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.