty strange things to deal with. I’ve had periods in my life where raw emotion has been completely consuming and it’s been a struggle to carry out even basic functions. I’ve also had times when I thought I should be more emotional, but actually found that inside I’m empty of all feeling.

Anyway, Marko’s notes are worth reading. As he says,

Bottom line: our emotions are a massive gift from God, and learning to be present to them is part of our created design.