"Winging it"

I have often had dreams set in school where I am not prepared for a class. Either it is a group of pupils that I am not familiar with, or teaching a topic that I know nothing about, or I cannot find the classroom. Sometimes I am just late arriving in school and miss the first lesson.

Last night I had another one of those dreams where nothing seemed to be going right – but this time I was supposed to preaching in church! I had a sermon prepared and tucked away in a polly-pocket. I seemed to have a million other polly-pockets, some with song lyrics in them and they were all mixed up and I every so often I found the one with the sermon in it, simply to lose it again.

We were meeting in a hotel and there were lots of people there that have since left the church. The previous church leaders were there – Charlie and Richard Green. Cliff and Michelle, great friends of ours who worship with another church were also present.

We had a short time of very dynamic worship, and then it was time for the sermon. I took out my notes and discovered that all the Bible references that I had printed out were all in the King James version with the most complicated sentence structure that even I could not make head nor tail of.

There were lots of people from the hotel that joined us. I was conscious that they were just ready for harvesting – but my sermon notes kept disappearing , the microphone wouldn’t work and every time I went to speak, there was no volume in my voice! It was frustrating. At one point Charlie or Richard stepped up to tell me that we would just keep on worshipping seeing as I was unable to do my bit! I insisted that as nice as the worship was, it was not going to convict people and bring them to repentance, and they needed to hear my words! But could I say anything – no! I remember singing a very prophetic song and the Holy Spirit was just saying to me “Follow my lead, you don’t need the notes, you don’t need the microphone – just follow me!”

At that point I woke up! I never got to preach the sermon. I was convinced that the sermon was based on something either in Micah or Malachi, so at four o’clock in the morning I was trying to hard to read both books, forcing my eyes to try to focus on the words trying to find out what I had been about to say.

I was prompted to pray. I am not sure quite how lucid my prayers were at four o’clock in the morning but I was praying for the voice of the church. We have something to say that will revolutionise the way that people live their lives and yet too often we are too quiet – there is not volume. Too often we get sidetracked by the music and the performance side of things that people become just an audience and not participators. People never reach a point of decision because they are not challenged to do so. So that was kind of the direction of my prayers.

Then I started by praying about my own inability. It wasn’t just someone else in the dream that was having problems speaking – but me! I like clear cut paths and things to be mapped out and planned. I like to know exactly where I am going and how to get there and what to look for along the way! I prayed that I would be able to drop all of that and just unhesitatingly follow the prompting of the Spirit. That is not to say that I just launch myself out blindly. There is a preparation that comes beforehand – the time spent in the word, in communion with the Spirit and in meditation where I am being equipped. The equipping isn’t so that I can just follow a particular path on a particular map, but that in any situation I come across – off the path so to speak– I will have an answer for.

I am watching the Ryder Cup in snatches between cleaning and stuff. The players know how to play the game. How they play the game is about using the knowledge they have effectively – the wind direction, the slope of the greens, the choice of club and golf stroke. If they only ever played on one golf course, and the holes were never shifted – they would always choose the same club, hit the ball in the same way and would be guaranteed to pot the hole in the same number of strokes. They will have learnt to play with a set pattern. They would get as result!

However, if they never played the same course twice, or the holes were shifted regularly – they would always have to be adapting what they knew to meet the conditions of the course. Their choice of club and choice of stroke would be chosen carefully depending on the wind conditions, the lie of the grass – so many variables to factor in. But who is playing the real golf? The man who has played the one course so many times, he could do it blindfolded? Or the man who is a stranger, who just knows his clubs and his strokes well enough to meet any obstacle?

I guess what I am trying to say that I believe that I have been equipped by the Spirit. I should be confident to “wing it” trusting that I have all the resources that I need for any task. I don’t need a map of where I am going because I have the presence of the one who has scouted out ahead. I just need to be more spontaneous in my approach to the things of the Spirit.

Children of Men

Last night Joe and I went to the cinema to see the film “Children of Men”. It was labelled as sci-fi simply because it was set slightly into the future, but there wasn’t much in the way of science to it. It was quite a depressing view of the future. Apparently women have lost the ability to reproduce, though no explanations are given as to how. Society falls apart and Britain seems to be the only part of the world where there is some kind of structure. Illegal immigrants flooding into the country looking for some kind of hope are herded up, caged and transported to refugee camps.

Into all of this a baby is born. You would think that the birth would be celebrated but because it is not born to a white British couple, but a black refugee, everything has to be done in secret.

There is a high body count, lots of blood and lots of swear words. Not much in the way of humour, not much in the way of kindness and compassion – except from some of the people in the refugee camp. It was a hard film to watch in that every bad character trait that the human race of capable of demonstrating was present! There was no Dunkirk spirit. No sense the “we are in this together and we will triumph!” It seemed like the lack of children brought out the worst in people. Knowing that the human race was dying out – they were not going to go with dignity and nobility, or a stiff upper lip!

So much seems to be just below the surface in life and the film says that it does not take much to strip away the veneer. I suppose the death of the human race and the fact that no babies are born is more that “not much” – but what is on the inside inevitably finds its way to the surface.

I was reading earlier on in the week that what condemns a man isn’t what goes into a man, but what comes out of his heart. The Pharisees were pretty much of the thinking that as long as the outside looked fine, what went on in the inside was of no concern. As long as they kept the traditions – tithed their herbs, washed their hands and turned up on street corners praying – it didn’t matter that inside they were seething with envy, or resentment or unforgiveness.

Maybe that is the problem with a world without children. Jesus says “Unless you become like little children…” – if there are no children, where are your role models? Too quickly we grow up and forget what it is like to be a child. If we don’t have children around us to remind us how we should behave – then we are in trouble.

The things I didn’t eat!

I lost just one measly pound this week! For all my stumbling over fallen logs and wading through bog pits for two hours the other day – just one measly pound! It is just not a fair reflection of all the sacrifices I have made this week!

Can I just tell you about some of things I didn’t eat? With the curry on Thursday, not only did I just eat half the portion they served me, but I didn’t have any nan bread. That to my mind is the best part of any curry! I didn’t have any toffee pavlova for dessert either.

Joe has a large packet of fun-sized Mars selections. It was one of his birthday presents. He did not take it with him when he went to Glasgow. Did I dib in at any point during the week? Well, actually, yes I did – only the fun-sized Malteser packets, but they were carefully accounted for in my points tracker!

Saturday morning is usually a full Scottish breakfast – with all the elements – bacon, sausage, egg, beans, mushrooms and a well fired roll. Two toasted crumpets with peanut butter just don’t measure up. The usual afternoon cake with a cup of tea while watching the big race – even that was sacrificed in the name of dieting!

Sunday was a beautiful day for a picnic at Whin Park. It was warm enough for an ice-cream, but did I indulge? No I didn’t! I went blackberry picking instead!

Normally, I would not give it a second thought. I love food. I love the variety of tastes and textures on my tongue. I actually don’t mind giving these things up if - IF - I can see some rewards in it. One measly pound is not a big enough reward in my mind.

This is exactly why I gave up Weight Watchers the last time – the measly one pound losses after careful counting and saying “No” to treats. Two weeks and I am discouraged. I know that all the one pounds add up over the weeks. I know that it took years of over indulgence to get me to where I am today and the excess pounds are not going to shift it in a few short weeks. I know all that in my head – but my heart fells short changed. This little voice in my head says “I bet you could probably have eaten the nan bread and you would still have lost the measly one pound.” I should never listen to voices in my head – but they are kind of compelling!

Discipline is hard! As someone once quoted Joe, “A sacrifice is not a sacrifice unless it costs.”

When You touch me

I’m coming to the cross again (When You touch me)

I’m coming to the cross again
The place where all the sin and shame
Of what I do
Was squarely placed on You
The pressure’s more than I can take
I’ve tried to walk in my own strength
I lay it down
Before your thorny crown

I’ve tried so hard to be someone
That You’d be proud to call Your son
To earn the love
I know I don’t deserve
When I think I’m standing tall
The greater height the bigger fall
Now all I see
Is my futility

But when you touch me
I feel the burdens slipping down again
And when you touch me
Can’t stop the tears from falling down like rain

I feel the shame of shallowness
The kind of measured holiness
That seems to fit
The life I want to live
How much of this is wood and straw
I want to work for something more
Than piety
Respectability

When the words cut like a knife
And harsh rejection haunts my life
I tell myself
This was the pain You felt
You walked this road a thousand times
The victim of the cruellest crimes
And left for dead
By every friend You had

When the accusations came
You refused to play their game
No words of hate
To set the record straight
And when they taunted at the cross
If You are God then save yourself
You set Your face
To free this fallen race

(c) Stuart Townsend 1999

I treated myself to a new CD. As I was peeling wallpaper off the bathroom wall I was listening to it. I just felt when I got to this track that God did some peeling off of His own!

It is the kind of poem that I wish I had the sensitivity to God's Spirit to write - the honesty of admistting that I am not where I should be, and that a lot of what i do that I pass off as holiness is just "wood and straw".

And then God touches me. I wept as I thought of God's grace towards me. Even when I think I am standing tall, God knows so well that in reality I have fallen over and still He comes to restore.

"Babe in the Wood "- it's no pantomime!

It is amazing the sense of peace that a stick of wood with a yellow arrow on it can create!

Because of the curry last night I was way over my Weight Watcher’s points, so I decided to try and claw a few back by going for a walk. The plan was for a half hour walk around a pleasant little wood I passed on the road a couple of days ago. About five miles away from there was an herb garden that does teas and coffees – a nice end to a busy week.

That was the plan! The Forestry commission are very good about making the best use of the woods. Usually beside the car park there is a big map of the place with all the various trails marked on it, telling you how long the yellow path is, or the blue one, or the red one and whether it is easily accessible or not. Tomfat Wood doesn’t have one.

I figured I would just walk along a path and after a while, take a left, and then another left, and another left and that by my reckoning would be like a big square and should get me back to the start. Earlier this afternoon I borrowed a book out of the staff library about the differences between men and women. Men have a great sense of direction, dating back from the cavemen times, while women don’t! I should have paid attention. I did the right amount of left turns but did not end back at the start! After about half an hour of walking I was lost. I suppose I could have retraced my steps, but I had come down some steep hills and I did not fancy climbing up them! I met a lady with three dogs and asked her for directions back to the car park.

She was very good telling me to follow the path I was one, past a small quarry, through a very big puddle and up a steep hill. That bit was fine. I wasn’t sure whether she said to turn left or right at the cross roads. I turned left. It looked a perfectly fine path, but after twenty minutes or so turned in a bog of squelching mud. Did I turn around and retrace my steps? Well, it had been mostly downhill and I was almost through the boggy ground. And I could see daylight through the trees. I figured that at worse, if I walked around the edge of the wood, I would find the car park eventually!

Did I ever? I just got more and more lost. There were no paths, no people, no dogs, no car park and the light was fading! I began to be just a little bit anxious. At this point I had been walking for an hour and a half! There was nothing to tell me whether I was walking in the right direction.

I saw a deer poking around in the trees, which I wouldn’t have seen if I had not been lost. I saw a variety of mushrooms and toadstools, and I saw some very small brown frogs hopping along the path earlier – so that was nice!

I felt very much like the lost sheep though, and although I didn’t pray properly I think God must have read my distressed thoughts! Suddenly there was a path and a stick with a yellow arrow on it! A path marker! I was no longer lost, but on a real path. A sense of relief washed over me and I followed the path back to the car park

My half hour stroll along a clear path had turned into a two and a half hour clamber over fallen tree trunks and wading through bog marshes!

I had to restrain myself from kissing the bonnet of my car once I had finally returned to the car park.

I think I fully earned the packet of Maltesers I ate when I got home - fun size, of course – just two points!

Dutch biscuits and rosehip syrup.

It is amazing the kinds of things that trigger memories. I remember years ago going out for a meal with Joe to a local pub. At the end of the meal we had tea and coffee. Balanced on the edge of the saucer was an individually wrapped biscuit. It was a caramel, ginger, finger sized biscuit. Once unwrapped, the smell of it evoked really strong memories of childhood. My father was part Dutch and used to visit Holland a few times a year. He always brought back gifts – headscarves with windmills or tulips printed on them, very small wooden clogs that you hung on a hook on the wall and packets of “speculars” – Dutch biscuits in the shape of windmills that smelt of ginger and caramel. I am not a fan of anything with ginger in it apart from stirfrys, but I adored these biscuits! The memory was so strong – I just sat there with the biscuit held to my nose, and a glazed look over my face.

A couple of days ago I had another memory moment. I had gone out for a long walk. Joe and I had planned to go out for his birthday meal – an Indian restaurant that the just recently opened up in the city. I needed points to play with – since joining Weight Watchers one just cannot eat something without working out how many calories or grams of fat one is dealing with. I intended to go for a walk, pick some blackberries, stop off at the shop to buy some apples and stew them up. Well, there were no blackberries in sight. There were lots of the most wonderfully coloured mushrooms or toadstools!

It was the rosehips that did it! Back in the 1960’s there was a government thing about collecting rosehips. We were encouraged to collect them, send them somewhere, and they got made into rosehip syrup. I think it was something that was good for you, like cod-liver oil but much nicer tasting! I can remember our primary school class going off for many an afternoon with our containers to collect rosehips.

It was a nice memory – being out of school, walking over the fields, knee deep in grass and avoiding the cowpats and the nettles to get to the rosehips. I don’t suppose the government today would want children out in the fields collecting rosehips. They probably wouldn’t know what to do with the rosehips anyway. They have probably decided that rosehip syrup really isn’t that good for children either compared to some other chemical collection masquerading as vitamin supplements.

Memories matter! The Bible has a lot to say about remembering things – listening to the reminders. I was reading this morning in Hebrews about the experiences of the Israelites being written down as a reminder for everyone else to learn from their mistakes. After sending in the spies to look out the land, they got very cold feet and wanted to head back to Egypt. God was not impressed and the only thing that stopped him disposing of the rebellious horde was Moses’ intercession. The people survived that day, but only to die another day on the journey through the wilderness. There fate, written down in detail, reminds me that to not trust God, to complain, to reject his claim on my life or to forget his mighty acts in my life is to court disaster.

To the next three and a half pounds

I think that very often the first step in making a change in our lives begins with admitting that there is a change that needs to be made!

For too long I have swithered about doing something about my weight. My nieces wedding last year although it provided motivation to loose weight, did not actually get translated into real action – so the weight never got lost. I just went up a dress size so that I would feel comfortable in whatever I wore for the day!

I have become quite lazy in some areas of my life and need to establish a bit of self control. So I joined Weight Watchers last week! A friend of mine joined a few years ago and has lost a tremendous amount of weight. People who have not seen her for quite as while no longer recognise her!

I hate Weight Watchers! I hate paying money to climb onto scales. ( I lost three and a half pounds this week.) I hate the discipline involved. Weighing out portion sizes to see what I ought to be eating has been a real eye opener. To some extent I do eat healthy food – I just eat too much of it! I think what I hate most is having to admit that on my own I can’t do anything that is as effective. On my own I have failed! I don’t have the required will power to say “No” to Indian takeaways! (Incidentally that does not make me a bad person!)

I am going to WW simply because I need to make myself accountable to someone. Left to my own devices, I have good intentions, but I don’t hold a whip over myself to make sure that I do it. The lady at Weight Watcher’s does!

It is not a sign of weakness to enlist the aid of other people to help us to do the things we cannot do for ourselves. It is recognising that we have weaknesses that need to be dealt with and that other people can provide the support we need.

I am sure that this translates into the spiritual realm somewhere.

Confession - Joining WW is like making a confession, openly admitting to thirty or so women in the room with you that, as far as eating is concerned, you are out of control. I don’t think we do enough confession in the church setting. We do not always openly admit that there are areas of life that we are struggling with.

Accountability – By joining WW I am making myself responsible to someone each week and have to report back on my successes and failures. Someone else knows what is going on in my “eating” life. To some extent she only knows what I choose to tell her – but if I don’t tell her, the advice that she gives is not the best advice to help me. I don’t believe for a moment that she is going to share my secrets with the rest of the women, or point the finger and laugh at me. I trust her. In the church setting we need to be accountable – to be more open and more vulnerable.

Support – It is not just what the lady at the front says that makes the difference but the conversations that I have with the other women. They are “normal” like me – with all their wobbly bits still in place. They are not success stories that make me feel I will never get there. Support in the church setting is not the prerogative of the pastor alone. It is all of us working together.

So cool!

This is so exciting! Thinking about the poem and getting an illustrator and a publisher – I took it a step further!

I don’t know any children’s illustrators so I “googled” it and arrived an internet directory of illustrators. They list loads of names and as you follow the links they showcase their work. I just picked a name at random, a name I liked the sound of (that is how I pick out my horses!), and someone living in the UK. I thought that if things came to anything, I would be able to contact the person easily.

I emailed the lady to explain about the poem, the illustrations and the publisher. I confessed that I was winging it and had really no clear idea how to go about it. I thought that if she just turned me down, I had lost nothing really. I was just pushing the door to see if it opened.

It opened! She emailed me back saying that the poem evoked very strong images and carried a deeper message too. She gave some suggestions about the options I might want to consider.

I could send it to a publisher and if they accepted it, I could tell them that I have an illustrator in mind. It might end up in an anthology, in which case the publisher might already have illustrators.

I could commission the illustrations and send the whole package – the poem and the pictures to the publisher. It might make a limited edition book for specifically Christian market.

I could go down the self publishing path, buying the illustrations and negotiating with the printers. I get the book I want, but they don’t manage the sales side of things. Contracts are drawn up between the writer and the artist about royalties and copyright at stuff.

I think that she is certainly interested in being involved!

So, I am well excited! I have great ideas but rarely take steps to make things a reality! It all looks so possible and not just pie-in-the-sky dreaming.

I am going to have a good talk with Joe about it and get his advice and talk with my friend, Mark, who may know how to contact a publisher.

This is so cool!

Absolutely delighted

As you know, I have been a member of Faithwriters.com for a few years. Most weeks I try to participate in the weekly challenge. I probably do get more caught up in winning and loosing than I ought to do – it is the competitive thing in me! Yesterday I was really delighted find my poem had won top spot.

A few of the comments made by the FW family said that I ought to try to get the poem published. As I wrote it, I could envision illustrations, but I am no artist. Maybe that ought to be my next challenge – to find a children’s illustrator and to find a publisher!

What, little tree, will you be?

Little tree, little tree
What will you be
When you grow tall
No longer small?
What, little tree, will you be?

I’ll be a crib
For the Saviour child
The holy babe
So meek and mild
I’ll rock Him gently
Through the night
Beneath the moon
While stars shine bright
That’s what this little tree
Will be!

Little tree, little tree
What will you be
When you grow tall
No longer small?
What, little tree, will you be?

With billowing sails
I’ll be a great ship
On a flurry of waves
I will rise and dip
And the Saviour
Will sleep
As I bear him along
Sturdy and strong
Upon the ocean deep
When winds start to toss
And clouds march across
The blue sky
Will I shake him
And wake him?
Others will, not I
He will raise up his arm
And the storm will calm
At his powerful word
In awe men will quiver
And demons will shiver
At what they have seen and heard
That’s what this little tree
Will be!

Little tree, little tree
What will you be
When you grow tall
No longer small?
What, little tree, will you be?

There’ll come a day
So dark and grey
I’ll lift him up high
As they watch him die
Mankind so cruel
To fashion a tool
Like this cross
As they hammer a nail
Through flesh soft and frail
They feel no loss
No regret and no shame
Not caring, or knowing
His crimson blood flowing
He’s bearing their shame
They witness his cry
“Abandoned am I!
And darkness steals over the sky
God’s face turns away
On that evil day
Then He hears his Son say
“It is finished”
Then falls his Son’s head
The Saviour is dead
And sin, the foul curse, melts away
That’s what this little tree
Will be!

Little tree, little tree
Do not weep or mourn
On the day the Son rises
All creation‘s reborn
Now hold we our breath
And eagerly wait
For His glorious victory
So awesome and great.

(c) Melanie Kerr 2006

Not at home

Jonathan Edwards made a resolution that he would live in such a way hat when he looked back on his life when he was old, he would have no regrets. There would not be a sense of wishing he had done something that he had the chance to do, but never did. I, sadly, do have regrets.

I regret not attending some of the weddings of my brothers and sisters. I was newly a Christian at the time of some of them and deeply disapproved of the chosen lifestyles and choices of husbands/wives. I was brash enough to think that I was right and they were wrong. I didn’t go to the weddings because…if you have seen the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, the scene quite near the end where Catherine de Boer and her daughter keep away from the wedding of Darcy and Elizabeth – well, that disapproving look says it all. That was me! I cut my nose off to spite my face and it didn’t change anything!

I would like to think that I am different now. I am less harsh and down-the-line, hopefully more generous. When a friend of ours invited us along to the Mormon Church to witness her baptism, Joe and I chose to go. The Mormon Church and I have a bitter history. While I was asking Jesus to be Lord of my life, my sister was becoming a member of the Mormon Church. At the time I visited her determined to “set her right” and push her onto right path. Things did not work out that well and we didn’t speak for a while afterwards! Looking back over the years, I still cannot see that her faith has enhanced her life – but that is another story!

I guess I must have had an invisible sign hovering over me – the body language speaking very clearly – “Don’t even attempt to witness to me!” No one approached, except in the most friendly and inoffensive manner. I know our friend was delighted to see us.

I have rarely felt so uncomfortable in a place or worship. Part of it was probably the baggage of attitude that I brought with me, but seriously, I never felt the presence of God. I don’t really know enough about Mormonism to pick holes in their theology. I just know that they have some very different views from mainstream Christians. The people were nice, but, for me, the Spirit of God wasn’t there. The reality of a life producing faith just wasn’t there. Not for me, anyway.

The service lasted about an hour. It was very serious and …I am trying not to say the word “dull” but that comes to mind. A small choir of men sang a wonderful hymn “The Lord is my Shepherd”. Maybe it is the worship leader in me but it wasn’t exuberant enough. Such wonderful words needed heart and soul and spirit. I wanted to say “Is He really your shepherd? If He is then why aren’t you exploding with joy?”

Part of the service included watching a DVD called “The Witnesses” – fifteen witnesses to the truth they had found in Mormonism. They thankfully stopped at number five. Ninety percent of what they were saying, I could go along with – but the ten percent of other stuff was not scriptural. Joe said afterwards that for him that kind of “church” is the most dangerous kind. There is so much truth that the error sneaks in. It is like getting someone to eat an unpleasant tasting tablet by sticking it in a banana! The banana is easy to digest, but you don’t notice the tablet. Tiny though the error might be, it infects the rest of the truth, twisting it to something it is not supposed to be. We are all susceptible to twisting the truth, but the Bible acts as a plumb-line, and the prompting of the Spirit keep us from error.

I felt really sad was that our friend had been unable to find her answers in our church. She had been a member of our church for a while many years ago. I felt sad that we had not managed to meet her needs – we failed to be the body that she needed. Actually, the problem might not lie with us. Just because you are being the right kind of body, does not mean that people wish to fit themselves into it.

Incidentally – to go back to places of worship where I have felt at home – amazingly enough – one such place was actually a Muslim mosque! Just a few miles away from the airport at Larnaca, in Cyprus, there is a small mosque. It is on the edge of a salt lake. It is surrounded by trees. Inside it is just one big empty space with carpets. I felt the presence of God there so strongly. It may have been just the silence and the peace of the place, but I felt close to God there.

Is he dead?

I think this is a genuis idea. It is in the Observer Food Monthly magazine. It is one of the winning entires of the Seeds of Change photography competition. Being a food producer, the photo had to have some connection with food.

It reminds me of the Brick Testament where a some has re-told stories of the bible through lego people. Maybe John Roberts, the winning photographer, should have a stab at doing Bbile stories with jelly babies.

Incidentally I really like jelly babies.

Where do people get these ideas?

I'll take the high road...

Joe and I have a very curious eccentricity, which so far we have not discovered anyone else shares! When we are away on holiday we take days off from one another! Think about it – throughout the normal working year we spend quite a bit of time apart. We don’t see each other during the day. Sometimes we don’t see each other in the evenings if I am away at music practice, or he is attending a union meeting. Suddenly we are in each other’s company for 24 hours! I defy any loving couple not to find that hard at least for a few days! We don’t have distractions like children – it is just Joe and I. So we devised a system to spend a day apart. It doesn’t always work! In Egypt it was not cultural for a woman to travel alone. In Saltsburg Joe found something really interesting to do on his day off and I gate-crashed! There are things that Joe loves to do like trailing across World War 1 battle sites that do nothing for me. There are things like shopping and visiting churches that do nothing for Joe. I am not saying that we do not attempt to share one another’s interests because we do, but days off are good ideas!

Not everything it life hoists the flag to the top of the pole for me. There are things that just don’t appeal. Trailing around museums does not appeal. I can do art galleries at a push.

I came across a really insightful chapter in one of the books in my bookcase the other week. The book, “God is Closer Than You Think” is by John Ortberg. The chapter is about spiritual pathways and begins with a quotation from C S Lewis, “Why else were individual created, but that God, loving all infinitely, should love them each differently.”

John Ortberg recognises this and writes about pathways to God. He is talking about the different ways that people relate to God. We all desire to connect with God but we don’t all do it in the same way.

Some people make the connection through the mind – reading and analysing the Bible. They hear God best when they are learning. They delight in Greek or Hebrew words. They are thinkers or philosophers and love to engage in discussion.

Other people connect with God through relationships – the small group junkies. They are not people who are into solitude but like to be with people.

Still others find the connection through serving or helping others. They are motivated by the passage in Matthew – “when I was hungry – did you feed me…”

Ortbreg identifies a number of pathways – through worship, through being active in the political arena, through retreats and contemplation or through being outside and communing with nature. It is not for us to ignore any of the pathways to connecting with God, but some are easier than others for us.

I find myself to be naturally making connections with the mind. Reading and studying God’s word really does hoist the flag for me. I am not so much into Greek and Hebrew words – but God speaks to me through His word. It is not dull or lifeless to me, but bristling with revelation. Word bombs explode inside my head and there is always something new to see – another path to explore. That is not to say that I am dull to worship, or to seeing God in the nature around me – it is just I love the written word!

To some extent, reading the chapter was like someone opening a prison door – it is OK to study the Bible and get excited about it! It also explains why sometimes I find it hard to relate to some people who do not share my passion for words. What rocks my boat does not rock the boats of other people. I have a little bit of the political activist in me and I don’t always see in reflected in people around me. People are different. We say that we acknowledge and respect the uniqueness of people but then we push them into a mould to make them just like everyone else. We think that is “this” works for me, then it has to work for her. I can remember earnestly thrusting a friend into a bible study on the character of God to deepen her relationship with Him. Getting her to switch off the TV was an accomplishment – but maybe she was one the relational types that just needed someone to be a friend, to watch TV with her and chat.

What Ortberg does challenge me on is to take a walk along the pathways I least explore and allow God to connect with me. It would stretch me in a way that perhaps a Bible study would not.

Slug Trails

In the house my mother lived in before she moved into her sheltered housing flat was the end house on a terraced row. It had the only backyard that was not covered in concrete or paving slabs. There wasn’t any grass, just lots of rose bushes.

I suppose it is inevitable that with a proper garden you get beetles and spiders, but it was the slugs that did me in. If the slugs had stuck to the garden we could probably have co-existed without much fuss. Somehow or other the slugs found their way into the house. Every morning there were slug trails in erratic patterns around the carpet under the dining table. They were sticky, slimy and silvery and always there in the morning.

One evening, late in the year, the phone rang. I was in the kitchen at the time and walked through the living room to pick up the receiver. Just because the slug trails are there in the morning, does not mean that the slugs make them in the morning! This lesson I learned as I stepped onto a slug. Sad to say, I wasn’t wearing shoes at the time and the squashed slug oozed between my toes. I was hopping round the room, screaming down the phone to my sister, “Ooh! Ooh! Oh no! Arrgh! It is gross! Yuk! Yuk!” It was very unpleasant!

This morning brought back those unpleasant memories! There was a slug trail in the hall way! The slug had kindly kept its ramblings to near the back door. A silvery trail of slime and goo marked its path. We have had things done to the garden over the last few weeks. I traced the slug trail back to a bin that my husband had been using to collect bits of a fir tree in as he was hacking at the branches. We are taking down a number of the trees. The slug had hitched a ride and then began exploring!

Spotting the slug trail is an easy thing. It stands out. In the book of Genesis, the path that Abraham took through the land of Israel was also easy to spot. Everywhere that Abraham stopped, he built an altar. Sometimes he went back to places where he had been before and worshipped there.

In the New Testament, when John the Baptist was imprisoned, he wanted to know whether Jesus really was the man who would come after him. He sent his disciples to find out. The path that Jesus walked was clear. The lame walked, the dumb spoke, demons were cast out and people were raised from the dead. Jesus left behind him a clear trail of changed, or challenged, people.

It just makes me wonder what kind of a trail I am leaving for others to follow! Do I want people to walk in my path? Are the words that I speak much like the unpleasant slug that gets squashed between the toes? Or do I leave a trails that demonstrates my worship of God, and my care for the people He loves?

Surreal moments

There is a scene in the film Notting Hill where the characters have “surreal moments”. Yesterday was a bit surreal – it was totally out of the normal run of things. The day for the most part was normal – as normal as first day back at school can be normal. It was after school that things got surreal!

I was very tired and decided to lie down on the sofa and listen to a worship CD. I was drifting off rather nicely when the doorbell rang. A few thoughts went through my mind – had I left the lights on in the car and a neighbour was coming to tell me, was it a double glazing salesman, or someone trying to convince me to change my gas and electricity supplier.? I recognised the man immediately – it was the husband of a friend from Rugby – the friend that I had regularly wrote letters to one year when she was going through a tough time. It turned out that they had decided to take a driving holiday – a whistle stop tour of Scotland, popping in to surprise us along the way. (I could never be that casual and off the cuff!)

Words really fail to say just how delighted I was that they were visiting. It was like Christmas!

My friend and I go back a long way. She has always been an inspiration to me, but the last few years have been hard. Her relationship with God has not been a bed of roses. A great deal of what we had in common was our faith, and when she was going through difficult times, it wasn’t always easy. My enthusiasm - I guess at times I probably made her uncomfortable! When you just want to keep God at a safe distance you probably don’t want to be around someone burning with a passion!

Maybe it is because I am a writer I think that the solution to feeling down is to read something uplifting. The written word does it for me! “Read this and you will feel much better” is my philosophy. I thought that if she read some of the poems and short stories that I had written, it would re-ignite her passion, so I left her with two files of my work – volumes one and two! As it was she was stirred by some of the things she read! But she held onto volumes one and two for so long that I did think about replacing them – printing them off again and sticking them in a new file. Her visit yesterday reunited me with volumes one and two!

It was so wonderful to see her and her husband. I have been drunk only twice in my life. One of those times was round at their house one New Year sampling their collection of liqueurs. If you are going to get drunk, there is no safer place that among people you like and trust! I didn’t know these things had whisky in them – and I was sorely missing Joe!

It was surreal – sitting in a pub on the banks of Loch Ness with three of my most favourite people in the world. I felt specially blessed. It kind of out weighed all the not so good stuff of first day back at school!

Mind reading

In the late nineteen eighties, I left my job to join an evangelistic outreach team working with a church in Inverness for a year. It was the right thing to do and the right place to be doing it. At the end of the year, it was back to the "real" world. I chose to remain in Inverness, and make the church there my family.

Trying to get a job afterwards proved most difficult. Teaching jobs were like gold mines. One plum job that had "Melanie" written all over it was advertsied. I applied, was interviewed, and not appointed. That was my first step on the downward spiral of unemployment.

What followed was eight months of rejection. Because of my qualifications, no one wanted me. I was overqualified to wait on tables, to clean floors, to file letters or any of the other jobs I had applied for. No one wanted me.

This downward spiral of unemployment was accompanied by a downward spiral into depression. Slowly but surely confidence in myself was being eroded. Every area of my life seemed to be affected. I felt everyone was looking at me and seeing failure written into everything I did. It was like being sucked into quicksand.

Perhaps someone looking on would not have noticed anything amiss. I did not appear on the surface to be worried or anxious. I didn’t withdraw myself from participating in church activities. I sang just as off-tune as ever, I prayed as fervently and shared insights at Bible studies. On the outside things seemed to be fine.

I would have to admit that there was a resentment building up that no one seemed to notice! I thought that if “these people” were really hearing from God, then they would know how miserable I was inside. If they were in touch with the divine, they would know. I don’t suppose that is a unique reaction to take, or that I am the only one who has ever travelled that path.

God’s reaction to that line of thinking was “Why don’t you just tell them how you feel?” Christians are not mind readers, and yet we expect them to be. There are occasions when God brings a word of knowledge to open up a situation, but when a person is quite capable of telling someone, He probably doesn’t see the need to do that. Eventually I did tell someone. My problems did not instantly lift, but because they were out in the open, the air was getting the wounds and healing was happening.

Since then I have always told people and told myself that if there is something bothering me, I should not go down the route of thinking “If they were really hearing from God…” I should not expect people to be mind-readers.

I think it must be a pride thing. It takes humility to admit that we are not the “more than conquerors” that Romans says we are. I also think there is a hurdle to climb over in the sense that you think that people are not going to understand. You see nothing in their lives that tells you that they have also been this way and they know how you feel. Too few people confess their weaknesses, so you get the impression that they don’t have any!

I am sorry to admit that I have been thinking that people ought to know how I feel without being humble enough to tell them that things are not wonderful. I don’t look around at my life and see holes everywhere, but there are areas where I am struggling and I don’t ask for help. I think sometimes that I inhabit a different planet and I don’t speak the same language as other people!

All this came to light at our ladies Bible study last night. I knew that I was on shaky ground when I found out we were studying Hannah. The whole issue of not being able to have children is guaranteed to throw a light on my vulnerabilities. I spent a lot of time in prayer trying to shore up the defences before I left – “Please, God, don’t let me bawl my eyes out.”

And I thought I was doing so well. I have no idea just what words turned the key and the floodgates opened – but I wept buckets! It was good that I was in an entirely supportive atmosphere, surrounded by friends that cared. I just wish that I had said something months ago – when the emotions were at a manageable level.

There are some people that would hold to the view that it is enough to talk through sensitive issues with God alone and they get sorted. I don’t believe that! I don’t believe either that you spread the message of your weaknesses to all and sundry – that could cause harm. It is important that someone knows the warts and all version of your life history.

Taking the rollercoaster ride

I have been thinking about my brother, Richard, recently. He is the youngest of my two brothers, though I suppose that somewhere in his forties now is hardly “young”. Joe and I have stayed with him when we have been down to visit the folks in Rugby, and his comment after spending an hour or two in Richard’s company, for the first time, was “He will either be a millionaire or totally bankrupt by the time he is forty.” I think he is swinging close to being bankrupt, but the millionaire part is waiting in the wings.

Richard has amazing self confidence. He left school when he was sixteen without any qualifications. He is very much a “hands on” kind of person. He will look at something like an extension to someone’s house, someone’s kitchen, or bathroom and go home and build it! He has no formal qualifications in architecture and yet his advice is sought out by big firms and he is asked to design shopping malls. He just talks confidence all the time. He may know absolutely nothing about something, read up on it for a couple of hours, and talk through it like he is an expert!

He invents things by adapting what someone else has made to suit his purposes. He applies for a patent on his invention and then the big companies who provided the shoulders to climb on take his to court and say that he has copied them – which to some extent he has.

He is a risk taker, and I think that is what I admire about him.

I don’t want to be self confident in quite the same way as Richard. I want to be God confident. Too often I play it really safe in the sense that I am very cautious. I am hesitant to plough all of my energy and time into something until I am 120% sure that it will succeed.

A couple of years ago I wrote regular letters to a friend of mine – I typed them, so there are copies of them on the hard disk. There is something like a dozen spanning an entire year – regular monthly updates of life in the Kerr household. They trace the beginnings of my involvement with Faitheriters.com and virtually every letter involves a debate about publishing a collection of poetry.

If I was my brother Richard, with all his confidence and risk taking – the book or books would be sitting on the bookshelf by now. He would have seen it in his mind’s eye, not even questioned whether they were “good enough”, and started contacting publishers!

Last night we were praying about the resurrection power of Jesus. Many of us have dead dreams that God wants to resurrect. As we were talking things through and praying, the reasoning bit of my mind kept up the mantra – “This is not about me – I am fulfilling all I have set out to do – there are no dead dreams for me to pursue.”

In a sense that is true. The dream of publishing a book of poetry is not dead. If this was a sci fi thing I would say it is suspended animation, or in stasis. Suspended animation is as good as dead in that there is not interaction with the world around.

It must be very hard being married to my brother – a real rollercoaster of a ride. He achieves things that other people just dream about doing. I want to be like that. I don’t want my confidence to be in me and in what I can do if I put my mind to it – but in God!

The mediocre has never been God’s plan for my life.

Green Cheese

There is a Scottish proverb, “Ye ne'er see green cheese but your een reels,” that my husband often quotes. Don’t ask me to translate “een reels” as I have no clue. The saying is about being covetous – seeing what someone else has and wanting it. The whole phrase has been shortened in our house to simply saying “green cheese”. It tends to be me that sees Joe with something and saying, “Where’s mine?” He points at me and chants “Green cheese!”

At work Joe completed a series of tests that led to him getting an ECDL qualification. The European Computer Driver’s License proves to an employer that the holder can use various Microsoft applications effectively to a certain standard. I think these kind of qualifications are always being superceded by something new – but getting the certificate also means you get a little credit sized piece of plastic. It is blue with a circle of stars on it. When Joe wafted in front of me I had a green cheese moment!

It just so happened that the school were able to negotiate a deal for ECDL training. The local authority was willing to pay all the costs for the materials, and tutors and the costs of sitting the tests. I thought it was a good deal. We have 35 hours of personal time that we have to account for every year and although I can easily fill 35 hours, not everything I do qualifies as “the” 35 hours. Marking doesn’t qualify, developing new units doesn’t qualify – anything that you normally do in your capacity as teacher doesn’t qualify! It has to be something that enhances you professional skills.

Well, I thought it would be a stroll in the park. I am fairly computer literate! The famous words of a song come to mind here – Frank Sinatra – “I did it my way”. It turned out that “my way” wasn’t “their way”. The end result might be the same but I got their by a different route. It was all about jumping through the right hoops in the right order. I admit that along the way I have learnt things that I didn’t know before, but much of the stuff was familiar – except maybe for databases which I found the easiest to do as it was entirely new to me so I didn’t have to unlearn any bad habits.

Upshot of it all is my certificate and my little blue card arrived in the post yesterday! I can now drive a computer all the way across Europe!

I was reading Numbers 31 this morning. The Israelites sent 12,000 men into a battle against the Moabites or the Midianites. 12,000 men returned at the end of the battle. They lost no one along the way! They made a point of giving an offering to Moses to give to God because they recognised that their victory had nothing to do with them – it wasn’t their weapons or their training that won the fight, but Gods’ goodness towards them. I just want to say thanks to God for helping me to get my ECDL certificate!

I see a fire burning...

I frequently lie awake at nights and wonder why my husband does not wake himself up with the volume of his snoring! Sometimes it can be quite loud! I suppose that I should not have been surprised when the thunder storm last night didn’t wake him up either. It wasn’t just the grumbles and rumbles that you sometimes get, but really loud cracks and snaps and crashes. It was really loud! But did the man even stir – not a bit!

It seems an automatic response for me to start counting when the lightning flashes. Divide the number by four and you can calculate how far away the storm is. I never managed to count further than five! That is one and a quarter miles away. The lightning was just flashes in the sky. The noise was much more impressive! I actually thought about going outside – not just to take the washing down from the line, but to lie on my back on the grass in the playing field and just watch the show! Then the thought of being zapped and fried like an egg did not appeal!

When I lived in Cyprus one of the most stirring things was to watch the lightning over the Troodos mountains. We lived far enough away not to hear the thunder part of it, but the lightning was really spectacular. It was not just flashes of light, but proper forks and things. It wasn’t just plain, boring white either, but rainbow colours of light flashing and illuminating the clouds.

A number of years ago, someone brought a prophecy over me that God’s lightning would fall on me. I would be spiritually zapped and would be energised to do what God anointed me to do. Holy Ghost fire blazing through me – that kind of thing! I also remember singing a chorus at the time – “I see a fire burning…I see a nation turning..” The idea was of God’s revival fire hitting us and blazing with purity.

At the time I had recently watched a nature documentary about lightning. The film makers had slowed down the film, frame by frame. Just as the lightning from above struck the earth, there was this small fork of light coming up from the ground. The lightning coming down didn’t just land anywhere – it touched the lightning that was going upwards from the ground! The light from the ground was generated by the activity of positive and negative ions in the ground and the lightning from above was being attracted to it! There was nothing random, in a sense of where the lightning would strike – it struck where the ground was generating the ions. The ground was generating the ions in response to the ions being generated in the air!

When Elijah built his altar and placed his bull upon it, and then doused the sacrifice with water, the bible account tells us that the lightning fell. The fire consumed the bull, the wood, the water and even burnt the stones. The fire fell in a very exact spot. It was as if Elijah’s faith and fervour were like those positive and negative ions building up on the earth and God’s fire was attracted to it. God is always attracted to our demonstrations of faith. The greater our demonstration of faith is, the greater His display of glory is.

I was musing about this prophecy about being zapped by Holy Spirit fire. God impressed on me the need to generate the spiritual ion activity in my heart – the negative ions being a total hatred towards sin, the positive ions being a whole-hearted pursuit of righteousness. Not either one – but both. Too often I embrace the pursuit of righteousness in my Christian walk, but too often do not take as harsh a stand of sin in my life than I aught to.

I am wondering now if I ever experienced that lightning bolt that was prophesied. Just because someone speaks a word does not make it happen. These things need to be coupled with faith to bring them into being. The very fact that I am wondering makes me think that perhaps I never did. I am sure that people struck by lightning don’t forget it! Maybe all I ever settled for were the rumbles and grumbles of thunder, but I never managed to generate enough ionic activity to attract a bolt of lightning!

That was then – some ten or more years ago! Hmm…it is amazing the things that come to mind when you are cowering underneath the covers as the storm rages outside the house!

When God is silent

I had been keeping an eye on the Open – the golf tournament that Tiger Woods won. The very first day, Tiger was paired up with Nick Faldo. For some reason or other, the radio commentator was very impressed that the two of them were smiling and chatting happily as they walked the course and potted their shots. It seems that some hatchet of other had been buried. One would imagine that if the two if them were not seen to be talking, the conclusions drawn would have been about continuing hostilities. It seems to me that the two of them could have been enjoying a companionable silence enjoying each others company without the need to talk!

Silence does not have to mean enmity. But how do we react when God seems to be silent. I know that present day theology seems to be sure that God is always talking and if we can’t hear Him, the problem lies with us, some hidden sin perhaps, or a gluey spiritual ear. I am not so sure that God is always talking!

Between the writing of the Old Testament and the New Testament there were 400 years when God was silent. There was a whole lot of books written during this time that did not make it into the Bible, but they are a collection called the Apocrypha, which appears in some versions. They don’t carry the same authority as the Bible. Silences happen.

A friend of mine was sharing with me earlier on last week that she has been going through a season of God’s silence. It is distressing her as she knows that she knows God’s voice and she can’t think why He would be so silent. Rather than feeling that she is receiving sparks of revelation, life is very much flat and her Christian walk has become a lonely path in the dark. She is becoming discouraged but holding on.

There is something Christian mystics call the 'Dark Night of the Soul'. I read about it in a book I found in a second hand bookshop, “The Celebration of Discipline” by Roger Foster (?). God seems to withdraw and stand at a distance. A person hasn’t done anything wrong so it isn’t linked to sin. The author made the point that it is an experience not to be avoided because there is a deeper blessing that comes with it. He also wrote that it was an experience not to be dissected and examined or reasoned about but simply lived through. Another friend described it like “a father who is trying to lead his child further on by walking ahead of it out of sight.” The child doesn’t understand what the father is doing, or enjoy the experience.

The author made the point that in our generation things like silence and solitude seem to scare us. When you think of communication today –everything happens in thirty second sound bites. We surround ourselves with noise and do not know how to live in silence. We don’t teach our children to sit still anymore!

I posted the topic on the FW message boards. Here are some the comments made:-

“Sometimes the greatest boost in our relationship with God comes in the form of a dry and barren land that seems to have no reason. It causes us to question our faith - a faith that may have become more formulaic than vibrant. We go through the motions without coming to the event with prepared hearts.”

“Sometimes when God seems to be silent, He may be dealing with us about an aspect of our lives that He wants us to trust Him with.”

A comment that really resonated with my spirit was this one:-
Sometimes when we are low or can't feel Father with us, it's time to go outside of ourselves and do service for someone who is in need. Just the act of doing compassionate service for another fellow child of God brings us closer to Him.

A restoring touch

I noticed it yesterday, but last night I had a proper look! Do you know that in the story of the Prodigal Son, not once does the father speak to his youngest son? He doesn’t say anything as his youngest son ups and leaves for the bright lights of the big city. He doesn’t say anything to his son when he turns up on the doorstep covered in rags and smelling like the pigs he has been living with. The father speaks to the servants to fetch things and to prepare for the feast, but to his son he says nothing at all! He doesn’t say, “Hello, son – it’s nice to have you back.” or “I forgive you and reinstate you as a son,” or “”Hmm.. it may take a while before I can ever trust you again, but let’s be patient.” He says nothing. I love words – spoken or written and in this story, for the younger son, there are none.

In one of the first year units at school we explore a whole series of lessons on symbolic actions. One phrase that we talk about is “Actions speak louder than words.” In the story of the Prodigal son there are plenty of actions. The embrace that the son receives when he comes home is awesome.

I wrote a story about Jesus’ encounter with the man who had leprosy. Rather than just stand at a distance and say the words, “Be healed”, Jesus touches the man. I thought so long and hard about that touch. I didn’t want it to be a light touch on the shoulder as he spoke, so I described an embrace. Here it is..

“There was nothing tentative or hesitant about his touch. He raises me to my feet and wraps me in his strong embrace. I inhale the clean smell of his robes and feel the roughness of the fabric against my cheek. The sun glistens off the pale hairs on his arms. I can feel his warmth seeping through his clothes and through my rags. Long forgotten sensations cascade over me as I stand enfolded. Just as the open sores of my leprosy break and bleed, my heart breaks and my hurts bleed out. He holds me close as I am drowned in a torrent of my pitiful and wretched tears. After a while I am still. I hear his heart beat in the peace after the storm. And we stand.

I am restored”.

When you are on the receiving end of a touch like that, no words are needed. Words perhaps would just dilute what you wanted to say. A cool hand shake, or a pat on the back that accompanies the words, “Glad to have you home, son,” pales into comparison. Give me that embrace any day!

The Lost Son 2 - The sequel

There are very few characters in the Bible that get the full story – a beginning, a middle and an end. Take the rich young ruler, for example. The last you hear of him is that the walks away from Jesus, sad because his riches mean too much to him. You don’t find out how perhaps two or three years later, it really hits him just how poor he really is because he is not with Jesus. Perhaps he gets around to selling all that he has and ends up church building in Ephesus! You just don’t know the ending of the story because the bible account stopped mid-way!

I was thinking about the story of the Lost Son this morning. It is just a story. There was a real rich man that walked away, but the lost son was just a character in a story. Even so you don’t really get the next episode in his life either. What happened the day after the party? Or what happened two months later on? Living back on the farm – after a while did it slip back into habit and routine and the longing for freedom return? Did he and his brother become reconciled in the end or was there always tension?

Musing this morning, I believe that his experience of the misery and horror of the pigsty coupled with the unqualified forgiveness of his father coloured his thinking from that day forth! I think every day he woke up almost expecting the smell of the pigsty and when he opened his eyes to experience his father’s abundance, joy just flowered. Each and every day!

He had been so far away from home. He had been so unfulfilled. He had been so empty. He had been so lost. What he was then – it was like someone else’s life. Now he woke up in a house where his father lived. He is given tasks to do that affirm his worth as a son, but also as a human being. He is full – is physical appetites are being met, he knows that he is loved and wanted. I believe that he found his soul when he returned home.

Psalm 90 begins “Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born, or You brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.” The lost son discovered that his dwelling place was with his father.

I want to wake up in the mornings, not forgetting that my existence before I knew God was pretty much a pigsty experience, and remembering now each day I open my eyes to experience his abundance. God is my dwelling place. God is my joy.

No lily floating on still waters

Do I look mean and aggressive or something? Do I have a face like skelped backside? Do I go around muttering humbug? I am beginning to wonder!

I went to Blue Flame last night. I no longer add the “prayer meeting” part of it as it doesn’t always feature prayer. There was a mixture of praise and worship, and prayer and prophecy. I felt somewhat intimidated when everyone bar one man arrived with guitars. I got offered the use of guitar and encouraged to “bring an instrument” next time. I began to wonder if I had gate-crashed the worship practice instead. I respectfully declined the offer of a guitar and explained that I wasn’t a musician. If I had been more “on the ball” I would have said that my voice was my instrument – and I never went anywhere without it!

The worship was excellent. There was one guitar player who was just awesome. What he played was prophetic – that is the only word I can think of. It wasn’t a specific tune, or a rhythm but stirring stuff that just came on in waves. It reminded me of being on a beach, and watching the tide come in – it was a wave of sound. It prompted me to be very still and soaking in the peace and tranquillity of being with God.

I really enjoyed the worship. I have to admit that it seems very unfair that they get at least four guitar players in their church where we have two – an unequal distribution of resources! But it is more than the music. The heart and the intimacy were there too.

After a time of worship we began to pray. Maybe it is because of Patricia King and her intercession prayer course, but I am aware that I pray differently. I think I am more aggressive in my prayers. The content and delivery is so different! I don’t seem to pray nice prayers, with nice words and nice sentiments. I pray like a seasoned warrior – like I am in a battle! They are fighting words!

One very big problem for me last night was the volume. We were in a big room, high ceiling and everyone prayed in such quiet tones – it was really quiet and because I honestly couldn’t hear what folks were praying I couldn’t add my “Amen”. I know that my ears are not functioning well. I have tinnitus – ringing in the ears – and there is constant noise that I have to hear above. There are some people that I have given up trying to hear – they speak too quietly and I can’t hear them above the ringing that is there already. I wanted to say “Speak up!” If I had to explain about the ear thing I might have had to fend off offers to pray for my ears and I know that my faith level is not there!

Words of prophecy were spoken over people – me included. The first comment – which I think was spot on – was about finding God in the quiet places, by the still waters. I am so aware of the need to simply “be” and not be concerned about what I “do”. That really did register with my spirit. I am busy and involved in things and time spent in quiet can only do good.

The other words were mostly based around the recognition that I was a warrior, dressed in armour and heading out to the frontline. God was dressing me armour, that was highly polished and that I wasn’t green behind the ears but a seasoned fighter! I went with the weapons of worship! I liked that! The first speaker immediately came in with the warning not to replace the battlefield for the still waters – the quietness was essential for preparation for the battles!

A final word that someone walked across the room to say was that I shouldn’t take things so seriously. I should lighten up and have fun with God! I know that I have heard that one before. I wasn’t told to giggle this time! This “fun” thing – why do people suppose I don’t have fun? What is wrong with being serious? What is “fun” about fun? I think it was Tozer that rote once that faith is a serious thing, not something to be casual about. I am not a miserable woman. I hope I don’t look miserable! There is deep seated joy within me that maybe doesn’t erupt out of me in giggles. Maybe I do forget to smile. Maybe I do sound serious. I want to learn to tremble before God like Isaiah did. There are enough gigglers and funsters. Why do I have to be another one? I enjoy my walk with God. Yes, God does tell me to lighten up on occasions and not take things so seriously – but I am not a giggler!

What has this got to do with lilies floating on still waters? Well, later on in the evening as everyone got their time on the hot seat a picture was given about a young woman. She was like a huge white water lily floating on still waters. That was how God saw her. On the tip of my tongue was a riposte which if I had been with people I knew well, I would have said. “How does she get to be a water lily floating on tranquil waters while I get to be dressed in armour and marched out to the front line? Why can’t I be the water lily? I didn’t say it! I have no answer to that one – except I think I have tried tranquil and gentle and I prefer the frontline!

Touching skin

Our church, during a mid week meeting, has been working through an intercession study course aimed at making prayer more effective and powerful. On Wednesday we were learning how to listen to God. Patricia King in her teaching had been encouraging us that God talks to us – that He wants to talk to us and that we all have the ability to hear from Him.

After a short time of worship we settled down to listen. I usually go into panic mode simply because what comes straight into my mind is “What if God talks to everyone else in the room, but He doesn’t talk to me!” I can usually think of a million things that would disqualify me from taking part!

Well, thoughts were going through my head, mostly about what God and I had been talking about from my quiet times – whether they were God directed, I will leave that up to you to decide.

Last weekend I popped into the City Forum. It is a message board specifically for Christian ladies, sparked off by a Faithwriter’s lady. I used to keep up to date with the Bible Study there last year. They are reading through the early chapters of Numbers. The Levites were assigned to help the priests with the running of the tabernacle. When it came down to moving the campsite along the route to the Promised Land, they were assigned things to carry. They didn’t just line up outside the tabernacle, but there was a list of their names, and each person, by name, was given a specific item to take. Each person was hand picked and their specific strengths and weaknesses taken into consideration. Who knows best, but God, what we can carry and what we can’t? There is a verse that says that God does not give us the things that we cannot bear that comes to mind. What God gives us to carry is not so heavy that we are broken by it.

OK – so that was what I “heard” from God. We didn’t have time to explore the specifics so we were encouraged to take it back to God and ask for the details! This is kind of mind-blowing! This is where God really “touches skin”.

What came across when I talked it over with God was firstly the word “Protection”. A lot of the instructions God gives at the start of Numbers are down to God’s desire to protect his people. Living in the midst of them is dangerous for them – He is holy, and they are not. They are dealing with sensitive dynamite and things have to be correctly handled. God assigning certain items to specific people is a matter of protection. It is fair to say that some of us have an unrealistic view of our abilities. We are not as strong as we think we are. The temptation for us is to take on board more than we can handle and we get burnt out. For some of us, it may be the opposite – we are actually much stronger than we think, but we rule ourselves out and we never really get to exercise our spiritual muscles properly. By God assigning specific tasks He gets the best out of us.

So the anointing that God gives for a task is not haphazard and random, but carefully orchestrated. The things that I do must be the things that God has set me apart to do and not the stuff I think I am capable of doing. They are the things that no one else has been assigned to do and they are matched to my strengths and weaknesses.

This is when God got really personal! Suppose as a Levite you turn up at the tabernacle. Every time you have moved camp you have been given things to carry. Sometimes it’s the same item you are carrying. Sometimes it’s something a little different – but you always have something to do. Suppose that one time you turn up and the priest turns you away – there is nothing for you to carry! Suppose the next time you turn up, you get turned away – again there is nothing for you to carry. And perhaps a third time, and a fourth time. What questions go through your mind? What do you think about? Do you automatically think – “Oh wonderful, I get to help my wife pack and move our stuff.” Or “I was really needing a rest!” or more likely perhaps, “What is wrong with me? Why am I being passed over here? Have I done something to offend the priests, or God?” The man has got used to doing stuff, but suddenly, he feels like he is being made redundant!

See this protection thing – it is not just a physical thing of not being given too heavy a burden to carry. I think it is also a spiritual thing. We have a tendency to measure value according to what a person does. We perhaps measure our value on the basis of what we contribute or the part we play in the church setting. If we do nothing, we think we have no value. If we had a job, and then it gets taken off us and given to someone else, we jump to a conclusion perhaps that the other person must be better than we are. Maybe this is just me and everyone else is a lot less complex! The world moves on whether I carry something or not – I am not the centre of the universe. God can work without me and he chooses to do so at times. Learning just to “be” and not to “do” is so important.

Are you still with me? Let’s forget about the “suppose”! The phrase I am playing with now is “touching skin” – when something touches you up close and it is not just theory or head knowledge. Just recently our church meetings have moved into the town centre. I don’t know how many weeks we have been there. I am aware that since moving into the town centre I have not been invited to lead worship. There is a small trickle of thoughts along the line of “What is wrong with me? Why am I being passed over here? Have I done something to offend someone?” It is a very small trickle that I don’t give space to because I know that there is nothing wrong, that I am not being passed over and that had I offended anyone, I would have been told. But it is a challenge! I feel like the Levite who turns up expecting to carry something and gets sent home empty handed. I am used to doing something and not just being something.

The challenge for me is to enjoy the rest and the space I am being given. There is space particularly to explore what else God has got in mind for me – that I am not limited to leading worship or preaching in a Sunday meeting setting – but something Melanie-sized and shaped in the wider setting of church in the community. It is kind of exciting – it is scary too!

World Cup misery

This year I have watched more than my usual dose of football. In the staff room sweepstake I picked out Croatia for the World Cup. They have not managed to move into the next round. I watched all their matches quite faithfully and also picked up one or two of the players’ names. One night they were playing, I went as far as finding a recipe for a Croatian beef stew to cook that evening. I think I did my stuff!

However, they failed to do their stuff. They played brilliantly against Brazil, but scored no goals and lost 1-0. They played against Japan, but with few sparks igniting and drew that match. They lost to Australia. I have to confess that I stopped watching the game quite early on. They were committing some fairly outrageous fouls. It went beyond hanging onto jumpers and tripping up the opposition – it was appalling. As I told my fourth years boys the following day – I can’t abide bad behaviour whether it is in the classroom or on the football field. They replied, “It’s a man’s game!” and “It’s a contact sport!” but even so…I still don’t think that excuses a lack of sportsmanship.

I am feeling quite convicted though of my abandonment of Croatia! I was reading this morning in Psalm 106 of Israel’s list of appalling behaviour towards God. Theirs was not the holding on to jumpers and tripping folks up kind of bad behaviour. The Israelites involved themselves in all a huge catalogue of extreme wickedness including sacrificing their children to idols! They were really bad – but in verse 44 God does not abandon them. It says that He had pity. He heard their cries. He remembered the covenant He made. He remembered the unfailing love he had for them.

I am convicted that I often tie in support and encouragement for people with behaviour. I am like the governments of so many countries – I will give aid as long as the man on the receiving end maintains a good human rights record! It is natural inclination I suppose.

But God is not like that! Unfailing love is exactly what it says! God’s love is not conditional upon good behaviour. He does not love me because I am good. He does not love me more if I am very good, as opposed to just good! He doesn’t cease to love me when I am bad. Disappointed perhaps, but He never withdraws his love.

At the end of the day, I supported Croatia because I drew their name out of a hat. I didn’t look at all the other teams and deliberately choose Croatia. I didn’t come to love them!

God chose me and that makes all the difference!

Promise keeping

I was reading Leviticus 27 today. It was all about making vows - making voluntary vows, and then regretting making the vow and wanting to get whatever you had given back. There was a fixed penalty of an added 20% on top of the value of the goods if a person chose to renege on a vow - that they had to pay more than the good were worth. If they tried to do a swap with a lesser item - they lost both things. If they regretted giving their number one bull and wanted to do a swap for their number two bull, they lost both bulls! And then there were just some things they just couldn't get back at all!

We all make promises - to pray more regularly, to read so many chapters of the Bible each day, to witness more often. When we make the vows we are being sincere. We have no intention of going back on what we promise to do. But then "real life" kicks in. We have only so much time and so many things to do and the prayers and the Bible reading get edged out and we just can't seem to get up enough confidence to speak to someone about our faith. Then we end up feeling guilty - so we make another promise!

There are a couple of parables that come to mind about counting the cost - the man that builds a tower and runs out of money before he can finish, and the king that goes to war and then decided he doesn't really have a great army and thinks about surrendering.

The parable of the tower really sticks in my mind. I lived in Cyprus for a number of years, teaching in a church school in Limassol. Living there was like living on a huge building site There were always buildings going up. It was common to build another level on top of your home to accommodate your son or daughter when they were married - so nothing ever really looked finished.

In particular there was a half finished hotel called the King Richard Hotel. The man began building it. There were the bare bones of a couple of dozen or so floors. Then he ran out of money and the unfinished building became a city landmark - but not a hotel! The year I left, some corporation bought the building and completed it - the bottom floor was given over to Woolworth's - the biggest store in the city at the time!

God knows what we are like about promises. In Leviticus 27 He made provision for the promise breakers - but he doesn't make it easy provision. It comes at a cost. I know what I am like about promises too! I always have second and third and fourth doubts about jumping in with something because I know that perhaps in a few weeks I will loose the enthusiasm and it will become a chore or a duty. Maybe that is not very "faith" inspired - maybe I just need to stop listening to the voices!! But there is this sense of knowing your history! Reading Leviticus 27, does that mean I should never make the promises in the first place? There is sense where I am called to live in the present tense - not worrying now whether in the future I will go back on my promise, because my past history tells me I will. God gives me all the resources I need, so I shouldn't have to go back on my promises!

Interestingly enough, on a preaching CD, Patricia King spoke about "seasons" of things. At the time she was in a season of prayer and felt quite able to pray eight hours in the day! She recognised that it was a "season" and not a life long commitment. Maybe that is the way ahead - stress that it is for a season!

God is a promise keeper! We are to imitate God and be promise keepers too. If we are reflecting the character of God and do not keep our promises or vows, it is like saying to people around us that perhaps the God we follow doesn't keep his promises either!

Wine into water?

I was listening to Radio 2 in the car this morning. The news reports had finished and Terry Wogan was commenting on the last item. Apparently Europe is producing more wine than people want to drink. Just like there are butter mountains and cheese mountains, there are also wine lakes! There is a surplus of produce. It seems that most Europeans are drinking less wine, and those that aren't - like the British, Irish and Swedes - are turning to Australia, or South Africa or South America for their wines. The government wants to pay wine makers to dig up some Europe's vineyards.

Terry commented that if only they could pipe the wine over to this country, fill the empty reservoirs, all that would be needed would be someone to turn the wine into water and we would all be happy!

My immediate thought was that many people would not get the reference. Terry’s comment was turning a biblical story on its head. Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding.

I can’t remember when I first realised that cultural references that I take for granted are not known anymore. I remember teaching a unit of work on Jesus parables. This was way back in the 1980s. I quite confidently asked the pupils to make a list of the parables Jesus taught. Two thirds of the pupils were from Indian families, and were Hindus or Sikhs, but surprisingly enough they were the ones that could do it! The rest of the class looked at me with blank faces. Parables? Jesus they knew about, but parables were a mystery.. After a lot of crowd manipulation, rephrasing and leading questions we managed to come up with the Good Samaritan! Someone may have suggested the Sower, and I think the Prodigal Son was levered out from deepest darkest memories!

I don’t think the word for this is “sad”. I think it is more serious than sadness! I was reading at the end of 2 Kings where Josiah’s priests, are given the instructions to collect money to repair the temple. When they start the renovations, they find hidden in a wall the Book of the Law – a record of God’s covenant. Josiah is appalled when he reads the book – appalled not just that they hadn’t been doing it, but they hadn’t even been aware that they were supposed to be doing it!

How do these things slip through our fingers? A friend and I were talking last week about the need to remember important things that God had said to us. For the Jews they did it tying boxes onto their foreheads or nailing little boxes onto their door-posts. The boxes contained a verse of scripture spoken by God.

What do we do to remember? The alternative to remembering is forgetting. What do we do to make sure that we don’t forget? I think part of it is simply talking about it. Isn’t that what witnessing is all about. There is a verse somewhere In Philomen (she says hesitantly) about sharing the gospel is good for us because it makes us more sure of exactly what it is that we believe. It strengthens our faith.

Joe and I are avid watchers of “Lost”. There have been one or two episodes where genuine Christian faith has formed a part of the story line with people praying and talking about their spirituality – not New Age mysticism, but the realities of believing in God when the world and reason say otherwise.

Deep fried caramel wafers

An interesting newspaper article cropped up last week. I have never tried it myself but some Scottish fish and chip shops sell battered deep fried Mars bars. The sound of it doesn't appeal to me at all.

Since Mars bars got renamed "Believe" for the World Cup, and are supposed to encourage us to believe that England will win, sales have plummeted in Scotland! The English don't really understand why the Scots don't get behind them seeing as Scotland are not in it.

Since deep fried Mars bars, or Believe bars, are all but impossible to sell, some chippies have been looking at other things to deep fry instead. Tunnocks Caramel Wafers fit the bill and are not quite so sweet.

It may seem rather petty. It is just a name. Take off the wrapper and it is just a Mars bar. The ingredients haven't changed at all. The colour scheme of the wrapper hasn't changed either - it is just that one word "Believe" and everything that is associated with it.

Personally I don't believe England will win - I don't want them to win because in the school sweepstake I picked out Croatia! I don't think eating a Mars bar or not eating one is going to a make a difference. I also don't think that believing that they will win means that they will win.

I am not sure whether there is any honour in refusing to buy a Mars bar, deep fried or not because of England's World Cup campaign, but is a matter compromising deeply held beliefs for many people. Not compromising is important, but the issue has to be a important one and I am not sure that it is - not for me anyway.

The transformation process

When you are a part of a small church, there are only so many planned meetings that are possible throughout the week, but we have always been encouraged to use our own initiative for the "unplanned" meetings. If there is something on our hearts that we wish to pursue, then we will get all the support we need to do it, but it is up to us to do it!

A few weeks ago I spoke, quite passionately apparently, about the need to be transformed. The whole process of the Christian life should be to make me more like Jesus. Through every encounter that I have with God - through worship, through His word, through prayer - every encounter - I should be changing. I shouldn't be struggling year in and year out with the same problems. The rest of the church should be involved in my transformation. It says somewhere in scripture about iron sharpening iron. If I am not being transformed then something is wrong somewhere. I had been reading about one of the kings in the Old Testament. He had made an attempt to repair the temple, the external visible part of worship, but without there being an invisible change on the inside - he did nothing about the shrines on the hills and under the trees - it was not effective. As a church we have been so pleased about the move into the town centre. It has given us a fresh vision - but that is just the externals. Moving the church from one place to another physically needs to accompany a move spiritually to a deeper relationship with God. I am not saying that is not happening because it is!

Afterwards one of my friends came up to me and asked if we might study the Bible together. I brought the study books and we met on Thursday for the first time.

I am sure that you have those times when you never realised you had lost something until you found it again! I didn't realise just how much I needed to come to the Bible with other people and simply talk about what I had learned. I read the Bible daily and I study to apply what I learn - this Thursday was just another planet altogether! There is one thing talking through what you learn with God during a quiet time and another thing talking it over with people.

The study book was about women in the Old Testament. "Women" orientated books are normally avoided by me, not because I am not a woman, but sometimes they focus on things that to some extent are irrelevant to me. I don't consider myself a home builder - that is probably why my home looks like a pigsty! I don't have children to bring up. I chose the study because my friend, who is a young woman, needs that kind of teaching. She is on the cusp of all these things!

I seriously didn't know just how much I needed this study. I have a tendency towards self sufficiency. I don't always expect people to help, I don't ask often enough, I just get on with the business, and I don't always realise just how much I am struggling. Being self sufficient is not what Jesus intends - that is not "body" thinking.

I learned so much on Thursday - about the life of Eve, who I thought I knew anyway but didn't really! The ways that other people look at things really threw a light on areas that I had never thought about! This was not just head stuff - but life stuff! I leaned so much about the lives of my friends. Quite often the questions in the study were just jumping off points to share heart. I know what to pray about for these women because of what they shared - not more guessing! I learned a lot about myself too.

It could have been a very cerebral meeting. We are intelligent women. It was not a meeting of heads and brains dissecting the word - but three friends wanting to get to know God better. I have much to put into practice!

Anything to declare? Plenty!

I made it to Blue Flame last night. The last time I went - just about a year ago (ouch!) I was very disappointed because I had set it up in my mind to be this great dynamic prayer meeting and it wasn't. Yesterday I went with no agenda - just a desire to be where God was. Now I know that God is everywhere - even with me as I sit in front of my computer doing my first year reports - BUT I just wanted to hang out, relaxed and chilling with God.

If you were to judge the success or failure of something based on the numbers of people who attend - then it was a failure. There were few people there, but it did not bother me because I had the sense that God had just the very people in the room that he was looking for. We are talking about very few people. I was getting a bit fidgety because it started late! I can do late starts if there is a cup of tea to be guzzle.

The leader had selected songs that regular visitors would know. There were too few of us for any of us to be passengers or observers, so lying on a table were a dozen or so songbooks - pretty much outdated. Matt Redman didn't get a look in! There was a violin player - awesome! The presence of God was just tangible - hairs on the back of your neck stuff. I spent a considerable amount of time on my knees - no tears, no break downs, just aware that I was with God. I loved the old songs, I loved singing them, I loved the violin music that stirred me and I loved just being there.

I really appreciated being unknown to everyone in the sense that no one had any expectations of what I would do. They didn't know if I could hold a note, if I could sing in the spirit - they knew nothing about me, and that was a release just to do what I liked or not do anything at all.

After a couple of hours of worship songs, we decided to call it a night - pray for one another if anyone wanted prayer. This was about ten o'clock. I got the impression that this was the usual time it ended - although when the meetings had first began six in the morning was more normal! God had no intentions of knocking off that early.

We began praying for each other - and then other people kept arriving! It was like we had just finished praying for one person, and then another couple would arrive. After they had been prayed for someone else would walk through the door. And then another person…and another. The more people there were, the longer it took to pray for people as everyone wanted their "shot".

What came to mind was what I had learned about prayer through being with the big boys a few weeks ago. I was faced with a roomful of people that I knew nothing about. From what they asked to be prayed for, and from other people's prayers for them I could glean a few things, but on the whole I was waiting for the Spirit. You know what? I didn't pray! I declared things. I had an awesome sense of God's anointing. The Holy Spirit would give me a single word, or phrase to get me going. It was awesome - I could just feel something breaking in the heavenlies each time. There were lots of words spoken over different people - but when I put my hand on their shoulder and did this declaring thing - something else was going on.

I just wanted to be with God - without any plans of my own…and I was. We knocked off at midnight and I floated home!

Standing up for the little people

I have to confess that I am not really a political animal. Like many people I feel that decisions are made regardless of what I think – politicians just go ahead and do it anyway. I am married to a wonderful man that does not think like that. He is the chairperson of the northern branch of his union.

There is a scene in the movie “The Railway Children” where there has been a landslide and the only way to stop the train is to stand on the lines and wave a something to catch the attention of the train driver and force him to stop. This so eloquently describes what my husband does.

Right now discussions are taking place to decide whether the Crofter’s Commission employees are to remain civil servants or to loose their civil service status. It may not be the biggest train coming down the track, but it effects the staff of the Crofter’s Commission. The label “civil servant” doesn’t make them a better worker, but it guarantees an established set of working conditions. There is no guarantee that any of those working conditions will be honoured once the Crofters Commission looses its civil service status. Promises were made to protect the worker’s right that ministers and management seem to be able to conveniently lay aside.

Sometimes the decisions of management and bosses are not made to benefit the workers. Many people just let it happen, mostly because they don’t know what to do, or how to do it. My husband does know what to do, and the times that he is not sure what to do, he makes it is job to find out. Any business is only as good as the people who work there. If the workers do not feel valued, they don’t produce the best that they are capable of doing.

Unions provide a service to workers to ensure that their rights are protected and their needs in the working environment are met. Being a teacher I am a member of a union. A large part of becoming a member was down to being married to a union man. Before I joined the union I hoped that I would never encounter a serious enough problem to need their assistance – and of course, it all costs money and you wonder if it is worth it.

There seems to be a minefield in Christian circles about whether people should join unions or not. They think they are “worldly” organisations, not set up by “The Church” and full of “trouble-makers stirring things up”. It is sad that an area where the church should be the frontrunner – protecting vulnerable people – is left to the world to make a difference. God is interested in the WHOLE person – not just the praying, singing, reading the Bible person. We spend a third of our lives in our work environment – and God is interested in that third.

We live in a society that has forgotten how to look after one another. I just wanted to say that I am proud to be married to someone that hasn’t!

Irresistible to God

The FW weekly challenge last week was "Hope". My husband Joe preached a sermon on hope many, many years ago. At the time we were not married, and I am not sure if we were even courting at the time. He hadn't been a Christian for long, but he has a kind of inbuilt maturity about him and had been asked to bring the word. At the time he was lodging with another lad, Dave, in the church, who was also the manager of a large hotel in Inverness. After Joe had spoken, Dave went up to him to apologise for not paying enough attention to what he'd said. Joe had a strong Glaswegian accent and sometimes speaks quite quickly, so he just thought that he had not toned down the accent enough. However that was not the problem. Dave had been sitting next to really tall fellow named Rab. Just as Joe was getting started - he made a point of telling a joke to put everyone at ease - Rab had turned to Dave and said, "See, that's some tie the wee fella's wearing!"

I had quite quickly latched on to the story of Anna, the prophetess, in Luke's gospel. There may be just three verses but I have been really encouraged as I have meditated on them. It took a while to find a way in - my computer is littered with opening paragraphs that I abandoned along the way, and half a dozen verses of a poem that just wasn't lighting my fire. In the end I wrote about a statue in an art gallery. It wasn't a real statue, or a real art gallery, but by the end of the piece I could see it in my mind's eye. There are times when I lament that I can't do the artist thing.

Thinking about Anna - my neurons have just been firing and I will seriously have to sit down and put a proper piece together. One of the things that has stirred in me is the need to put myself in the place to hear from God. Scripture says that she practically lived in the Temple, worshipping day and night. The temple is where the presence of God was most clearly felt - it was the place that He had chosen to dwell. Physically she was in the right place. Through her worship, prayer and fasting, she had put herself in the right spiritual place - the right frame of mind to experience His presence.

Putting yourself in the right place to experience God - what a challenge! Day and night Anna was in the right place - it was inevitable that God would speak to her. What often impresses me is that some people make themselves irresistible to God by their manner and approach. God cannot but help be drawn to people who place themselves physically and spiritually in His path. I want to be like that. I want to be irresistible to God too - just like she was. I want to make the place where God is found to be my dwelling place.

The simplest solutions

I have been incredibly out of sorts for the last few days. I have had a fairly heavy cold but over and above that I have had a nagging headache! I rarely get headaches. I am one of those people that when I am unwell, absolutely nothing feels right - my hair does not feel comfortable on my head, my skin feels uncomfortable stretched over my bones and nothing feels like it should. I couldn't work it out but somehow my glasses felt wrong. The frame bits that you never notice seemed to be all that I could see and I kept having to tip the glasses down to the end of my nose to read anything!

I am really a bad case scenario person. I never think the most obvious things. My first thought was that it was a caffeine thing and somehow I wasn't drinking as much tea or coffee as I used to, so I overdosed on coffee and tea to make up for it. There was no improvement in the headaches. My second thought was that perhaps I needed to update the prescription on the lenses. This was not a good thing as they were not cheap! The third thing - absurd really, but remember I have a cold so I'm not thinking clearly - perhaps the shape of my head had changed and the glasses just no longer fitted!

Well this morning I had a proper squint at the glasses and discovered the problem - one of the small bits that balance the glasses on the nose that fallen off. The tiny screw had unscrewed itself and the little plastic thing had fallen off! The glasses were not sitting properly. No wonder my eyes were having a problem focussing on things. There is a proper term somewhere for a situation when you are given a number of possible solutions to a problem and it is the simplest one that is usually the most effective.

The lady at the shop fixed it for me and the headache is subsiding. Maybe I should have asked her if she could fix my cold too.