Billy Graham's Crowning Achievement!

A friend emailed this to me – I was telling someone about it last night, but here it the account.

Billy Graham's Crowning Achievement!

In what might prove to be the crowning achievement of an illustrious career in ministry, the 87-year-old evangelist, Billy Graham shocked The 16,300 in attendance at the Celebration of Hope crusade in New Orleans Arena on Sunday Night. Touted in advance as possibly his last Evangelistic crusade, Graham invited the packed house of evangelical Christians and the hundreds of new converts to join him on the one mile walk from the arena to New Orleans' infamous Bourbon Street.

"While we have seen God do tremendous things here the past couple of evenings. Yes, it is true that a great healing and a great many salvations have occurred within the confines of this auditorium. Still yet, there lies a great mountain in this city which needs to be
conquered."

Then taking from the Biblical Book of Joshua Chapter 14 he read, "I am this day, eighty-five years old. As yet I am as strong this day as on the day that Moses sent me; just as my strength was then, so now is my strength for war, both for going out and for coming in. Now therefore, give me this mountain of which the Lord spoke in that day," his voice suddenly sounding more forceful than during his 22 minute sermon.

"I last preached in the City of New Orleans in 1954 and I felt then that there was some unfinished business. Tonight, in what very well might be my last evangelistic service, I aim to finish that business and lead as many of you that would follow me to the multitude of lost souls that fill Bourbon Street tonight. That is my mountain!

That is where we shall see the harvest!" said Graham as the stadium erupted in cheers that lasted the next several minutes.

Utilizing a waiting mobility scooter, the elder Graham joined his son Franklin across the Arena floor and through the opened doors leading towards the French Quarter. In a show of solidarity and determination reminiscent of civil rights marches of the 1960's, nearly the entire capacity crowd joined in the 20 minute trek while singing, "When the Saints Go Marching In".

As the march crossed Canal Street and headed nor! toward towards Bourbon Street, many onlookers stood in stunned silence as the massive crowd Of people began singing in unison the Christian hymn, Amazing Grace.

Upon entering the west end of Bourbon Street, Billy Graham was soon recognized by partiers.

Soon those joining in the march began to approach those partying on Bourbon Street with the Gospel message that they had heard preached just a half hour before. Graham himself joined with a group of local street evangelist in ministering to a man who had survived Hurricane Katrina in the lower 9th Ward.

Within 30 minutes the entirety of Bourbon Street was packed with Christians and the once blaring music of nightclubs and strip joints had been replaced by weeping and worship as people poured out their drinks and sought prayer from the Christians who were now reaching out to them.

"I have never seen anything like this in my life," said 20 years New Orleans Police Department veteran, Tom Phillips. "This is unbelievable! We thought a riot was going to break out, but this looks more like a Revival than a riot!"

Two hours later, a glowing Graham sat back down on his scooter and smiled. "Now I know how the Apostle Paul must have felt at the end of his ministry. Do the work of an evangelist; make full proof of thy ministry. For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith."

Hours later hundreds of Christians remained on the street ministering to the many people eagerly waiting to receive prayer and ministry. New Orleans will never be the same.

Feet of clay

Joe asked me earlier on this week if I knew what was wrong with Jonathan Edwards. He was stepping down from his commitment to “Songs of Praise.” He didn’t know whether it was a problem with the “Songs of Praise” set-up or whether it was a faith issue.

Years ago, Songs of praise did a Jonathan Edwards special. He was such a big name – an Olympic hero – and a Christian too. He talked about his family, his achievements and how God had been with him.

I knew nothing, but made it my business to find out. It is a faith issue. He is not convinced anymore that God exists!

How does that happen to a person – shining brightly one moment and snuffed out the next? Except that it never happens that way at all – the light dims gradually over time, until there is no light. You don’t go to bed one night believing in the reality of God and wake up next day not believing. It is a process. There is a beginning, a middle and an end.

I think the beginning it is about who you perhaps spend your time with, and who you don’t, or about what you spend your time doing and what you neglect to do. The world of work, the people that you meet every day in the work place, can erode away at your faith, ever so slowly. In the Song of Songs it mentions the little foxes that eat away at the vines. The times when I feel most fragile are times when I have started to listen to the cynicism around me, and poke holes in the things I know to be true! What stops me from progressing too far down that road is making sure that I have fellowship with people who will build me up and repair the damage done.

Other times when I feel fragile it has been down to being too busy and not spending enough time with God. I know that I can get so immersed in writing that all else gets put to one side. I don’t soak in God’s presence because I see a deadline looming over the horizon. I do my mathematics and don’t think I have enough time to do what I need to and have the quiet times with God.

I think that for Jonathan it must have been an added pressure to be a Christian hero to many. Why do we need to do that people – put them up on a pedestal like that? We all need to be heroes of the faith in what ever walk in life we find ourselves, so that people like Jonathan Edwards don’t have to shoulder all the responsibility.

I taught for a while in a private school in Cyprus. Some of the pupils were boarders, and I lived in the same building. The school was a Christian school and many of the boarders were not Christians. It would appear to be an ideal situation – a real Christian living among them. A living advertisement as it were before their eyes! It didn’t work out that way. I was immature in the faith, and not really sure of what I believed.

I can remember saying, “Don’t look at me. Read the New Testament and see how Jesus lived his life!”

How sad! It was so the opposite of what God wants to say, “Look at her! Then you will see me.”

We seem to be so busy pointing to someone else and saying “Follow him – he’s got it right.” That we don’t say, like Paul confidently said, “Imitate me, because I am imitating the Father.”

Third in the Snowman's Rally

We have workmen coming on Tuesday to do something with the ceiling by the back door. For a long time we had a bath that leaked, and the water dribbled through to the hall downstairs. It is quite scary watching as the light bulb on the ceiling used to fill up with water.

Well when we finally got around to replacing the bath, someone suggested that we might be able to claim on the insurance to get the downstairs ceiling repaired. A survey revealed that there is asbestos lurking, so we have people coming in to dismantle the thing safely and build us a new ceiling. The insurance will also cover replacing the wallpaper.

All of this is just one huge introduction to something entirely unrelated to all of that! Having to clear out the back end of the hall of all the rubbish we have hoarded, we took a couple of boxes of stuff down to the recycling centre. Much of it may not be worth recycling, but it is someone else’s problem now.

On the way back home, we went by way of the Caledonian Thistle Football ground. I thought it would be a quiet road and an easy roundabout to negotiate on the way home. I was wrong. The car park was full, and at first Joe thought maybe Calley were playing at home, but that was not the case. The car park was full of lorries and racing cars. It was the starting point for the Snowman’s Rally. The route takes in the road to Loch Ness and surrounding forest trails and things.

We have very fond memories of the Snowman’s Rally – Joe likes to think that we came third one year! We must have been married at the time and it being near to the Valentine weekend, we had booked a hotel on the edge of Loch Ness. I think we hired a car. On the way out towards Loch Ness, we noticed that at every lay-by along the road there were hulking great lorries with men rolling tyres down ramps. It was all very curious.

Suddenly from behind us there was a whooshing sound and a race car shot past us at very high speed. I think we blinked, not quite able to believe it. This was closely followed by another whoosh as another race car sped by.

The local paper warns people long in advance about the race and the course. They don’t close the roads or anything, you just take your chances. We were on the middle of the Snowman’s Rally – currently third, according to Joe.

My first instinct was to get off the road quick, but all the lay-bys were taken over by the lorries. I drove to the next village, Drumnadrochit, and took a right, assuming I would be off the route and safe. Whoosh, another racing car sped by – the race route also took a right at the village and we were still in the race – currently fourth!

We finally managed to get off the road, when the route took a left into a forest track, but our troubles were not entirely over. Spectators had parked along the road – both sides of the road, and coming towards us was one of the big lorries. Remember, I was in a hire car at the time. I had hysterics! Somewhere in that moment I just lost it! I was all for abandoning the car and walking back to the village to find a bus stop. I hauled my nerves together, and I might have closed my eyes too, as our car and the big lorry passed within millimetres of each other.

So, yes, the Snowman’s Rally! I wanted something stronger than a cup of tea when we found a café a mile or two down the road.

Kay Carver and Melanie Morrison

Last night as part of our Valentine celebrations, Joe and I went to the cinema to see “Music and Lyrics”. It was labeled as a romantic comedy and I thoroughly enjoyed it. For an hour or so after wards Joe and I were humming the song the two main characters had composed. It was very romantic and very sing-able and if they bring out a record, I will buy it! Hugh Grant has a very nice voice, although in an interview he put it all down to the sound equipment. Just as computer packages can airbrush models so they look slimmer, or have perfect skin tone, you can do the same with voices! I prefer to think that Hugh is just being his usual self-effacing self.

I enjoyed the movie because it struck a chord with me. You have probably never heard of a couple of song writers before – Kay Carver and Melanie Morrison. This goes way, way back in time.

Kay Grant was one of my best friends at school. She was visually impaired and used to wear plastic glasses with very thick lenses. I think that she was virtually blind in one eye, and not so far off blind in the other eye. She was very tall and gangly and not at all graceful. She was good at sports – she always won the cross country races. She was kind of person that just kept running.

The love of her life was music. She played the piano and taught herself to play the guitar. She really was a genius on the piano – after one lesson she composed a tune.

She discovered Jesus a short while after I did and she began writing songs. She would come up with a melody and then wait for a while for the lyrics to come together. It is a long time ago so I don’t remember any of the songs, but they were her heart to Jesus.

The Christians that I hung around with then were guitar players and singers, so I have always had a soft spot for music, although I don’t play. I had guitar lessons, kay tried to teach me, but I never got beyond the pain. I didn’t like sore finger tips!

I can remember one time Kay playing a melody and saying she didn’t have any words yet. I asked if I could write the lyrics. I am not even sure if I asked. My interest in writing was just in the bulb beneath the ground stage, no shoots as yet, but I thought I could string a few words together, and she was too nice to tell me to back off and let her do it. The words that I came up with, yet again it is too long ago to remember them, they were nice words. They were beautiful words and the song sounded great – but they were not “heart” words. They were “head” words, strung together because they fitted well, but they lacked soul. Looking back I cringe at my audacity. I am sure that if Kay had been allowed to do her waiting thing, the lyrics she would have settled on would have been so much better.

As it was, years later, she got married to a man called David Carver (hence Kay Carver). When we met up we tried to remember the song lyrics, but because there was no heart and soul to it, the words had been forgotten. She could still remember every word of the songs she had written!

Where does Melanie Morrison fit into all of this? I had been away living in Cyprus for five years, returned home to live with my parents for a while and started attending their church. I was single at the time, and there was a wonderful man who I thought I was in love with and thought I might marry – Michael Morrison. It never happened but Kay Carver and Melanie Morrison had such a good ring about it! I imagined the two of us, Kay and myself, getting back together to revive our songwriting partnership. It didn’t happen.

I watched the film and I remembered those days. I am so different now. Today my lyrics would have heart and soul, but I wouldn’t but in and invade someone else’s melody the way I did then.

Love to..

I felt that Valentine's Day could not go unremarked! I wrote this peom a couple of years ago. I am just reminded of how often I used to write poems to my husband, Joe. There are recipe books at home, and cards kept from previous anniversaries and celebration days with Mel's poems scrawled on the inside cover - a pastime worth reviving!

Love to hold you
Love to touch you
Gently, softly
Love to love you

Love to feel you
Warm beside me
Every contour
Love to love you

Love to hear you
Sharing whispers
Wholly tender
Love to love you

Love to taste you
Lips caressing
Lightly stirring
Love to love you

Love to watch you
Still and sleeping
Quietly dreaming
Love to love you

To be near you
To be with you
Ever always
Love to love you

My road

There are times when I really feel like the church in the book of Revelation that is accused of being luke-warm. I don’t particularly feel far from God, I just don’t feel so on the ball and I don’t beat myself up about it either! So when one of the churches in Inverness was hosting a “soaking school” I signed up for the meeting tonight and for the day tomorrow.

I spent quite a bit of time in preparation for the evening. I admit to being a tad worried at times that everyone else will get touched by God and I will be left stone cold! I sent some time praying about that. The big issue though for me is about feeling manipulated. I have been to many meetings where it is not necessarily the Spirit that is doing the stirring. Because of that I kind of go into these things with my guard up and keep a distance from what is happening. I am vaguely cynical at times, but repented and asked God to increase my expectation.

However, God gave me two words. The first was “Step forward” – be prepared to embrace what is said. Along with that was this idea of being unrestrained – not putting up barriers and allowing God access in whatever way He wanted to move.

The second word, which could sound like an opposite was “Step back”. This is a curious one. Because I am so wanting to join in and feel something, I often try too hard to make it happen. God was saying “Step back” – not to wind myself up, make myself feel something, when in reality there was nothing of substance happening. God said, He wanted to do it all, without my help. He would do the touching, if there was to be any.

It came right out of the blue. The speaker was talking about forgiveness. I recognized that it is something that I don’t do enough of. Her list of people that she hadn’t forgiven was thirteen or fourteen – mine was a lot longer. I have whole classes that hurt me and I carry the hurt like a badge. She talked about forgiveness bringing release and freedom – that you are no longer tied to the person by your anger.

Then she went on to talk about forgiving God. I had never thought about forgiving God – that I would ever need to forgive God. Bad things happen and, yes, God could have prevented them from happening but chose not to, and, yes, I suppose you do get angry with God – but I always thought that you focused on the fact that all things work out for good, so you just get on with it. The whole idea that you could hold a grudge against God surprised me. God is good, he has paid the price for my sins, adopted me in his family – so many really wonderful things that the things that don’t turn out so good, are nothing in comparison.

And yet, sometimes all you have really done is suppressed it. Even if you talk it through and feel better, it is not necessarily dealt with.

After she had finished talking, she asked for people to come forward if they felt they needed to forgive anyone. My millions of third year pupils that give me grief came to mind and knowing I was to “Step forward”, I went to the front.

Once I was there the word 6to “Step back” came and I decided to allow God His space and not try to direct His gaze. I soon discovered that the real issue was not the millions of third years giving me grief. My issue was with God.

When I married Joe, I thought I had stepped onto a path of motherhood. It was part of the plan – children. And a break from teaching while I reared them. The path I found myself on was barrenness, infertility treatment, miscarriages and no children at all. I never had the break from teaching. There are so many things – not reading to them at night, no tucking them in, no homework to supervise, no parents evening, no being the mother of the bride at the weddings, not grandchildren. People that have children just have no idea of the hundreds of ways that childless couples miss out. I know they miss out on the wet beds and the nit combs – but there is so much I don’t get to do.

Suddenly what I have never allowed myself to really say was that it was God’s fault. I was robbed of my motherhood!

I am three years into the menopause, so my biological clock has just about stopped ticking.

When one of the helpers came to minister to me, we stood for a while holding hands, and then embraced. Maybe God didn’t say anything to the woman, but to me He said “Mourn the loss of your motherhood.” That is kind of a depressing thing – not the uplifting thing I was looking for! I cried. It wasn’t unrestrained weeping and wailing – just heart wrenching sobs.

God talked to me about putting me on my path and not to yearn to be on someone else’s. I was almost wasting time wishing that I was somewhere else in life and not being the “me” that I could be. Motherhood was not my road, my road was better! My road was just as full of challenges, just as full of joy, just as fulfilling. My road was a good road and it wasn’t a single track with passing places and potholes!

A verse came to mind about weeping enduring for a night but joy coming in the morning. “Why wait till morning?” said the Spirit. I don’t know whether I can say that I feel joyful right now – I feel contentment. I feel the right path beneath my feet and an explorer’s anticipation.

A good hair day?

Well, I finally did it! Trying to organise myself to get a hairdressing appointment sorted for a Saturday is not working and the box of hair colour was winking at me from the bathroom shelf.

I carefully read the instructions and decided that I was well capable of following them. I had watched what the hair dresser did on numerous occasions, and it was not beyond me! That said – she made it look a lot easier than it was! The front of the head was do-able, but the back of the head was plain guess-work. I was trying to cover the roots first, leave the colour to fix for a while, and then “refresh” the rest of the hair – see, I even know the right jargon!

Contrary to what most pupils think – teachers do not have eyes in the back of their heads – they would have been most useful! In the end I looked like the woman in the diagrams on the instruction sheet. I also felt like I usually feel in the hairdresser – things were going well.

I ruined a perfectly good jumper by not following the instruction of putting a towel over the shoulders. It said “non-drip cream”, but it did drip!

The end result is a head of rich auburn hair with no grey roots! It is much darker than I anticipated, much darker than it has been for years. My once natural shade was very dark brown, almost black with a kind of blue/blackness to it. This is kind of that dark but with a red hint to it. I keep catching glimpses of me in mirrors and doing a double take.

I am however rather impressed – that it is not orange, that the box did what it said it would do, that I have saved a LOT of money, that I have done something I consider quite courageous and that I can live with it for the next three months!.

My husband, Joe, gave me the once over and decided that, yes, it was very dark, perhaps a shade darker on the top than at the bottom – but like it is supposed to be like that, and not an unintentional effect. He also looked at his own hair greying at the temples and asked if I had used all the colour in the hair kit. Seeing as I haven’t made a mess of my own head, he thinks he might entrust his own into my enthusiastic but unskilled hands!

Incidentally my mother always used to cut my dad’s hair. In the early days of our marriage, I offered to cut Joe’s hair – thinking that it was what wives did to their husbands. Joe looked horrified! He made it quite clear that the day I take a pair of scissors to his head is the day we divorce.

Incidentally, he also has bushy eyebrows. His sister took me to task one day for not “tidying them up”. She is the kind of woman that would tie him to a chair, firmly tell him not to be a baby and sit still while she snipped away! I am not made of such stern stuff!

Impossible?

Impossible that by Your word
The universe was made
That in the stars, the moon, the earth
Your splendour is displayed

Impossible that with Your hands
From clay You fashioned man
Your breath released brought forth his birth
And so new life began

Impossible that You would choose
To be his closest friend
To walk with him through pastures green
Until his journey’s end

Impossible that he did turn
To tread his wayward track
Rebellious heart, and soiled soul
On You he turned his back

Impossible that You could know
The wicked heart of man
And still because Your love compels
Conceive redemption’s plan

Impossible that You were born
Into this fragile world
And whipped and crucified by man
Salvation was unfurled

Impossible You gladly bore
The sins of all mankind
That at the cross the debt is paid
Abundant grace we find

Impossible that you could gift
Forgiveness full, complete
That when the prodigal comes home
You kiss and gladly greet

Impossible that man’s wild heart
Is tamed beneath his breast
And humbly bowed before Your throne
He finds eternal rest

Impossible? To You? Not so
The One enthroned on high
I join with angels in their praise
“My Lord, My God,” I cry

© Melanie Kerr Jan 2007

Three threesomes

I think that it is a debating technique to repeat things three times for emphasis. I can remember Tony Blair in one of his speeches talking about their manifesto – the policies they hoped to implement once they were in power – “Education, Education, Education”. I am not sure that he has done anything other than just repeat the word!

Just lately I have been finding these threesomes as I read the Bible and other books. I was reading an interview with Os Guinness. I am currently reading one of his books and thought I would find out a little bit more about the man. He doesn’t have a holy huddle mentality and is not afraid to explore not just why he is a Christian, but also why he is not a Muslim or a Hindu. In the interview, he mentioned that he had spent a lot of time with another theologian and was asked what he had learned from the man. He said that he admired the man for his passion for God, his passion for people and his passion for truth. I like that threesome. I like the word passion. I like the way that it is balanced – God, people and truth.

Another threesome I read was in the end chapters of Jeremiah. A remnant of Israelites who had not been taken off to Babylon with the rest of the nation had ran to Egypt thinking they would get away from the war and the poverty, rather than trusting in God. Jeremiah told them clearly that their actions meant that God no longer considered them His people. They hadn’t shown humility, they had failed to give God reverence and they had not obeyed His word. If failing to do these things takes us away from God, the opposite must also be true – God will draw us near to Himself if we are humble, if we revere Him and if we seek to obey His commands. Working out the practicalities of that threesome has got to be very challenging.

The threesome I read this morning was in the opening verses of the book of Revelation. Things are written there which Jesus wants us to know that we might be more effective witnesses. The more we know about Jesus and his intentions, the more we can work with Him. The instruction here was to read the words, to hear it and to take to heart what is written. Sometimes we stop at the reading bit of it, and do not give our hearts a chance to hear the words in our hearts as the Holy Spirit ignites it. Until the Spirit ignites the words, they seldom get taken to heart in a life changing way.

Three threesomes:-

Passion for God
Passion for people
Passion for the truth

Being humble
Being reverent
Being obedient

The word read
The word heard
The word taken to heart

Built up and planted

“He (Jeremiah) said to them, "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, to whom you sent me to present your petition, says: 'If you stay in this land, I will build you up and not tear you down; I will plant you and not uproot you, for I am grieved over the disaster I have inflicted on you. Do not be afraid of the king of Babylon, whom you now fear. Do not be afraid of him, declares the LORD, for I am with you and will save you and deliver you from his hands. I will show you compassion so that he will have compassion on you and restore you to your land.'” Jeremiah 42:9-12

I was really encouraged reading these words this morning. Over the last few weeks or so I have been thinking about moving issues, wondering whether I am in the place where God has placed me in – church wise and job wise. Sometimes when things get difficult you begin to think that you must be in the wrong place precisely because things are so difficult! If you really were where God had placed you then things would progress much more smoothly. Things would just fall into place.

Maybe things get so difficult because the enemy would like to see you anywhere other then where God wants you to be.

Built up and planted are very deliberate actions. You don’t build a wall or plant a garden by accident. God’s actions towards me are not accidental either. They don’t happen just by-the-way.

God is appealing for an act of trust – He will do the building and the planting – if we allow him to. Sometimes we are too quick to build things and plant things that are not on God’s heart for us. When He builds something, He builds it properly and there is no need to tear it down. When He plants it is exactly where he wants it to be, so there is no need to uproot it at a later date.

God building and planting in my life are conditional on the basis that I stay – in His presence, in His purposes, in His Covenant, in Him.

The Journey

I have been reading a book called “The Call” by Os Guinness. I bought the book ages ago, and rediscovered it while having a cleaning session just before Christmas. For many religious festivals, cleaning the house seems to be an important part. I don’t think for a moment that Santa is going to pass us by if there is a inch thick coating of dust everywhere, but a clean up for me is also something that cheers me up too.

I digress! The book has an interesting chapter on life being like a journey. When Jesus said to Peter and Andrew, and later James and John, and later still Matthew, “Follow me!” it was an invitation to join him on a journey. In this life we never reach a place where we have arrived, and all of us are somewhere along the route. Life is not static and settled, although we often live like is. We are not wanderers because we know where we are heading and we have the company of the Holy Spirit to guide us there. Not everyone has the same milestones that we have on their journey. They have the same destination but might not be walking at the same pace, or taking notice of the same landscapes.

I can remember, during my time in Cyprus, every year the school held a sponsored walk. It was not a five mile stroll, but a really difficult hike. The route was twenty five miles and began high in the Troodos mountains, and ended a few miles west of the city of Limmasol. It took in forests and vineyards, old monasteries and almond tree orchards. There were bits of it that followed a tarmac road uphill for two or three miles, while another section of the walk was following a goat trail along the top of a hill. It was a picturesque route, but very challenging!

The route remained pretty much the same year in year out, but the company changed as old students left and new ones arrived. You began the walk with member from one class, for them to decide to race on ahead somewhere further down the line. You caught up with another group, perhaps as they stopped to catch their breath at the top of the hill.

This is what Christian life is like – different people along the route. Sometimes they walk a few miles with you, sometimes it may be just a few hundred yards. Maybe they just wave as they overtake!

I was thinking about the people I had walked with for a while. I say people, but I mean just one person – my friend, Shona. I missed her company and decided to seek her out, just to find out how she was doing. She has stopped along the route, she is spiritually sitting down by the side of the road, perhaps catching her breathe, perhaps hoping for a sympathetic driver to come along and offer her a lift!

We invited herself and Patrick and Shannon to lunch on New Year’s Day. Joe entertained the kids – they were showing him the wonderful tricks is new mobile phone could do. Shona and I sat in the kitchen and chatted. I didn’t particularly avoid any talk of God. She admits to feeling a little adrift right now, but not cast aside or cut off from God.

It was nice to drop back a little and walk beside her again for a few hundred yards – simply to remind her that she was in my thoughts.

Make it happen

I am one for slogans and mottos and things. They catch my eye and ignite my imagination. I guess I must have a really short attention span or something!

I was standing in line waiting for my turn at the hole-in-the-wall cash machine and a poster in the bank window caught my eye. The slogan at the bottom of the poster was “Make it happen”. It was about taking out a bank loan or something, but for me is was just the active tense of the whole thing – Make it happen!

Ages ago, long before I met Joe, I thought I was in love with another man. I was one among many women who thought themselves in love with him. He had this particular idea of falling in love. For him it wasn’t the slow process of getting to know someone, going out on a few dates and over time coming to the realisation that they are the one. He was looking for the “love at first sight” kind of falling in love. A definite spark that was more than just general interest – that look across a crowded room moment. Needless to say, none of the “harem” that thought they loved him provided the spark, so he didn’t get romantically involved with anyone. He didn’t “Make it happen” because he didn’t see his spark.

His approach to love seemed to me to be rather passive. If it happens, it happens seems to me to be too casual. However, you can go to the other extreme of putting so much effort and energy into something and make it happen, when perhaps it wasn’t supposed to happen. Your own energy made give life to something, and it’s something you have created, not necessarily something God birthed inside of you.

When does “Make it happen” become my work and cease to be God’s work? “Make it happen” remains God’s when I whole heartedly engage with God’s purpose for my life and when His passions become mine.

I want to “Make it Happen” this year – wholeheartedly engage with God’s purpose for my life and allow His passions to become my own.

If that sounds a bit vague, it is a least a starting point.

Unused gifts

There is nothing worse than unused presents – Christmas or birthday or any other occasion. I cringe when I think about the things I have asked Joe to buy me. There are some things that have been well used and other things that have not been so well used.

I asked for an MP3 player this year and last night I spent a bit of time learning how to use it. I uploaded the only CD I had to hand at the time – David Cassidy! I spent the rest of the evening bobbing up and down and singing out my favourite lines as I plugged myself in! This morning I added a worship CD to the list of stuff on the player. I feel “cool” and “with it”, although I have to admit that finding a comfortable place in my ear for the ear plugs takes me a while!

I was thinking earlier on in the week about the gifts that the wise men brought to Jesus. I am not aware that Jesus ever used any of them. When I think about a time when he needed money to pay taxes – he didn’t use the gold to do so, but sent a friend to catch a fish and the money needed was in the fish’s mouth. He didn’t use the frankincense – the gift of the priest - as he didn’t go into that part of the temple to burn it before the altar. He prayed on hilltops early in the morning and ministered to the lepers and tax collectors that the other priests had no time for. He didn’t get to use the myrrh either. A woman anointed his feet with perfume before his death, and before the women got to the tomb with their anointing oils, Jesus had risen from the dead and there was no body to anoint.

There are traditions about what happened to the gifts. Some traditions have Mary and Joseph selling the gifts to make ends meet and pay the bills. Another tradition had Judas lusting after the gold and stealing it. Another tradition had the boxes the gifts held being revered in a very old church in Russia somewhere.

There is also another story that talks about the baby Jesus giving gifts to the wise men. According to one tradition, Jesus gave them stones. They didn’t see the usefulness of the gifts and threw them down a well. The well exploded in a ball of fire and they realised that what was given should not be treated so shabbily. I did read on to the end of the story – but the bit about being given a gift and how I treat that gift matters really touched me. To treat a gift in a casual and careless manner says something about how you regard the gift giver.

Any way, back to Jesus’ unused gifts – what could you give to Jesus that he would make use of?

The Spirit’s answer? Yourself!

In Jesus’ hands, the gift of “myself” would not go unused. It is when I take myself out of Jesus’ hand that I become unused.

"Triphina" living

This week, in our ladies Bible study, we were looking at the life of Lydia. She is the first convert in Philippi, a business woman and a leader in the community. The study we were doing assumed that she became a leader in the church too, so we talked through the role of women in the church. Just how far does the leadership role extend?

I have been thinking quite a lot about a lady called Triphina. When I was in South Africa a number of years ago and one of the most vibrant churches I visited was in a black township on the outskirts of Durban. It had been lead by a man for a number of years, and when he had died, his wife assumed the leadership role. She was wonderful.

My thoughts have not really been about her role as a leader in the church and whether it is biblically sound or not – my thoughts at the time! I have been thinking about just the way she lived her life.

The black township was a place of poverty. It was reflected in the community. Apartheid had come to an end perhaps three or four years earlier, but the thinking was still in place. The black community did not think themselves equal with white people. They did not have the same opportunities or chances. There was a mentality that said “This is our place in life – accept it!” I think for many they had ceased to dream.

For them their whole environment was an excuse not to succeed in life. It was a kind of “Why bother? Nothing is really going to change,” attitude that pervaded everything they did. I realise that I am making some sweeping generalisations here.

Triphina was different. She had not made her living conditions an excuse not to triumph in life. As well as leading the church, she also ran two businesses. One was a sewing business, making and selling dresses. The other business was running a small shop. She grew vegetables and sold them – or gave them away to really needy people.

She lived in the black township, with all the limitations that everyone else had with lack of decent sanitation and clean water – but again, her home was as neat and tidy, comfortable and clean as possible. It was painted and decorated, unlike any homes in the township.

It was like she was flying a banner to say that you don’t have to live according to your circumstances. You don’t have to let the environment dictate the way that you live, or the way that you think. She was acting as salt and light – very powerfully.

I am so challenged by her lifestyle right now. I can make so many excuses about why my testimony is not as powerful as it could be. If I had nicer pupils, if I had new desks, if I was not teaching in a prefabricated hut – all these things are irrelevant. Triphina didn’t make excuses. She shone regardless.

Choosing to walk

I suppose that my husband had a very valid question this week. Last weekend, at church, we were being encouraged to get involved in each others lives, to ask for help, to offer to do something with or for someone We had written things on small slips of paper, and then looked through all the things on offer and chose one.

Why on earth would I choose to go for a walk with someone after a whole week of walking back and forth from school? I think the “choose” was the answer. All the other walks, I hadn’t really chosen to do. With the car off the road, the choice was made for me and the route was well walked and predictable. Here, I was choosing to walk, with someone I wanted to get to know better, somewhere I had not walked before.

We headed off to Tomatin Woods just outside Inverness. There were lots of very clearly marked trails. We walked in a circular route for about an hour, talking of all sorts of things. All that was missing was a dog, although one joined us for a wee while – a black and white spaniel type of dog, extremely wet from playing in the puddles!

We talked about jobs, and holidays, families and weddings, people we used to know and we talked about God. It was a satisfying conversation in lovely surroundings.

What came to me was just how much nicer walking is when you are with someone! I have a tendency to just do stuff myself, not really thinking of inviting anyone to join me. Sometimes I just like my own company, but often it’s because I don’t think they would want to come. It harks back to my pre-marriage days and not having a huge circle of friends, I would just take off by myself, simply because, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t ever go anywhere. I have got used to doing stuff by myself and it is nice to be reminded that sharing the experience makes it more satisfying.

However, walking with someone does have its limitations too. I kept to the path, where had I been on my own I would have wandered off the path – that is how I get lost so often! I see something interesting and have to go and have a closer look. I am tactile – I pick up stones with interesting colours or textures, I swirl my fingers around in puddles and stroke the bark on trees. And I dream…I work out plots of stories in my head, write opening paragraphs for a novel, or make up rhyming poetry couplets.

I shall have to find a fellow writer for my walks then I can have the best of both worlds – the company that I really did enjoy, and the freedom to touch stuff and to dream and make up poetry – which I missed.

Maybe that is the part of getting to know people better. Once I know people better I can drag them off the path to touch the bark on a tree and invite them swirl their fingers in a puddle with me!

An army on the move

It is that time of year when the birds head for warmer places, but yesterday they did it in real style.

It was about quarter past eight in the morning. I had just walked into school – yet again! It was probably the sound that caught my attention first. Birds can make a lot of noise – but this was A LOT OF NOISE.

Right above my head the sky was full of birds. I don’t know what variety of birds, but there were lots of them. It took a good few minutes for the flock to pass. It was wave after wave after wave. I seriously thought about saluting – as if it was a squadron of bombers heading out for a dogfight with the Germans over the English Channel or something!

Just in front of me hopping around on the path was a couple of other birds. They may be flying south at a later date, or maybe they just stay around all year.

If I had been one of those birds hopping on the ground, I think that I might have been rather awestruck at the huge noisy flock heading south. I think I might have been a little bit envious that they were part of something huge, and obviously with a destination in mind.

I think sometimes I get to be a little like that in my Christian walk. There are some people that are just on the move and I am busy hopping around on the path! They have responded to a call which I don’t seem to have heard! They are spurring others on to reach a specific destination, perhaps a closer walk with Jesus, or a clearer understanding of the word, and I am hopping around on the path looking for worms!

I found the birds’ flight yesterday very inspiring! There is a call deep inside for that closer walk with God. There is a desire to be on the move and heading for a clear destination and I will be up there! Not by my own efforts, though. Not by straining and struggling and striving to be up there – but when the Holy Spirit says, “Now!”

The mouse and the messages

I was seriously tempted on Tuesday night to take the car – which the AA man had told me not to drive under any circumstances – to the supermarket down the road. We had eaten our way through the contents of the fridge, the freezer and the fruit bowl. The tins in the cupboard were fine as a part of a meal but not a meal in themselves. What stopped me from going shopping was the fear of not being able to get the car started on the homeward journey and having to explain to the AA man – it would, naturally, be the same man would arrive to rescue me – why I had blatantly ignored his instructions!

Cheese and beetroot sandwiches loose their novelty eventually – and cheese is a weight watcher’s nightmare in terms of points. I had a genius idea of shopping on line. I have often thought that my mum’s problems of having to rely of my sister to do her shopping would be history if she did it all on line and it was all delivered to the door for her. The problem is that she wouldn’t spend enough on the shop to qualify.

So, I prepared to forage on line. It wasn’t time saving like they promised. Part of the problem was the dying mouse. The computer mouse is not as fast or as nimble as he used to be. Trying to get him to land on the tiny little squares to put ticks into certain boxes was not working well. After two hours I thought I had done the shopping and proceeded to the checkout. Naturally, it was only as I was leaving the virtual shop that I realised I had forgotten the toothpaste! They don’t let you pop back in for the one forgotten item!

It was an experience! This morning the bags were delivered to the door. For the most part I got what I asked for, apart from one or two things they didn’t have so they had given me something similar instead.

Was it more expensive? Probably yes! You don’t get a chance to pick out the things that are reduced because their sell by dates are due. And then there is a delivery charge to deal with too.

Will I do it again? Possibly yes! With Christmas marching toward me, and visions of end to end trolleys at the checkout, I think I may well go back to the virtual store

Slowly slowly

At the International Friends meeting – where I help out with an English language class for the Polish community (and others too), we were learning about jobs. Right at the end of the class for a fun activity, we were doing charades – acting out jobs so that the other people in the group could guess what we were doing.

Andre, one of the Polish men, picked the card with “Joiner” written on it. Quite of few of the men there are in the building business, many of them joiners. I think Andre might also be a joiner. He began his acting out by pretending to light a cigarette, smoke it for a while, drink a cup of tea and then knock in some nails! There was no haste involved – but the job got done eventually.

I think that the people who are repairing my car are cut from the same cloth. Despite making arrangements to pick up the car last Friday, they finally collected it on the following Wednesday. It now appears that I won’t be mobile until next Wednesday – two days (the original estimate of when I would be back on the road) has turned into something much longer.

I have been walking back and forth from school and to mid-week church meetings and I can safely say that the novelty has worn off! I might be accumulating some Weight Watcher bonus points but, to be honest, I walk at such a slow pace – particularly on the homeward journey – that I am probably not earning that many extra fro the time involved!

Missing Abdul

Didn’t I say that I was car illiterate? I called out the AA yet again. This time I was the required quarter of a mile from home, so they came to get me. What I thought was a flat battery turned out to be a little more serious.

Work is being done on the new school building – just preliminaries. The builders have fenced off a bit of the school car park. Although the builders are not supposed to park there, they do. This morning, one person had parked his car skew-whiff, abandoning his car in such a way to make four of the parking bays unusable. I thought maybe I had been too busy muttering about it this morning to check my lights!

The AA man recognised the car, and me – he has changed the tyre once and jump started me twice! This time, however, it was bad news. It was something to do with a cracked gasket and he explained perfectly what has been happening to the disappearing water. The dryness I mentioned weeks ago was nothing to with neglect from me. That’s kind of comforting!

The AA man went through all the little things that might have been happening over the last few weeks – curious smells, smoke coming out of things, disappearing water, white residue on the top of the water cap. These little things that you maybe notice but don’t really register all add up to one big thing that costs a lot of time and money to fix.

You see, this is where being car illiterate, or a mechanical numpty, really gets you into trouble. I could be driving a death trap and not know about it. When I moved back to live with my parents after coming back from Cyprus, I owned a mini. It was red and it was wonderful and I loved it dearly. The man across the road, a Sikh gentleman, called Abdul, loved my mini too. He used to spend hours tinkering under the bonnet and he knew everything about cars and stuff.

Right now I miss Abdul! I don’t have an Abdul. No one tinkers under the bonnet of my cars anymore. Abdul would have known what all the little clues added up to. I would have been warned about a huge repair bill looming over the horizon.

Well, the conclusion of it all, apart from cancelling Christmas, is that a mechanic from a garage is coming to collect the car tomorrow, have a look at it and start ordering bits. Yet again, Cinderella’s carriage becomes a pumpkin and I get to walk. There is an upside – I should loose some serious weight with all the exercise!

I am pretty much feeling like drowning my sorrows with an Indian takeaway – it memory of Abdul.

It's just a phase

I can remember when, at the exciting age of eighteen, I gave my life to Jesus, I was so enthusiastic – not that I am not still enthusiastic! My enthusiasm demonstrated itself in picking fault with everything everyone was doing. Their actions just didn’t match up with what Jesus expected of them and I was bold enough to tell them so.

My mother retreated behind a mantra – “It’s just a phase she’s going through.” The phase has lasted quite a while now and I would like to think that I have softened a little since those early days!

I think my body has been repeating that same mantra since I began attending Weight Watchers – “It’s just a phase she’s going through”. It may well be right! Up till now I have always lost something, even just the half pound – but yesterday I stayed the same. I had not put on any weight, not taken any off.

A part of me would like to blame the jumper I was wearing! It was a winter jumper of thick wool and cables! I had dressed for walking to work in the morning, and after school I walked around to Weight Watchers. The truthful bit of me would blame the curry and nan bread at the weekend, and the slice of chocolate cake to celebrate someone’s birthday!

I think I may just have hit the part of the diet where the body doesn’t like it anymore. The novelty of counting points and eating Nimble bread has worn off and it craves chocolate! It is not about to be pawned off with a drink of Options low-calorie hot chocolate. That is a poor substitute. It wants to old Mel back! It was at this point in my previous attempts to lose weight that I gave up as it all seemed too hard to keep going.

I can’t think of a time in my walk with Jesus that I have ever some to a point of really thinking about giving up. I have thought about giving up with churches, or with individual people – but my faith? No. I love the person that Jesus reveals me to be through our relationship – I see what I am becoming and what I am leaving behind, and there is no comparison.

I suppose weight-wise I also like the person I am becoming – the one that does not need to head for the “Plus” rail in the dress shop! Which is why I will fight on!

Dry days

Not so long ago we got labelled as a health promoting school. It wasn’t just about introducing healthy options in the school canteen but also raising health awareness among the staff. There was a rash of things for staff including a lady that came to do various massages, classes for yoga and meditation, and a million leaflets scattered about the place about diets and dealing with stress.

A friend was leafing through one of the leaflets to compare her eating habits with the “ideal”. She decided that she was probably eating too much protein, enough fruit and vegetables, and possibly not enough of the complex carbohydrates! She was pretty much convinced that she was not drinking enough water.

When I first joined Weight Watchers, I did try to increase my water intake. It seriously disrupted my carefully timed toilet breaks! In any other environment, toilet attendance is probably not so strictly worked out – but my life is directed by bells. In my pre-weight watching existence, toilet breaks coincided with break time and lunchtime. After trying to drink more water, things went a little awry! There are some classes where I need to be in the room when they arrive. If they are allowed access to the snibs on the door – they will lock themselves in and grin at you as you helplessly knock and wait to be let in. I could afford to allow a first year class to wait for me, but not a fourth year class. My bladder did not seem to be able to make the distinction so I returned to my old water drinking habits!

I still try to drink more but recognise that my body is probably in a permanent state of dehydration! I am not sure that my body would know what to do with the excess!

It came as quite a shock to discover yesterday that my car engine was seriously dehydrated too! The plan yesterday was to join some friends for a friendly quiz night at King’s Fellowship in Culloden. Driving to pick up Joe on the way, I noticed the temperature gauge in the car was not just steadily rising but overheating at a tremendous rate. It was well into the red bit, which I assume is not good. In a panic I drove home. I wasn’t sure what the car might do, but I envisioned that it would involve lots of smoke and a huge garage bill.

A friend told us that it sounded like the water in the radiator needed topping up, and at the end of the evening, at half past ten at night, bonnet up, in the torch light, checked out his theory. He was right – extremely right. Bone-dry so it was.

You see I am not mechanically literate. I had hoped long ago that my wonderful husband would learn to drive, pass his test and take on the mantle of car maintenance. It’s a boy thing – along with “slugs and snails and puppy dog tails”. Car oil levels, spark plugs and radiators – it’s boy stuff. I can do the air freshener that hangs from the mirror, and keep the glove compartment relatively tidy – but underneath the bonnet, all those tubes and stuff – that is boy stuff! And yet as the driver of the family I have the responsibility thrust upon me!

May be it is time to enrol in the car maintenance class and not just think about doing it!

There is a refrain from a worship song that is running through my head “Your word is a lamp unto my feet, Your Spirit like water to my soul.” In the body water flushes out toxins and joins the blood in transporting red blood cells and oxygen around the body, in my car the water keeps everything cool and prevents the engine from overheating.

The water of the Holy Spirit does a similar job – taking the oxygen teaching of Jesus and transporting it to nurture my spirit. He flushes out the toxins – attitudes and thoughts that if left unchallenged would prove harmful. He prevents me from overheating, by being the small still voice of faith and reason that keeps me from loosing it!

Silence is golden

My friend and I, in our weekly bible studies are working our way through women in the New Testament. This week it was the turn of the woman who gate-crashes Simon the Pharisee’s meal to weep before Jesus and anoint his feet with perfume.

In the middle of the story is the parable about two people who owe money. One owes just a little, the other owes a great amount. Both have their debts cancelled. (Actually, that is kind of relevant for my third year classes – we are looking at the Debt Crisis and the Drop the Debt campaign – cancelling debts!). Neither could pay their debt – so it did not matter who owed the most. If you owe someone ten pounds and you don’t have the money, you might as well owe them a hundred pounds – you still don’t have the money.

What really struck me about the woman’s encounter with Jesus is her silence. She never said a word. Simon did not say much either come to think about it. The woman never confessed her sins to Jesus. She never tried to defend her lifestyle or the choices that she had made. She never blamed anyone or society for the way things had turned out. She never spoke at all, and yet through her actions she spoke volumes!

Her silence challenges me. She doesn’t list the individual crimes or give details about when they happened or who was there. To stand in front of someone knowing that they do not need to know the details – they know how bad it is, and you know how bad it is – and that is enough, is something so humble.

Words put limits on things. The minute you begin to use words to describe something, you set up boundaries. No words – no boundaries. The bad state of things is just too bad to put into words. We are so careful that people don’t think the worst of us that we are careful to describe exactly what we have or haven’t done.

She is allowing him to think the worst of her. I know that God knows everything about me, but deep down I also want him not to think badly of me. Her silence says – “Think what you will. I can offer no excuses. I simply come before you. Do what you must.”

Jesus accepts everything – the silence and all that it means. His grace reaches out and embraces her.

The dog ate my homework

I managed to shave off just a half a pound last week on the diet! I am sure I heard somewhere that the older you get, the less easy it gets to loose weight and that is true for me. I have just a half a pound left to reach my first stone gone!

Jo, the class leader, was talking yesterday about making excuses for ourselves. We can justify why we are as overweight as we are – it’s the medication that we are on, or we are just big boned people, or it’s in the genes or …. you know how it goes! These things are just excuses and they don’t really hold up under scrutiny.

I was praying this morning. I spoke on Sunday about asking for help. The basis of the word was the story in Acts 3 where Peter and John are God’s instruments in healing a lame man. I made the point that they had passed the man on a number of occasions and never noticed him. Indeed, it was the man himself that initiated the encounter by asking for help. Peter and John were just walking by. Why did they not see him? Why did the Spirit not provoke them into action?

I think too some extent that beggars around the Temple were so common place that people accepted their presence without thinking. It was just normal life and just the way things were, so they didn’t question whether there was an alternative. The beggars were part of the scenery and almost invisible.

I was challenged about what things have become so acceptable to me they have become invisible and unquestioned. We have a family where the mother and her children are part of the church family, but the father isn’t. I accept his absence when I shouldn’t. Just as it grieves God that this is an incomplete family in the church, it should grieve me too. There is a history – an unpleasant history – of his encounter with the church in earlier years that wasn’t good. It left wounds and scars which have not really healed.

This morning as I was praying for the family, I was focussing on what we as a church had done wrong so many years ago, and apologising to God for making His job that much harder. God spoke clearly about the problem no longer being about us. We were not the same bunch of people. The problem was that what had happened long ago had been made an excuse not to become involved.

It is far easier to maintain what you think to be the truth about a group of people, or an individual, rather than to seek a fresh view. To think that the person you knew five years, or ten years ago, has never changed is unrealistic. People change – but we hold on to who we think they are from our past experience. We make it an excuse to polish the grudge, or sharpen the hatchet.

We have a choice. We can forgive and move forward, or hold resentment in our heart and stay stuck in the mud of stubbornness.

I am learning to forgive.

What are you doing this weekend?

The school staffroom is becoming a very interesting place to be. For a while there was not a nice atmosphere as staff griped and grumbled about how hard life was and how heavy the workload was getting. It really was unpleasant! Since then we have had a influx of four new staff – all young folk who have lives outside of school! They talk about what they are going to do at the weekend – and the M word (marking) doesn’t get a mention!

When they are discussing weekend plans they ask around. My answer to the question of what I was going to do at the weekend was “I have a sermon to prepare as I am preaching on Sunday.” I wouldn’t say that I am a closet Christian by any means, but no one had ever asked me before about my weekend plans, and it just so happened to be me preaching. They were fascinated – what was I going to talk about? How many people would be listening? Did anyone have any problems with a woman preaching? How often did I preach? What was my church like? It was an open door to a flood of questions.

It was also an open door to a flood of comments about their own church experiences. One of the new teachers had a father who was or had been a lay preacher. Another teacher had attended a Plymouth Brethren church for a short while. It was interesting and very animated.

My sermon is all ready! Our church leader, Mark, has introduced a new structure for people involved in preaching and worship. The preacher needs to pass on the topic a week in advance so that if the worship leader wants to link in songs they can do.

My first inclination was to think the structure left no space for my usual last minute preparation and wasn’t it all stifling to the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit answered quite promptly, “I can fit in with a weeks notice. Don’t you worry about me, Mel!” So out went the “What if God doesn’t talk to me a week in advance?” misgivings, and in came a confident declaration that, yes, the Holy Spirit can fit in with the week in advance! The topic flowed from a (phone) conversation I had with my mum and the bible context and verses came from another (cyberspace) conversation. It has all been pretty painless, but rather exciting too. I guess I am learning to simply listen and not agonise.

And to top it all – I don’t have five pages of notes with a million Bible references. I did a mind map! One single side of A4 paper with colour coded boxes and lots of arrows! Cool or what? I have preached the sermon a dozen times to an invisible audience in my head and there were no hecklers! See how flexible I can be if I try?

Is Something Wrong?

This is something that I read on FW. Glen is a good friend of mine and I hope will not mind me posting it here. I found it very thought provoking.

Is Something Wrong?

by Glenn A. Hascall

What if we’ve created an illusion of what Christianity is supposed to be?

What if we’ve convinced ourselves that grace doesn’t mind intentional sin?

What if we’ve convinced ourselves the filthy rags we wear are something grand and glorious?

What if we’re wrong?

Have we been so busy fashioning a world that caters to our needs that we’ve forgotten we are warriors in a strange land?

Have we forgotten we’re on a journey while we set up a paradise on earth?

Have we forgotten our Captain while we crown other sheep?

What have we done?

The church today provides a coffee shop and café while the world outside the doors thinks we’ve dedicated a country club to ‘our kind’.

The church today makes youth group so cool that even non-Christians can come and still miss out on their need for something more.

Christian radio is so cool the whole family can enjoy it.

We wield political power – we lobby for our cause – we mobilize those who should be sharing their faith into a force for political change.

We gather with God’s people by satellite feed and miss face-to-face interaction.

We relegate those gatherings to one event a week.

Yet

We

Know

Something

Is

WRONG.

We are NOT strangers in a strange land anymore. We have forgotten how to read our maps so we’ve settled for a second rate hotel in the low rent district – never sharing good news – never weeping for the lost – never longing for home.

What draws us deep into a relationship with Jesus? A four-minute song, a five-minute devotional, or a two-minute radio thought or a touching video?

How much is enough?

Have we found it too much?

Do we yearn for more?

Do we?

Can we?

Will we?

Flat batteries

Apparently I have done it again – left the car lights on and drained the battery. However, because the car is parked outside the house, and not a quarter of a mile away, the AA can’t help me. I did consider whether it was feasible to push the car for a quarter of a mile just so it qualified for assistance – but getting myself, let alone the car, a quarter of a mile away from the house is a challenge!

Actually I am not sure who has the flattest battery – me or the car! Joe spent the latter part of the week coughing and spluttering everywhere. Doing my Florence Nightingale impersonation was enough for me to catch the cold. I am a bit bunged up and my brain is slowly turning to mush. I admit that I don’t fight these things off, or put up much resistance. I pretty much roll over and surrender. One or two days off school has its attractions.

The trouble is that all the nice things I think I will do during those two days – like catch up with some writing, or reading a book or making in-roads into the ironing pile just don’t happen because I feel too unwell!

Pulling the red chord

I was talking to my mum this afternoon on the phone. My sister Carla was around visiting, with granddaughter, Kira, but it wasn’t until they had both left that my mum began to share some really personal issues that she felt she couldn’t say while my sister was there.

On thing that underlined the whole thing was the issue of asking for help. My mum had been so independent for so long. Even with failing sight and hearing, she refuses to give in and admit weaknesses.

She moved into sheltered housing a number of years ago, and with all the government’s penny pinching and cost effectiveness, there is no longer a warden for the scheme. There are still red triangles on strings around the flat that my mum can pull on and help arrives eventually, but she because she doesn’t know the people who respond, she doesn’t want to be a bother. She will have her bad moments when she needs help but does not ask. I was trying to tell her that only by pulling the red chord as often as she needs to will the authorities realise that she needs the care.

Part of the problem is that she does not want to enter into a deeper level of the care system. She always said that once she lost her sight completely, then she would go into a proper nursing home. There are so many other areas in her life that she is not coping with and I think she is beginning to think that perhaps the time has come to evaluate where she is at.

My family are marvellous in their support, particularly Carla’s family. They take her shopping once a week, clean the flat for her once a week and pop around every so often. My mum knows that she can phone them anytime and, for the most part, they will come. My brother, Richard, is also close by and contactable.

I think what is really eating my mum up is that she feels that she is becoming a burden to them. I know that when I came back from Cyprus, I lived with my parents for a couple of years, and much as my mum loved having me around, she wanted me to have my own life and not end up looking after them both. She wants us to live our lives without worrying about her.

We had a good chat about different agencies that could take some of the pressure off. Between visits, my mum is pretty much housebound. She is shaky on her feet and very anxious about moving among people. I don’t know what level of service something like Shopmobility can provide. She also has money worries. She gets a care allowance that she doesn’t make the best use of, and the bank would like her not to keep so much of it in an easily accessible account.

My mum is a courageous lady, but her courage is just leaking out. She is becoming afraid of different aspects of life.

We also talked about church. Different people in churches have different gifts, and I thought maybe someone with money sense could help her make the best of her money, and just watch her account. I know that Joe’s brother, John does that for my mother-in-law. Again this idea of asking cropped up. My mum thought she would burst into tears is she had to talk it over with someone. If you can’t cry in front of your church family – where else is there?

I got to thinking about whether I feel comfortable crying in front of my church family. No one feel comfortable crying, let’s admit it, but there has to be somewhere you can just take off the amour, put down the sword and rest from the battle. I have a wonderful church – and, yes, I can and often do burst into tears when things get a little too much. But why wait until things get too much? Why wait until the burden is unbearable? Why do we keep things hidden for long? Why don’t we pull the red chord more often?

Is it a pride thing? Or a trust thing? Or a message that the church is giving out that it shouldn’t be?

I thought about whether it was time to perhaps think about moving back to Warwickshire. I don’t think for a moment that I can offer anything more than Carla and Richard do, but I really feel powerless to help. Maybe the best help I can be is to give her a chance to simply off-load the issues that are building up, much like a pressure cooker valve. A book I am reading at the moment suggests that women when they talk about their problems are not always looking for solutions, they just want to talk and have someone listen.

Pure, honest and blameless

I was reading 1 Thessalonians 2:10 yesterday morning. “You yourselves are our witnesses—and so is God—that we were devout and honest and faultless toward all of you believers.” The version that I read it in used the words pure, honest and blameless. I found it very challenging that Paul could use those terms so confidently.

I have no problems with thinking myself honest. Pure and blameless, however, are much harder words to use. Because of the redemptive work of Christ God considers us to be pure and blameless, but in the world we do not always behave in a manner that is pure and blameless.

What came to mind when I was reading that Paul was careful about his behaviour. He thought about the effects his actions might have on other people and acted wisely. Wise behaviour doesn’t come naturally. Too often we act without thinking about the effects of our actions and then have to deal with the mess afterwards!

How much heartache we would save ourselves if we took careful thought of the things we did and avoid having to deal with the consequences of thoughtless actions all the time.

Together in the storm

Yet again, another worship song stirs in me today. The song was “Jesus, lover of my soul.” The line was “Jesus I want You to know I will follow You all my days.” As I was singing it, I felt God asking me – “Will you follow me out onto the water?” I wrote a poem:-

Will You follow me
And walk on water?
Will you leave the security of the boat
Cast aside your comfort
And join me in the storm?
Will you believe
As you commit yourself
To the first step,
That I have called you
To walk beside me,
That the wind and the waves
Won’t swallow you?
Will you keep your eyes
Fixed on my face alone,
Not allowing your gaze to wander
And leave the boat behind?
For I will hold you
Firm as a rock
On the shifting waves
And I will steady you
Strong and confident
In the whistling winds
I have made the impossible possible
And as You and I
Walk together in the storm
You will demonstrate my glory
And the invisible God
Will be made visible in you
Come
Walk on water
With me.

Where is the water that Jesus would have me walk upon? I have been invited to join with the other teachers and preachers in our church to study together and seek to listen to what God is saying. We are planning to sharpen the gifting that we each have so that we pass on clearly God’s word and direction.

I can probably preach a word at the drop of a hat, but just recently I have felt that the revelation coming through our leader has been slightly out of my reach. I suppose that I have a choice – I can stay in the boat, in my comfort zone, or I can step out and start walking on unfamiliar ground.

I found as I wrote the poem, that it took on a prophetic tone. Jesus will be there to hold me safe and secure, and will steady me when things feel like they are shifting.

Peter’s walk on the water enabled the rest of the disciples, and those of us that read the account in the gospels, to have confirmation about who Jesus was that they, and we, would otherwise not have. Nothing is said to Peter when he and Jesus get back into the boat. There are no slaps on the back, no applause, no congratulations and no high fives for Peter. There attention was directed at Jesus. Their words and worship were reserved for Him – “Truly, you are the Son of God.”

Early birds and no worms

I finally have the excuse I have been looking for! Now I know what to say to my next door neighbour who looks disapprovingly at my un-mown lawn!

This morning I was listening to Radio 4. I have no idea why the radio is tuned in to Radio 4. There was an item about birds. There is apparently a decline in song thrushes, house sparrows and starlings. People are building patio’s and paving over their gardens to make it easier to manage. I confess to being guilty of that although there is still a lot of grass left. However, when the whole garden is paved over there are no worms and insects for the birds to eat. Even small gardens are home to 700 different species of insect - and many of them have crawled over my arm as I have dug out weeds!.

In fact, the RSPB recommend that you leave a little bit of your garden alone entirely – let the grass grow long because it is good for insects and that means that is good for birds too!

Thankyou, RSPB, for giving me permission to ignore my lawn mower!

To boldly go

I seem to remember many years ago reading a holiday advertisement about following the route Moses took through the wilderness. The “holiday” promised lots of sand, camels, an oasis or two and lots of nomads. I was interested but it was entirely out of the question as I quite broke at the time.

This morning I was reading Numbers 33. It is itinerary of all the stops and starts along the route to the Promised Land.

What caught my attention came quite near the beginning of the chapter. In v 3 it reads “The people of Israel left defiantly, in full view of all the Egyptians.” That’s the NLT version. The Egyptians had been their enemies, mistreating them for many years, but after God had intervened with all the plagues, culminating in the death of the first-born, the threat that they posed was gone. There Egyptians no longer had power to dictate their lives.

I loved the word “defiantly” and the phrase “in full view”. The Israelites did not creep out of Egypt in the middle of the night, on tiptoe, with their camels hooves wrapped in cloth to stop them making any noise. They did not leave the country apologetically, sorry that they were leaving buildings unfinished. They left “defiantly”!

Other translations of the verse are really worth reading too.

“They marched out boldly in full view of the Egyptians.” (NIV)

“They marched out heads held high and confident…and the Egyptians watched them go.” (The Message)

“The Israelites went out of Egypt with a high hand and triumphantly in the sight of all the Egyptians.” (The Amplified Bible)

Defiantly, boldly, with confidence and triumphantly are words and phrases that paint a strong picture. Their enemies watched and could do nothing to stop them from leaving.

Satan is our enemy and when he was forced to hand over the keys of Hades to Jesus, he could only watch as hell emptied. He could do nothing to stop the souls he had imprisoned there from following Jesus. I bet they all marched out defiantly, boldly, with confidence and triumphantly!

God delivered His people from the hands of their enemies and in Christ, through His death on the cross, and His resurrection from the grave – God has delivered me!

I want to walk each day defiantly, boldly, with confidence and triumphantly letting the enemy know that he has lost. He has no authority over me and he cannot dictate how I should live my life! I want to stop being apologetic about my faith. I want to stop walking on tiptoe afraid to disturb people.

What enabled the Israelites to be so defiant and bold was not in anything they had done, but in everything that God had done for them. God had secured their freedom just as He has secured mine.

Child of Prague

When Joe’s mum, Alice, moved into sheltered housing there was a lot of stuff that she couldn’t take with her. Her collection of dolls was accidentally thrown away, so when Joe started talking about a Child of Prague, I thought he was meaning some kind of doll in Czech national costume!

I think he was amazed at my ignorance. I claimed a Roman Catholic upbringing so I should have known. He seemed to think that every Catholic home had one!

While we were in Prague we visited the Church of Our Lady Victorious which is home to the original Child of Prague. It is a statue of the infant Jesus made of wax dressed in a bishop’s garb and wearing a small crown.

Joe remembers that they used to have a Child of Prague in his home when he was younger, and it had either got broken or lost, so he thought it would be an opportunity to buy one for his mum. He also bought one for his Aunty Agnes, and one for us. You slip a silver coin beneath the base. I suppose it is like wearing a St Christopher when you travel – that kind of thing. I confess to being unsure about that part of it.

Joe also bought three more smaller versions but didn’t tell me. I think he knew that I didn’t really know what they were about. Being a charismatic, Pentecostal type of Christian who had forgotten her Catholic roots, he thought I might have objections!

He took them into work yesterday and gave two of them away! For the girls that work in his department, he had bought other souvenirs – little wooden Prague houses that fitted nicely on top of their computers. The Child souvenirs were for people he knew to be Roman Catholics.

He was amazed at the effect the gifts had. He expected wreathes of smiles and thanks for being remembered, but when he gave one Child to a lady in another part of the building she burst into tears. She thinks Joe is wonderful anyway, but the gift of a “Child of Prague” was beyond wonderful.

Another Child was given to a pub manager. The man has been very kind to our church providing us with a venue for our meetings, and Joe knowing that he was a Roman Catholic gave him a Child. Like the lady in Joe’s office, he was very touched by the gift, and taken aback by Joe thinking about him. He also thinks Joe is wonderful, and treated him to free pint of beer!

I love my husband! I love him because he is kind to people! It is not in the big grand gestures that he demonstrates his kindness, but in small things. Isn’t that just like Jesus?

To The Ends Of The Earth

Singing the Hillsongs' worship song yesterday, "To The Ends Of The Earth", there were certain words that really captured my heart. The whole song is really challenging and I wasn't even sure that I could sing the words and really mean them.

I am not sure that I would go "to the ends of the earth". The heart would be willing but the flesh would be weak. I was thinking…just where are the ends of the earth? I find it hard enough to go to the end of the garden path and initiate a conversation with my next door neighbour!

Where are the ends of the earth?

For a long time, my family, because I wasn't married, and I had a zealous passion for God, expected me to become a missionary. They could picture me in a canoe, making my way up the Congo river. A far off country where the pygmies live was where the end of the earth was. However, I believe that the "ends of the earth" have little to do with the geography of the earth and more to do with the geography of the heart. I think they change and shift with time and maturity.

About eight years ago I spent four weeks of my summer holiday working with a mission in Durban, South Africa. It wasn't a huge mission, perhaps just a half dozen or so workers. They had many fingers in many pies in terms of ministry, but the one that I spent most time with was working in an orphanage in a black township. Early in the morning we drove around various supermarkets in the area to collect out of date bread and vegetables which we delivered to the orphanage. While the women used these leftovers to make stews for the children, we busied ourselves about the buildings making repairs to broken windows, emptying clogged up cisterns and washing and playing with the children

My particular "end of the earth" came when I encountered the smell of the place. It was not a clean, hygienic smell. Some of the younger children in particular smelt overpoweringly of dried urine. There were one or two children that had diahorrea and rather than swathe them in nappies that they would have to change, and couldn't afford anyway, they were left naked from the waist down.

All children love affection. They want to be cuddled. My "end of the earth" was about whether I wanted to do the cuddling. Could I really get beyond the unpleasant smell to show compassion to these children. I found that I could not hold them at arm's length and picked up the children to carry, sat them on my knee and played pattacake and let them run their sticky fingers through my hair.

In the course of the afternoon, I became just as smelly. There was nothing to distinguish them from me.

I found it quite distressing and when I returned to the Mission house, I spend ages in the bathroom, scrubbing my skin, and washing my hair. The smell seemed to linger, no matter how much soap and water I applied.

I felt God speak to me, telling me that he understood how I felt. After all, didn't He leave the glory of heaven to become human? He took on the smell of humanity. He embraced all of the sin and the deprivation of humankind - and on the cross there was nothing to distinguish Him from any other person, so God turned His face away.

He did not want to be tarnished by sin, but because He loved people, He was willing to embrace all of man's dirtiness.

Because he loved people.

It is love that enables us to do tremendous things.

Roast pork, dumplings, red cabbage and life

Joe and I have just been out to lunch with a friend of ours and her two children. We went to a place that has an indoor play area, with climbing nets and pits full of coloured plastic balls and spaces to crawl through. I think it is a shame that these things are only for kids. I think that adults would love to play in something like that too.

Ordering lunch was a mammoth task since we had a selection of menus – the ordinary one, a light lunches one and the kid’s menu. We were ordering something from each one! In Prague we didn’t have the luxury of three menus, each with a huge variety of tempting options. The food faire tended to be very heavily weighted towards pork, with various kinds of dumplings and either sauerkraut or red cabbage. We also worked our way through soups and sausages. It was heavy stuff, designed for lining the stomach, on cold winter days. Italian and Chinese restaurants are beginning to spring up, but for the most part it was traditional Czech food.

No matter how nice the dumplings, or tasty the pork, after a while, it does not appeal. I found myself hankering for an Indian takeaway! I like variety! One of the Weight Watchers leaflets emphasised the need to have variety even when you were on a diet. Tuna baked potatoes may be nice for lunch but not every single day!

I think variety applies in the spiritual realm too! When God gave instructions for the anointing oil to be used by the priesthood, there were five or more different ingredients. Each of the ingredients had symbolic significance, but the fact is that only the combined ingredients together were good enough.

I think that very often my spiritual life takes on the equivalent of the “tuna baked potato every lunchtime”. I might congratulate myself that I have quiet times, or go to every church meeting and do a Bible study with a friend every week – but it sometimes has the feel of the predictable Czech meal of roast pork, dumpling and red cabbage. I don’t think the disciples woke up every morning thinking, “Oh, another blind man to heal today,” or “Let’s listen to the parable of the Good Samaritan one more time.” Everyday was an unexpected adventure. It wasn’t about what they were doing but who they were with that coloured their days. There were so many experiences to taste – walking on water, catching huge nets of fish, witnessing a transfigured Christ on top of a mountain and feeding five thousand people. My life doesn’t measure up to the challenge that Jesus issues.

When everyday of my individual walk with Jesus is an adventure, this has to have a transforming effect on the corporate body. There are times when church meetings too become like the Czech menu. Perhaps for the Czech’s it has to do with what ingredients are available, or the lack of skills of the chefs to cook something innovative or maybe it is just about playing safe. For the Christian in hi or her own walk with Jesus, and in the church life together we have all the ingredients we need, the skill of the Holy Spirit to be innovative and playing it safe never was God’s strategy.

Names on a wall

I have just returned from my holiday in Prague. I am missing the clinking sound of the trams running up and down the street, and the smell of sausages being cooked by the street venders. I am not missing the cobblestones or the excessive walking that we had been doing! Just about half of all the tourist leaflets I saw featured the word “Walks”! I suppose that with it being a quite compact medieval city it makes sense. So many of the groups of people were following someone brandishing a stick with a small flag telling you everything you needed to know absolutely everything! Joe and I did our own stuff!

I kept a journal, faithfully writing stuff in it at the end of every day. I don’t think it has the potential to be a best selling travel book on Prague, but Joe found it entertaining – mostly with the mistakes! The biggest mistake was mixing up Franz Kafka, the author who lived in Prague with Frank Capra, the movie man – how similar are the names?

I knew very little of Prague or of the Czech Republic before I went – and too some extent I am not sure if I know that much more now.

The one place that probably affected me most was one of the Jewish synagogues. It has become a memorial to all of the Jews in Prague and the surrounding areas who were killed in concentration camps by the Nazis. I had read the blurb on the leaflet about names written on the walls, but nothing could have prepared me for what it was like.

Thousands upon thousands of names of people with their birth dates and death dates were written neatly in row upon row. At a glance it could have been wallpaper. One Jewish family had faithfully researched who had been lost during those years and made sure that they were not forgotten. Each name was a person that someone knew, passed in the street, chatted with, drank coffee with – they were real people.

For a while I have been thinking about whether I am as tender-hearted as I could be. So many things that seem to touch some people have left me relatively unaffected. I stood looking at all these names on the wall, and I cried. These were not people I knew, they had all met their death long before I was even born – and yet the only word that I could come up with was “Sorry.” I just stood there, tears streaming down my face, reading out the names of total strangers and saying sorry.

I looked at some of the white spaces on the wall, the plaster above the arches and prayed that they would stay white – that there would never be another occasion where so many people die so needlessly that their names need to be recorded on the white bits of the wall.

I hope that we never reach the point where someone says that events like the Holocaust should not be remembered. The Bible is littered with memorials – not always to help people remember the good stuff – but also the bad stuff. If we do not remember the bad stuff, we will be in danger of repeating it.

Clearing out

The first two or three days of the October holiday have been clearing out days. I took a black bin liner into the wardrobe and I filled it!

There are one or two things that probably ought to be in the bin liner but I talked myself into a stay of execution! I can’t imagine that I will ever wear them again but, they have memories attached.

There is a black flowery top and skirt of obscene smallness of waist that I wore to my engagement party. For a long time I entertained ideas of slimming down – but even though I am slimming down, the outfit is not your classic style that never dates. It has shoulder pads, Dynasty style.

There is also a kind of terracotta suit that I wore for my going away outfit after the wedding. The skirt part of it is pleated and quite short – those were the days when my legs were more shapely than they are now, no doubt. Yet again I can’t picture myself wearing it, but I am loathe to get rid of it.

There is a black T-shirt with Paris emblazoned across the front. We were there for my fortieth birthday and I actually may wear it one day. It is a weight loss goal that is achievable and the t-shirt is less liable to date.

Another T-shirt, a red one this time, marks an achievement in a health and fitness club – my attendance at 35 tummy tucking sessions! I am reminded that I was that disciplined once upon a time, that I took exercise seriously.

A jumper that I knitted didn’t make the path back to the wardrobe. (The black bin liner is still in the spare room, so a pardon is still possible!) It reminds me that I used to knit, once upon a time and I wore what I knitted with pride! I had one particular pattern that I used over and over again and adapted.

I confess to being a hoarder. As I have mentioned before I am one of those people who collect the plastic toys from Christmas crackers “just in case” they turn out to be useful! I have held on to clothes “just in case” I slim down sufficiently to be able to wear them.
I hold on to letters and notebooks that I never read “just in case” I want to walk down memory lane.

It all takes space up though. Put all the stuff in a box and you have to put the box somewhere. If that space is filled with boxes, then there is less space to put things that are currently in use!

If my physical life is full of stuff that I no longer need or use, or will ever need or use again – does the same apply to my spiritual life? Are there doctrines that are out of date, or revelation that his been superseded by something new? Am I resolutely hanging on to things, knowledge that I think might be useful one day when it clearly won't ever be?

Does theology become outdated? Do the things I believed twenty or thirty years ago actually have a “best before” date attached?

I find myself unwilling to take the black bin liner into my heart and fill it. There are no things in there that I don’t use. There is a verse somewhere in the gospels that talks of the wise man taking new and old treasure out of the store house.

I guess it takes real discernment to know what to let go of and what to hold on to.

A Glorious Fire

I know that I shouldn't really do this! I just have to hope that I don't get any FW visitors to the blog, and/or they don't tell one me. The Fathwriter weekly challenge topic was "Fire Fighters! I never thought that I would be able to come up with anything that I woud be proud of. I have written a few things that I really wish didn't have my name attatched! Then I had an excellent idea but not really sure that I could pull it off. I wrote a poem based on an story in Numbers.

A Glorious Fire

You should have seen the fire
It was glorious!
Blazing with a blistering heat
Furious flames
Choking smoke
And all it took was
Just a small spark

An abundance of
Driftwood in the wilderness
Exploding out of Egypt
It tumbled around barren places
Rebellious attitudes
Rumbling complaints
Snarling and sniping
Dry spirits
Parched hearts
And arid souls

And I lit my match
As I whispered in the shadows
“Why him? Why not you?”
And their covetous eyes
Gazed lustfully on Aaron’s staff
“Why him? Why not us?”
Their shout echoed among the sand dunes

The ground split
The earth opened its mouth
And swallowed the jealous ones
And fire roared from heaven
Consuming men who envied
And people ran from the flames
Screaming

Embers glowed dull red
Sparks quietly hissed
Not extinguished
The fire smouldered
I whispered again
To twitching ears
Fanning the flames of resentment
“They were the Lord’s people…
And Moses killed them.”
And they gathered
And they grumbled



God’s wrath was ignited
Flames of a different kind
Licked at His stiff necked people
Disease crawled over their faces
Gouging holes
Ripping flesh
Seeping poison
Weeping blood

And I danced
Among the fallen bodies
Skipping lightly through the flames
Laughing riotously
“Did You really think
You could do it, God?
Take a sin-stained people
And find your image in them?
Look at them!
Look at you!
Yet again I win
You lose!”

Then I saw a man running
Into the flames
Was it water he carried?
Aaron
Armed with incense
And fire from the altar
Ran into the plague pocked crowd
Making atonement
He stood between the living and the dead

And a shadow fell
Hinting at
Another time, another fire
Another place, another plague
Another man running into the crowd
Making atonement

And the fire stopped burning
The plague ceased
And all wounds were healed

It was a glorious fire
While it lasted!



(Based on Numbers Chapter 16)