Day 32 - disconnect

Struggling today.  Every now and again the depression which is mostly kept well at bay by the happy pills seems to just have a little surge and I feel myself struggling to stay above the surface.  Actually, no, thats not right.  That makes it sound as though Im fighting for air. but actually what Im doing is just floating on the surface inert and lifeless.   I feel that I cant be bothered with anyone or anything.  I feel angry.  I start rehearsing in my head all the reasons I have to be miserable.   I know it wont last and that tomorrow or this afternoon or next week I shall be fine again.   But its not very nice being in that place.

So you will excuse me if this is short and to the point cos to be honest I cant really be bothered  😉

Last night I was at part one of a prophetic conference.   Worship was some of the most exuberant Ive experienced in N I for a while  ( Edinburgh folks - this means that there was a teeny reminder of the good old days, but nothing like as free ).   The teaching was all about character vs gifting.  The prayer was a sort of guided meditation about getting reconnected with the Holy Spirit - which was unusual and really quite helpful.   But all the way through I was battling the inertia which settles on me at times like these.   We sang a song  ' Death where is your victory , grave where is your sting'  and I found myself thinking, ' It's not death which is the issue.  I'm more than happy to entertain the notion of death.  It is life which is the problem.'    Which led me to think about Jesus saying that He had come to give us life in all its fullness.   What does that life look like and why arent I living it?

I suppose the only indication we have as to what 'life in all its fullness' looks like is the life of Jesus.  We have to assume that His time on earth was the perfect example of what a fully lived, fully connected, holy,  righteous life actually is.   So what was His life like?  Well it was :-

hidden for the first 30 years
poor
homeless
counter cultural
exceedingly busy
full of the demands of others
dangerous
compassionate and merciful
full of friendship
in conflict with religion
comfortable with the margins of society
miraculous
powerful
kind
outrageous
fearless
purposeful
fully connected to the Father by the Holy Spirit
prayerful
misunderstood
betrayed
much loved


etc etc etc.  As the writer said, if we were to write it all down it would fill the world with words.

I suppose the not-so-consoling thought which came to my dark-misted mind was that when Jesus promises us life in all its fullness, maybe He means life with all its ups and downs.  If Jesus had to go through the tough stuff then no doubt so do we. He promises to never leave us or forsake us as we live it - and to send us the comforter to help us through.  But some days this being alive business is hard work.   Im probably not doing it right 😊   Maybe todays prophetic conference part two will throw some light on me and get me back on track.

I'll let you know how it goes and hopefully be on better form for my next post

(PS please dont worry about me, Im fine.  Just a dip not a plummet  xx)

Day 31 - eyesight

It's really odd how sometimes the same thing seems to crop up over and over again within a short space of time, such that it becomes really noticeable.   As though God is trying to get your attention through repetition.   One such thing for me of late has been sight.  Vision.  Or lack of vision.

It started  a while back when my Mum started to suffer from macular degeneration ( a condition of deterioration of the eye).  She finds it difficult to look at anything with straight lines in it because the lines start to waver about and make her feel a bit dizzy and odd.  And then my friend Gladys seemed to lose most of her eyesight almost overnight - which was a bit concerning although the hospital say it is just down to old age.  Then at the weekend a good friend of mine told me that she has just been diagnosed with cataracts in both eyes.   Added to which I have started to have to hold the small print at arms length in order to see it. 😎

It all seems to be about eyes at the moment.

I suppose it would be easy to go down the road of ' without vision the people perish'  or  something about focusing on the Lord.  But Im not sure that that's the emphasis for today.   I think perhaps the Lord is saying something about losing sight.

I wonder what Ive lost sight of recently.

The problem with losing your sight in the physical is that so often its a gradual process.  You hold the menu just that bit further away, you squint a bit, you dont really realise that you arent seeing everything in full technicolour any more..... until eventually you miss something important ( or your arms arent long enough !) and you work out that you have to do something about it.
Perhaps its like that in the spiritual as well.   The things which we once had in our sights as ambitions or dreams or ' calling' or vocation have become just that bit dimmer.  Slightly out of focus.  Or perhaps we have started to hold them at arm's length.

I know that many years ago God spoke to me about providing accommodation for people in need.  And for years before I got married I worked towards that goal - first qualifying as a social worker, then buying and renovating a house and finally having 16 year old Cara and her six month old baby Katelin to live with me.   But then I got married, moved to Ireland and had three babies.  The plan got put on hold - and that was fine, I dont think God had a problem with that.  But in the intervening years I think I might have lost sight of what God said at the start.  It's probably time to look at it again in some way or other and see if I can get back on track with the vision.

Just as we can always find some excuse for not going to the optician for that eye test, we can always put off a spiritual health check.  But it is good to go back to what God said at the start of our journey and just make sure we are still headed in the right direction.  There is no point in going off at tangents.  He might let us do that for a time but if He has called us to do something then that something is what we had better get on with.  Whether it is being an encourager,  running a business, preaching the gospel,  caring, giving, leading, administrating, helping, praying, teaching, going to a certain place, working in a certain field or writing poetry...... whatever it is, in order to be the you God wants you to be, you need to be doing that thing.

Ask the Lord if you have lost sight of any of His purposes for your life today
Then find your glasses and get on with the business of being the most fabulous you you can be 😊

Day 30 - grace

On Tuesday night I watched the programme about footballer Rio Ferdinand and how he is coping with the grief of having lost his wife to breast cancer last year.  It was a very moving documentary and he was so open and honest talking about his fears of opening up and talking about his feelings.
 He was scared for his three young children and didnt know if he was doing a good enough job in helping them to process their feelings.  He was well supported by family and friends but still acknowledged how hard it was for him to ' do the work' of mourning.

Yesterday evening I was watching DIY SOS - a young woman went into hospital to have twins, suffered from a stroke and came home severely disabled.  Her young husband struggling so hard with twin babies, a house which was completely unsuitable for their needs, a wife who needs 24 hour care and the realisation that his best friend and life partner has gone.  Possibly, probably , forever.

All around us, all the time, people are suffering from monumental, life altering, tragic events.   In our church a young guy, newly married, went out on his motorbike before christmas.  He ended up in a coma for weeks and is now very very seriously disabled - unable to speak, walk, move much.  But still able to smile, understand and be a person loved by a young wife who now has a whole different path in front of her from the one she imagined just a few months ago.

It is tempting to think and say ' there but for the grace of God go I'  

But that is utter nonsense.   Did the grace of God not extend to Rio Ferdinand as his wife was dying?  Or to the countless young mothers struck down by illness or young men knocked off their motorbikes?    The grace of God is a gift entirely undeserved, unearned and free.  God can be nothing but gracious.  It is who He is.  His grace is every bit as active when times are tough as it is when we are living in the sunny uplands.  He is a good good Father.  All the time.   His grace , mercy, compassion and kindness are available to all in every circumstance.  We just have to draw near.   And how can people draw near if they don't know??


I think when we hear tragic stories of people going through awful times our first reaction can be to back away, give people space, fear saying the wrong thing,  worry about having to answer difficult questions.   But in times of crisis people really really need to know that

grace abounds.   They need to hear that God is right in it with them.  That He weeps with them , cares deeply and has a plan.  People need to know that there is grace to bear suffering and pain.  That life is about more than our physical bodies and their restrictions but that heaven is waiting where there is no more pain and suffering.   Rio Ferdinand doesnt know that.   He is not able to reassure his children that their Mummy is in heaven because he doesn't know that heaven exists.   He is alone and struggling with his grief because He has not been introduced to the Man of Sorrows who is acquainted with grief and can walk through it with him.

I love watching shows like DIY SOS, where people from a community come together to give practical help to complete strangers.  But the greatest help we can give anyone is to tell them about our gracious, kind, merciful God.   We fear rejection, but people in pain are suddenly free from all of the baggage of the mind.  They are focused on what is real.  They want to know truth.

SO I challenge you today - if you know someone who is suffering real trauma don't walk past on the other side.  Be brave and speak up.  Tell them that you are praying for them and that God is so willing to come alongside to carry them through.  Tell them how He has done that for you.  Reach out and embrace those who are grieving, in pain, traumatised.  Trust that God will give you the words.

Day 29 - patience (lack thereof)

I do hope you will excuse me but Im about to have a moan.  It might turn into a full blown rant.  You have been warned :)

Bit of background.  We currently live in Dromara, a small village about 35 minutes from Belfast and 20 minutes from Lisburn which is our nearest local town ( city actually but really its a town :) )  We moved here when we got married cos it is ten minutes away from where Keith's mother lives and it has a great primary school, a couple of shops and a GP surgery.  Kids all went to primary school right across the road from our house.    All good, but I did always have in mind that once they went up to secondary school then living where we do would not be ideal.

Over the past five years our lives have moved more and more towards Lisburn.  Sam, then Josh and now Ben are all at school there.  I work from a Lisburn base and Keith works in Belfast.  All the boys out of school activities are now in Lisburn.  So it makes sense for us to move house.

This time two years ago Ben was getting ready to sit his 11+ and we started talking about putting the houses on the market ( we have two, we live in one and we built one in the back garden which we have always rented out)  In my head I had it all worked out.  We would put the houses up for sale after Christmas 2015 , sell by summer 2016 and have bought a new place by Sept 2016 ready for Ben to start high school in September.   There was just one tiny weeny problem - the people next door wanted to shift the boundaries - in our favour as it happens. So that required a bit of legal paperwork.

Long story short TWO years later and we still dont have the houses on the market.!!!!   Aaaarrrrgggh. We have redecorated.  We have sorted and tidied up all the bits that never quite got finished before now.  We repainted the outside of the house.  Everything is all set and ready to go.  But for the past six months the solicitors have faffed and messed and delayed and we still dont have the one piece of paper which we need in order to establish what we own so we can put the properties up for sale.

We have prayed about it.  Lots.  Lots of people have prayed lots.  We believe that God's time is the right time.  We believe He has the right people lined up to buy both our houses and we believe there is the perfect place waiting for us to buy in Lisburn.  Really and genuinely I have no trouble at all in knowing that He has it all in hand.

So why oh why oh why have I found it so incredibly frustrating and annoying and downright aaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhhh  to have to wait?

Im really struggling with this and I dont know why.   Ive threatened to go into the solicitors office and shout and stamp my feet.  Ive threatened to move into rented accommodation and leave Keith to sort out the house sales.    I have been like a toddler throwing a tantrum cos Im not getting my own way.  I just want to move house.  I want to stop the endless journeys in and out of town.  I want the boys to be closer to their friends and to be able to walk to school.  I want to save about £200 a month on petrol.  I want to have a garden suitable for the dogs and to be able to sometimes walk places instead of always having to jump in the car.  That's not unreasonable is it? 😊

We are all rubbish at waiting for things.  Why?  Surely by the time we get to adulthood you would have thought we would all be so well versed in waiting that we would have it down to a fine art. But it doesnt seem to work like that does it?  Every time we come up against a ' WAIT' sign in our lives we find it difficult.   Sometimes a plain NO is easier to handle than a WAIT.

I think principally what I am finding so annoying about the whole situation is that it is outwith my control.  I am completely dependent on other people doing things and I cant make them do them more quickly.   I dont have a choice.  I have to wait and I cant change the process or speed it up .  Suddenly the word ' surrender' becomes a whole heap more practical and real.   Of course, when I get a grip and give myself a talking to then I can get myself into the ' trusting God' frame of mind.  I have no doubt at all that He has got it all in hand.  But......   hurry up God!!!  

I suppose part of 'doing Lent' is about being honest with ourselves about who we really are.  Owning our behaviour and taking responsibility for our walk with God.  The past few months have been a bit grumpy.  I have not covered myself in glory when it comes to talking and thinking about moving house.  A fruit of the spirit is patience and another is peace.  So perhaps Id better start allowing much much more of Him into my life.  I think it's probably the only answer 😇

Day 28 - blessings

Am at a complete loss as to what to say today.   Unusual for me to be without words Im sure you 'll agree 😊  So....  I thought Id list my blessings.   A few of them anyway. ( in no particular order)

I am blessed by........

Living in a country in which I am free to worship God, vote, express an opinion and be treated equally under the law.

Being healthy

Being financially secure

Having three healthy, smart, funny kind loving boys

Having two parents who love me and a brother who is very dear to my heart.

Belonging to a massive worldwide church family

having food on the table every day

having had a really excellent education

not living in fear of any kind

being musical

having a job

living close to sea and mountains and valleys

friends of decades standing - some of whom I know would take a bullet for me

being creative

having a super comfortable bed and plenty of time to spend in it 😊

technology and the way it allows me to stay connected with people.

having spent years sitting under some of the finest Bible teaching

laughter

the encouragement of strangers

having been found by Jesus when I was 16 just in the nick of time

anti-depressants

spring sunshine and warm days

hot water on tap

living in a first world country and never having known real poverty, starvation, famine or natural disaster

radio 4

music, art and culture

doctors and the health service

chocolate and all the senses and processes in my body which allow me to enjoy it.

my camera

my piano

every single person who has ever prayed for me


Counting your blessings is good - it makes you stop and be thankful and also puts in perspective the minor irritations and niggles of life.   God is so good and so kind to us all.  I hope that in reading my list you have been able to add blessings of your own.  Let us never stop being deeply grateful for every good and perfect gift which comes to us from the Father of lights.

Day 27 = wonders

Whenever Im sitting at the end of the runway in a plane which is about to take off, and I feel the engines starting to roar and there is that moment of thrust before the brakes come off and the plane starts to hurtle along - these words always come to mind

Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.  John 14 :12

Im not sure that Jesus was primarily thinking about air travel when He said that to His disciples, but nevertheless, the fact is that Jesus never flew in a plane.  😊



I was watching a documentary last night about a guy who was rowing up the west coast of Ireland.  Amazing photography captured dolphins and puffins and basking sharks and even hump backed whales!  I had no idea there were so many fascinating sea creatures on my doorstep ( so to speak)  It made me want to get a boat and go out there myself.  But of course if I did that I probably wouldnt see much or any of the things my television brought me last night.   Because the wonders of television mean that I can see the whole world, and above it and below it from my armchair.  I can see inside volcanos and the peaks of mountains and the deepest caves.  I am part of the first generation on earth which has been able to view the whole world in all its amazing glory and incredible biodiversty on a screen in front of me.  Isnt that just amazing?   Only a hundred years ago people were still marvelling at the invention of colour photography ( 1904).   Sound recording on magnetic tape only became possible in 1934 .  And yet now we can watch an amoeba splitting and dividing or see an egg being fertilized by a sperm.   We can track a blue whale's song through the oceans and accompany a greylag goose on its migration.  Incredible.  Really.

The world is truly an amazing planet.  It is full of amazing places.  Incredible beauty.  Astonishing creatures and plants and flowers.  And human beings are equally amazing - their feats of engineering, works of art, endless creativity in customs and architecture and staggering diversity of creed and tribe are also now all available to us at the touch of a button.   My great grandparents had to read books for a lifetime if they wanted to know just a tiny fraction of what I can now scroll through in an evening.
Even in my lifetime things have changed so much with the invention of the internet.   We have so much information nowadays. What would the Jesus generation make to it all I wonder.

I think it must be an end times privilege to be able to know our wonderful planet in so much detail.  It should cause us to worship the God who created it all.  As our world gets smaller our God should be getting bigger and bigger.  Every high definition image on our screens which shows us a heretofore unknown aspect of His creation is a miracle.

Let's keep our eyes open today, not just for what we can see around us in the sunshine of a spring morning, but for every wonder of the world which we encounter through technology today as well.  And let us give thanks for this wonderful time in which we live when so much of what was hidden to generations past has been made known to us.  What a privilege!

Day 26 - rest

OK, so Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness.

What was He DOING exactly ??

Forty days is a long time.  Forty days ago it was Feb 17th.  What were you doing on Feb 17th - can you remember?  I cant.

Yesterday I spent the day at the Via Wings ladies day conference.  We worshipped, we listened, we had a go at ' being still'  ( that was the theme of the day) we had lunch and chatted and listened some more.  It was a nice day.  And we thought about what it means and what it looks like to ' Be still and know that I am God'.   I cant say that I was particularly moved or inspired or awe-struck.  It was just nice to be able to take the good part of a day to chill with friends in God's presence, knowing that during the day some people would be undergoing life-changing experiences with Him.   Not me this time , but it might have been.  You never know do you?

I came home thinking about the whole ' be still' thing, in the context of the Lent blog and it led to me wonder what Jesus was up to during his forty wilderness days.  As far as we know He was completely on His own.  No phone.  No ipad.  No food.  No work.   Nobody at all except the wild animals and the birds.  Did He sit down on a rock for forty days and wait for God ( and the devil) to speak to Him?  Did He walk for miles and miles each day pondering the word of God?   Did He find Himself something to do - perhaps He built Himself a shelter out of scrub and rocks or composed poetry in His head or wrote songs?    Forty days is an awful long time to do nothing.

When was the last time you did nothing?   I mean apart from being asleep....   when was the last time you sat in a chair in complete silence and listened to your own heartbeat?   Maybe you are very good at doing that.  Im rubbish at it.   If Im sitting still ( which I do from time to time) then there is always music playing or the telly on or something.   If I'm outside walking the dogs Im pretty much always either scouting for photos to take or searching for firewood or just trying to keep my dogs from wandering or chasing other dogs.   I sometimes consider time in the car as my ' alone time'.  And of course I am alone then, but Im still busy doing something.  Namely driving.    I find it almost impossible to be still.  Completely.  Mentally and physically.    I think the only place where I came close to being still is at the beach.  There is something about the sea which I find utterly liberating.  I used to live beside the sea and spent many a happy hour doing nothing much at all whilst wandering the shores.  But for the past 17 years Ive been pretty much landlocked.  And not still.

I think it is interesting that the temptation of Jesus comes just before He starts His public ministry.  Traditionally people think about it in terms of Satan coming to Him to divert Him from the path and Jesus redeeming the sin of Adam ( who succumbed to the lust of the eyes the lust of the flesh and the pride of life).   But today I saw it in a different light.  Jesus had been working as a carpenter for, probably, the past 16 or 17 years.   Im sure it was hard physical work.  He was about to embark on a whole new way of life.  Perhaps He needed to rest.  Maybe God, knowing what was coming and the pressures Jesus was going to be under from all sides as He became public property, with no privacy whatsoever,  maybe God told Jesus He needed to do nothing for forty days.   To completely rest.  Recharge the batteries.  Physically and mentally to stop, sit, be still.    Yes, of course Im sure that spiritually it was a time for Jesus to connect with His Father and fight off the temptations and set His face towards His mission.   But physically I wonder if He didnt just need a break.   Forty days of peace and rest and no demands on His time.

God's word is very very clear that we need rest.  We need a Sabbath - a day off - a day to recharge every single week.  We need to sleep.  If we dont, we get ill.  Physically our bodies just cant cope with being constantly on the go.  Our brains implode if we are just constantly bombarding them with work, responsibility, pressure, information, tasks , problems to solve.  I'm sure Jesus as a good Jew kept the Sabbath every week.   But after nearly two decades of hard physical work, and before embarking on His big mission, maybe He needed a more extended period of rest.

Maybe you do too.

Perhaps you need a real, proper, do nothing, sit in the sun type holiday.   Don't feel guilty if you do.
Perhaps you need to take a sabbatical from work and go and do something completely different for a while.  Maybe it's time to retire.   Or perhaps you just need to get to bed at a sensible time every night.

You know who you are  😉

Day 25 - walls

Yesterday I was walking the dog at Dromore Motte and Bailey - a hill fort built in 1200 by John De Courcy  after the Norman conquest which is a perfect place for a spot of dog walking and contemplation.

Every time I go there I marvel at the thought of the effort which people put into building this huge mound and moat in days before modern tools and engineering techniques.  I imagine that they had buckets and spades and picks and barrows and that it took dozens and dozens of men many months to pile up the tonnes of earth as a defence against their enemies and a lookout post over the surrounding countryside.

Yesterday I was wondering what it is that makes human beings want to build castles and walls and defences.   Walls are very much in the news at the moment of course - what with Mr Trump having already started work on his great Mexican barricade.  There are walls in the middle east and in Belfast and across borders and boundaries all over the world - we seem to have an inbuilt need to keep people out and separate ourselves from each other by physical means.   It's sad.  I wish we could all live without walls

As I was thinking about this I felt the Lord say to me ' think about the good things walls do'

I filed that one away for later.   

Then, later, I bumped into a friend who was telling me that she had been driving down the road

beside the army barracks in Lisburn that afternoon.  The sun was shining on the barbed wire which runs along the top of the fence and she said she almost had to stop the car to look at it because it was like a chain of silver and gold sparkling in the sunshine.  She'd never seen anything like it.  When she turned the corner out of the sunlight the barbed wire was just grubby grey wire again.   But for a few moment she had witnessed the jagged, threatening fence become something really beautiful.

How can something as horrible as a barbed wire fence be lovely?  How can walls be good?   

Well, I suppose we could look at what God says about walls in the Bible.   The old testament is full of walls.  Jericho, Jerusalem, the fortified cities of Judah ..... lots of defensive walls in times of battle but also lots of references to walls in times of peace.

In 2 Chronicles 14, we learn of the good king Asa, who did “what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord; he “built up the fortified cities of Judah, since the land was at peace…’Let us build up these towns,’ he said to Judah, ‘and put walls around them, with towers, gates and bars. The land is still ours, because we have sought the Lord our God; we sought him and he has given us rest on every side.’ So they built and prospered.”

There seems to be a theme running through the OT that walls were necessary for defence in times of war but that in times of peace the walls symbolised the protection and provision and peace of God.  In Revelation 21 when we read of the new Jerusalem descending from heaven its so interesting to see that it has walls made of jasper set on the foundations of jewels.  There are no enemies in heaven, there is no need for defences, and yet the city is still bounded by walls.  The walls have twelve gates in them but the gates will never be closed - there will be no need.  There will be nothing to keep out.

So why are there walls in the first place?  If its not to keep anyone out, perhaps it is to provide a boundary marker - or maybe to display to the heavenly realm the physical place where God is now dwelling with His people? 

The walls in the Old Testament are built by men.  They are mostly defensive. 

The walls in Revelation are built by God and they are about salvation, the dwelling place of God, peace, hope and joy.  

Perhaps we need to focus a little less on building defensive walls around ourselves and run instead into the loving arms of a Father who promises to be our shield, our strong tower, our very present help.  The walls He builds are beautiful, precious, impregnable, safe and entirely without fear. 

Day 24 - Biscuits :)

Someone famous ( fictional, but famous nontheless) once said that life is like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you're gonna get.

Yesterday in the shower I was minding my own business and along came a thought that church is like a box of biscuits.  Well, when a thought like that rudely interrupts ones ablutions one feels obliged to follow it up and see where it goes 😊

I think my initial thought was about denominations.  I've been pondering the Catholic Protestant thing again today - being much cheered to hear the news that when Arlene Foster ( Protestant First Minister of Northern Ireland) attended the funeral of Martin McGuinness ( Catholic Deputy First Minister) she was applauded going into the church.  Hard to imagine that happening even half a dozen years ago.  Things are surely moving forward.  There is much hope.



Denominations are like the biscuits in the box.  They are all slightly different, but they are all biscuits.  Made by the same manufacturer.  Basically consisting of the same ingredients, with variations on a theme.  The church box of biscuits is called Family Circle because every biscuit belongs.  The Methodists might be a different shape from the Baptists, the Catholics might have a creme filling and the Protestants might have chocolate chips, the Pentecostals and Presbyterians and Bretheren might all taste slightly different - but they all have a place in the box.  And the reason they are all in the box is so that when someone wants to taste and see what God is like, they have a choice.  They might not like coconut, or chocolate chips, or plain shortbread - but because the Family Circle of God has lots of variety they are bound to find something which they think is delicious.

Imagine if the chocolate digestive were to turn round to the hobnob and tell it that it shouldnt be in the box because it didn't have a chocolate covering.  That chocolate biscuits were the only real biscuits and anything without chocolate really couldn't be considered a biscuit at all.     Ridiculous eh?  Because the chocolate digestive doesn't get to choose what goes in the box.  That's up to the manufacturer.  No matter how much the choc digestive protests, if the manufacturer wants the hobnob in there,  then that's what happens.



I suppose you can take the analogy one step further and say that the same principle applies to individual churches as well as to the Church.  Congregations should be full of variety.  If we look around on a Sunday and find that we are worshipping in a room full of people just like us - same age and stage, same class and culture, same tastes and habits then we are no longer a box of biscuits.  We are a packet of biscuits.   And there is nothing wrong with being a packet of biscuits - its just that when someone comes along wanting to taste and see what God is like, if they don't like the flavour of you and your people they won't stay.   They will head off to find a biscuit they like better.

Are you feeling hungry yet ?  🍪🍪🍪

Day 23 - family

Families are odd things arent they?   I find myself being a daughter and a sister in one family and a mother and a wife in another one , trying to negotiate my way through all sorts of permutations of those relationships without upsetting too many people or experiencing too much grief !  My family is a particularly complicated one given that my parents divorced when I was about 5 yrs old, both remarried, both then lost their spouses and married again.  So Ive had four step-parents and the step parents have got five children and eight grandchildren between them all of whom are sort of related to me through marriage - but not really.   Both my parents are now in their late seventies/early eighties and are starting to need a bit more care and attention than they have in the past.  My brother is in London and Im in Northern Ireland so trying to work out how we might be able to offer support and care to our parents as they get older is logistically quite a challenge.    I suppose in many ways my family is now pretty typical - its a divorced-remarried-step relationship-physically distanced set up ; bearing little or no relationship to the nuclear family with 2.4 kids of years gone by.

I wonder how ready the church is to respond to the huge shift there has been in society since divorce became so common and step-parenting and grandparenting became the norm rather than the exception. Family breakdown is now so common but that doesn't mean its consequences are any less devastating.  What it does mean is that many families are now living under the shadow of the failure of a previous relationship ( or sometimes the failure of two relationships)  and the pressure of trying to step-parent blended families where children from two previous marriages might now be expected to relate as siblings together.  There are issues for children of contact with the other parent - or with shared care between two households.   I get the feeling that the church doesnt yet really have a frame of reference for caring for and ministering to the complex thing that family has become.

We need to get up to speed because there is going to be an influx of people into the churches - people with broken and difficult backgrounds and complicated families.  People who need acceptance and love and understanding as they work through their past hurts with Jesus and experience His healing and freedom. We need to offer peace and mercy not judgement to those with chaotic pasts - especially to the children who have a skewed understanding of fatherhood and mothers and relationships and covenant and promises.  

Day 22 - Love

Think about someone you really love - the person you love most in the whole world.

No.  Really.  I want you to picture that person.  What is it about them that you love?  How do they make you feel?   Can you actually put into words things about them which make you love them?   I dont know about you, but I find it hard to describe something as profound and experiential as love.   Lots of poets and artists and songwriters have tried to capture something of the feeling which love is.  But mostly words just don't portray a fraction of the feelings which we experience when we think about, or are with people we deeply love.

If you are a parent then you probably agree that the love you feel for your children is something indescribably powerful.  It is a fierce desire to protect, a passionate rush of joy, a complete fascination with every detail of their beings and an all consuming interest in every aspect of their wellbeing.   It is also a pride in achievements, a delight in their personalities, a shared sense of humour and values and experience.  And that barely scratches the surface of what it means to love somebody.

It isnt necessarily easy to love someone.  Sometimes it is painful.  Sometimes it involves sacrifices and expense and time and lots and lots of patience.  But when you love someone you don't really count the cost.  Because the benefits of being loved in return are just so huge.   To love and be loved is surely the most precious thing in life.


Jesus says......

LOVE

your enemies.


Now I know that theologians will point out that the love Jesus talks about in Matthew 5 44-45 isnt the romantic or even the familial sort of love we have just been thinking about.  But nontheless..... if we are supposed to love our enemies then it has to go further than merely tolerating their presence or being able to forgive them for the wrongs they do to us.

Of course all of this has been brought to my mind by the death of Martin McGuinness - former IRA terrorist turned politician and peacemaker in Northern Ireland where I now live.  He was the enemy of many people in this land who saw him as being directly responsible for the murders of countless innocent civilians during the 30 year bloody reign of terror so quaintly and inappropriately called ' The Troubles'.   It is thought that there is not one family in Northern Ireland who did not lose someone or have someone injured in those 30 years.  Certainly everyone I have ever met here has a story to tell.  They dont tell you those stories right away.  But over time, in conversation, you hear the unfolding of histories and it is terribly sad.  Keith's uncle was a delivery driver who was parking his van when a bomb went off nearby.  He lost an arm and a leg.  It is not surprising that people here have very mixed feelings about someone like Martin McGuinness.


Im supposing that not many of us have ' enemies'.   We hopefully don't live in fear of our lives.  We probably are not aware of being the object of someones hatred.  We might not get along with someone or other terribly well, or we might wish that the office bore would go and get another job elsewhere.  But we would probably not classify those people as enemies.   However there are many Christians around the world right now who are being persecuted.  Shot, imprisoned, tortured, discriminated against, deprived, ridiculed, legislated against...... etc etc.   And we cannot take it for granted that we will not be in the same boat sometime soon.   If we can't learn to love those who mildy annoy us now, how can we learn to love our enemies when they appear on our doorstep?   Here in Northern Ireland Christians are one step ahead on that road.  They have had to search their hearts to find forgiveness.  They have had to decide to lay down 'the cause', and then  hatred and bitterness and emnity.  They have made the choice to sit down at the table with those who have killed their friends and relatives and build peace.    Some have managed to learn to love their enemies and the result is truly inspiring.  Catholics and Protestants are living and working and praying together.  Former terrorists are preaching sermons and leading people to Jesus.  Communities which have been divided by physical walls are now working together to integrate their schools and shops and parks.   Peace is a real thing.  And it looks like this.

Day 21 - salt

First day of spring and the gritters are out on the roads!   Snow is forecast and the temperature has plummeted.  Typical eh?  I planted some bedding plants the other day and now they are probably all going to freeze to death.

I was driving home from Belfast last night behind the road gritter and it made me think about the verse in Matthew 5

“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.''

No doubt Jesus was talking about the salt we put on our food and use as a preservative but last night I started thinking about the salt we throw on roads and paths in winter.  It is not refined, certainly not edible, but it is salt nonetheless and it is incredibly useful.   I just happen to live near one of the three areas in the UK which has salt deposits under the ground.  Up to two million tonnes of salt can be spread on the roads of the UK in any year - so the mines are busy carving and blasting out the rock salt all year round and stockpiling it to be used on the roads in the winter.  ( or in the spring !)  There is a depot not far from our house which stores mountains of pinky red road salt in big warehouses and its where the gritter lorries live when they are not out salting the roads.

You are the salt of the earth.

You might not feel like it, but God says you are.

Maybe you have thought about that verse and reckoned that you dont add much flavour to the world around you.  You dont seem to be able to stop the world from going rotten.  Maybe you have worried that you have lost your saltiness.  Or that you never really had much flavour in the first place.   But perhaps you arent that sort of salt!   Maybe you are the rough diamond, the rock salt, the sort which God uses to gently melt things and people which are frozen.   Maybe you are quietly going about being you , unaware of the fact that your very presence on the road is going to enable others to walk that road more safely. Without slipping up.   

Our world in these days seems to be spiritually cold, dangerous, hopeless , in need of rescue. Like Narnia when Aslan is absent it can often feel that it is ' always winter but never Christmas'.   But God is using us wherever we are and whatever we are doing , to bring about a thaw.  Because He has made you salty, just by being yourself you are affecting those around you in ways you probably dont ever see or appreciate.  This Lent why not ask God to use you to melt cold hard hearts.  To add flavour to dull, lifeless situations and to purify things which are going off.   He loves to answer prayers like that.

D\y 20 - privacy vs secrecy

Someone recently told me that they had promised their mother that they wouldn't discuss certain aspects of their family background with their soon-to-be spouse.    My immediate reaction was that you cant build a marriage on a foundation of secrets.  But their reasoning was that it wasnt secret keeping - it was a matter of privacy.   There were matters relating to the extended family which had nothing to do with the new spouse and therefore the new spouse didnt need to know them.   There was no lying involved.... it appeared that it was more a matter of not telling the whole story.   It wasnt even as though there were shameful or criminal or .... well, any issues which might have warranted such secrecy - it was just that this was a private family who wanted to keep their affairs to themselves.     Privacy or secrecy ?   Is there a difference and are either of them good things?

Jesus seems to have been a private person.  He used to go away by Himself into the mountains or some place quiet to be by Himself and to pray.  In the Garden of Gethsemane He removes Himself from the guys and wants to be alone.  And He tells us that when we pray we need to shut the door on the world and get private with God.   So in some ways privacy is clearly a good thing.  The Bible encourages us to be modest in our behaviour - closing the bathroom door isnt a matter of keeping
things from those we love - its merely a matter of decency!!   And of course we do expect our personal details to be kept private in some areas of our lives.....

( 😁 these both made me laugh out loud so I had to give you both of them  !)

Then there's the matter of secrets - not even Jesus knows the day or the hour that God is going to bring about the end.  It's a secret.  That's an interesting one!

In having read a bit around the subject of secrecy vs privacy today I've come across something useful

Privacy is given
Secrets are withheld
Privacy encourages a sense of self
Secrecy is used to control


I think on balance that we need an element of privacy in our lives - but that really it is something which should be given to us by others who love and respect us.  And therefore something we should be grateful for but not feel entitled to.  And secrets - although occasionally useful ( that surprise birthday party or special Christmas present just wouldnt be the same without a bit of secret- keeping ) are never a good idea when they involve lies and deception.    Satan is the father of lies.   Every lie, however small, comes from the pit of hell.  I'm convinced of it.   So we need to be very careful indeed.  For the health of our relationships we should endeavour to foster trust and openness - secrets tend to breed mistrust, insecurity and fear.  If keeping a secret from someone causes us to tell lies, behave in a devious manner, avoid people and feel guilty then its time to find another way.  And perhaps its also time to gently but clearly confront people who ask us to keep secrets and bring up our children to do ' surprises' rather than keep secrets ( the culture of ' keep quiet and dont tell anyone' has led to untold horrors for children in the past and ruined many lives by being used as a weapon of control.  )

Big subject.  Much to say.  But hopefully this has got you thinking about something you might not have heretofore considered.   Many blessings to you as we approach the half way spot on our Lenten journey xx

day 19 - springs

I'm in England visiting Mum at the moment.  Yesterday she asked the boys what they wanted to do and Josh said he wanted to take a photograph of the fountain in Letchworth !!!   He had seen it the last time we were here and for some reason capturing it on 'film' ( digital media) was the order of the day.  So off we went into town to do  our very best David Bailey impersonations.

  

Letchworth is a garden city so it is full of parks with ornamental fountains and lovely green spaces.  Nice eh?   It reminded me of Jesus saying to the Samaritan woman

13Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. 14But whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a fount of water springing up to eternal life.”  John 4 13-14

Whenever Ive read this verse before, the picture above is pretty much what Ive imagined Jesus to be talking about.  A big gush of water shooting up, visible and impressive.  But today I started wondering if that is what  Jesus had in mind when he was talking about ' a fount of water'.  In Bible times did they have fountains like the one in Letchworth?   No.  Because mechanical fountains weren't invented till the 15th century so the best 1st century Roman civilization could manage was a water feature based around a natural spring.   For the ordinary Samaritan woman to whom Jesus was speaking at the well........ possibly her only point of reference would have been the hole in the ground she was standing beside when Jesus asked her for a drink.  Water was a precious commodity then ( and still) in the Middle East.  Life or death ,not something to use for entertainment.

This got me thinking about something Colin Symes posted on Facebook yesterday - a video clip of a spring he had walked to a few days previously - which was just basically the start of a tiny stream way up in the forest somewhere.  A fracture in the earth from which water bubbles up and trickles out.

For some reason I find this comforting.  Whenever I have imagined those streams of living waters which are supposed to be gushing out of me and flowing out to those around me I have always felt a sense of .... disappointment?  Resignation?  That Im not quite up to scratch.  Yes there might be a small trickle flowing out of me but I'm no Caesars Palace Las Vegas  😊  People don't stop and stare and marvel at my spiritual awesomeness.   In fact people barely notice that Im a Christian at all most of the time!

 GOOD NEWS!  Maybe Jesus never meant for me to be a twenty five foot fountain, perhaps a small but constant, life giving, unstoppable bubbling is what He needs me to be.  Maybe just gently gurgling away in the place He has put me I can water the dry ground round about and make the barren places fertile.  Perhaps this is what He meant when He said to the woman at the well that she would never thirst again.  Never quest again for meaning and significance and love because all those things would now be bubbling up in her heart daily, over and over, unstoppable and gently overflowing.

Im sure you have all had this revelation long ago and are smiling at my foolishness.   But it is good to stop and re-think the things you think you know and be ready for adjustment every now and again.  It's all part of that water being living instead of stagnant.

Day 18 - turbulence

Flew over to England yesterday evening to spend the weekend with my Mum.  Took two of the three boys with me on a well travelled path which we have done lots and lots of times before.  Usually the hour long flight is entirely without incident..... but yesterday the weather was decidedly breezy and it made for a very uncomfortable last twenty minutes as the flight was descending towards Luton.

Im not good with turbulence.   I was sitting holding onto the seat in front with my eyes closed focusing on breathing and trying not to throw up.  Josh was sitting looking a bit grim - his main problem was that his ears were popping and feeling sore.  Ben, on the other hand,  was merrily playing games on his tablet seemingly entirely oblivious to the fact that the plane was being thrown about like a ship on stormy seas!!!   I seriously don't know how he could have been watching a video game when I had to keep my eyes closed to stop myself from feeling sick.  But then, that's life isnt it?  One persons turbulence is another persons ' what's the problem?'


Having had cause to reflect a little on the past, I can honestly say that one thing I have learned over the last fifteen years is that feelings, however turbulent, dont last.   The feelings of euphoria as one falls in love don't last.   Feelings of fear and anxiety about a new situation don't last - you do the new thing and a whole new set of feelings emerge.  Disappointments don't last.  Yes, sure, the event or person might always go down in your history as a disappointment - but your feelings about that person, place or thing will change over time until you can see them in a different light.  Misery might feel as if it is going to last forever, but it doesn't.  If you wait..... wait..... keep on waiting then feelings change.  Because feelings are fickle and  the heart cannot really be trusted.

It's funny, because in this day and age the world would tell us to ' follow our hearts'.  To trust ourselves and our own feelings.  If it feels right then it must be right.    But the Bible tells us the opposite.   How we feel about things isn't necessarily the way things really are.  How we feel about things might not be the truth.  We may be being deceived.  By our own hearts.

Ive spoken at length about depression in various blog posts - and one thing which having depression has taught me is that it is a lie.   I don't pretend to understand exactly what goes on when someone's brain gets overloaded and the feelings start on a downward spiral and suicidal thoughts rear their ugly head.  But Im sure its the work of the enemy - the father of lies.  How we feel when we are depressed is not the truth.  I cant explain it in a way which makes sense - because obviously when you are feeling those things they are very real to you at the time.  But next month or next year or next decade those feelings will have changed.  The circumstances might not have.  But the feelings will have.  Turbulence is horrible when you are going through it - but its merely weather.  An external buffeting.  through which you are travelling at hundreds of miles an hour and above or beneath which you will shortly emerge into clearer skies.

If you are going through turbulent times right now ( and let's face it, right now the whole world seems to be going through pretty turbulent times! ) then stay strapped in, hold on and set your course to go higher up.  Or set your course to come down to land.  Either way the turbulence will pass.  By its very nature it is transient.   And remember the 365 times in the Bible we are told not to fear.

Day 17 - Van Gough

Yesterday Josh had a day off school ( much to the annoyance of his two brothers who go to another school and dont get their St Patrick's day holiday until today.  Josh gets two days!) so he and I went to the beach to walk the dogs and have a spot of brunch.

We managed to nicely dodge the heavy showers and ended up in a seafront cafe having a big fat fry up at half eleven.  Whilst we were waiting for our food I suddenly realised that they were playing the radio, and the track which was on was this   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wrNFDxCRzU
Vincent.  By Don Mclean.

This song was the backdrop to my teens.  I played it constantly and it made me cry all the time.  There is something so sad about the song, and so beautiful.  A gang of friends and I used to take a blanket and a ghetto blaster down to the river with whatever food we could scrounge from home and spend long summer days just messing about and listening to Don Mclean.  I think we listened to other stuff too - but this song definitely transports me straight back to the 1980s and days of idle innocence.

It wasn't until much much later that I actually learned the story of Vincent Van Gough.  It is an amazing and tragic one.  Did you know that he never intended to become an artist?  His mission in life was to take the gospel to the poor.  His father and his grandfather were both preachers and Vincent really wanted to serve the poor so he went to work in a hideously deprived mining community in Belgium which had suffered a tragedy in the mine.  People were sick and injured, could barely afford to feed themselves and were living in appallingly bad housing.  Vincent lived among them sharing everything he had and living in the same poverty in order to win some for Christ.  Which he did.  But the established church was scandalised by his standard of living and poverty of dress and refused to support his endeavours.   Later he applied to be a missionary but was turned down because he didnt have any academic qualifications.    It was on the back of the rejections by the church that he went to art college.   Much of his work has Biblical themes.  But we don't get to see those paintings much because they aren't the ones which have fetched millions at auction,

To read a more full description of Vincent's life try this blog page which gives a good flavour of the man.
http://blog.godreports.com/2012/11/vincent-van-goghs-unappreciated-journey-with-christ/   


When I get to heaven ( assuming that I do, and then assuming that heaven is the sort of place where you can meet those who have gone before ) I am going to go right up to Mr Van Gough and give him the biggest hug.  I think he must have been the sort of man who just became overwhelmed with the suffering that he saw in the world.   Sensitive , compassionate, vulnerable and spiritual.   I heard a radio programme not long ago positing a theory about why he cut off his ear.  Apparently he had befriended a young woman who had had her ear bitten off by a dog and who was working as a maid in order to try to scrape together the money to have surgery to improve her appearance.   It is now thought that in a supreme    (and probably mentally disturbed) act of self sacrifice, Vincent cut off his own ear and gave it to her.  Presumably in the hope that it could help to heal her wound.

What a guy eh?

Im betting that in heaven there will not be a Van Gough painting anywhere to be seen.  Because what is worth several million pounds here on earth is worth nothing there.  But what will be on display is the faith and kindness and sacrifice of a man who was remarkably like Jesus.