August’s Posture

I will stand at my watch  and station myself on the ramparts;
I will look to see what he will say to me,    (Habakkuk 2:1)

This month I have been challenged by prayer, how big are my prayers?

In looking at different spiritual postures possibly prayer is the first posture I should have been considering in this theme, but actually it has only come up for me now!

Praying big is often easier to do when praying for others, but not so much for myself. Yet that really is my need so that the eyes of my heart enlightened so that I may truly know the Hope to which He has called me and what these glorious riches are which are my inheritance. I so need to know the greatness of His might and power so that I can lift my eyes and really believe these things, and in believing be able to Pray Big.

In his book, Pray Big, Alistair Begg teaches us to look beyond the here and how to pray big, eternal prayers like the apostle Paul did in his letter to the Ephesians in chapter s1&3.

Begg encourages us to pray for –

Focus – that the eyes of our heart will be open so that we can see all that we have in Christ and to know God.

Hope – “to know hope is to know the assurance of a reality that isn’t yet fully experienced “

Riches – “It is to God, into the reservoir of the riches of His glory that we go first, and out of the abundance of His provision and in anticipation of one day living in His full, unshielded glory , that the other things fall into line.”

Power – We experience the power of God keeping us going, keeping us growing, obeying and witnessing. It is when we come to the end of our own power that we come to find His.

Love – To know the four dimensions of love . Love that is broad enough to encompass all mankind, long enough to last for all eternity; deep enough to reach the most degraded sinner and high enough to exalt her to heaven. It is an experiential knowledge, but never an exhaustive knowledge.

I need this; I need my heart-eyes opened so that I can have a measure of understanding of the breadth, length, height and depth of His love. And I really, really need to believe that He is able, able to “do far more abundantly than I can imagine or think”.

In short, I need to see the bigness of God to be able to pray Big prayers. If my prayers are too small it is because my view of God is too small

And I need to pray big prayers because I am in need of a big God. My family need me to pray big prayers for them for they need to know the power and love of God. My friends need me to pray big prayers for them, that God will keep them. My church needs me to pray big prayers for them that she will grow in the riches and power of Christ . And I need to pray big prayers for the world because it is in desperate need of redemption and to know the hope found in God.

So I humble myself, I bow before Him now, confessing the smallness of my vision of Him and my limited faith and I pray and ask for my heart-eyes to be open and to be filled with ALL the fulness of His love. I pray big and ask to know His power and might and to really know that He is able!

What about you, what posture do you need to adopt in order to pray big? How can you pray big today?

Pray Big: Learn to Pray Like an Apostle (Inspiration from the Apostle Paul on how to pray and what to pray): Amazon.co.uk: Alistair Begg: 9781784983369: Books

July’s Posture

I will stand at my watch  and station myself on the ramparts;
I will look to see what he will say to me,    (Habakkuk 2:1)

This month I have been reflecting on Wisdom!

Blessed are those who listen to ME,

WATCHING daily at my doors,

WAITING at my doorway (Proverbs 8:34)

In his book ‘Wiser with Jesus’, Zach Eswine describes wisdom in three ways:

Wisdom is a person – Jesus

Wisdom is a posture – watching

Wisdom is a pace – waiting

This ties in with my verse in Habakkuk about watching, positioning and listening, but more than that , he points out that when I ask for wisdom I am asking for Jesus, I am seeking Him and a relationship with Him.

With these things in mind, these were the verses which came to my mind. They are well known, oft repeated verses, but I don’t think I have ever really taken them on board till now:-

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;

in all your ways submit to Him and He will make your paths straight (Proverbs 3:5,6)

Putting these two sets of Proverbs together (8:34 and 3:5,6) this is what I realise that it is the Lord, Jesus, that I am placing my trust in, trusting that He knows what is going on even when I don’t so I don’t then lean on my own understanding of a situation; instead I submit it to Him for Him to make my paths known. I submit to Him to clarify how I should tackle an awkward situation/person; I submit to Him to show me the way ahead; I submit to Him to give me wisdom to know how to navigate through this crazy and confusing broken world.

When I don’t lean on my own understanding, then I watch, I position myself to listen, to hear, I quieten my soul, I actively, intentionally seek the Lord through prayer, song and walking.

When I don’t lean on my own understanding then I wait, I wait to see what the Lord will show. That means not rushing ahead, not speaking out of turn, not pushing open a door. I pace. I pace myself to the Lord, to His timing. I wait for Him. I sit with Him, with His teaching, with His wisdom and then let that guide me.

So, today , this week and hopefully for many weeks I will get into the discipline of not leaning on my own understanding of a situation, but submit to Jesus who is the wisdom of God. I will forge a path through my own mixed up thinking, by positioning myself to watch and wait for wisdom, for Jesus Himself.

Which way are you leaning this week? Towards your own understanding or the understanding of the Lord’s?

June’s Posture

I will stand at my watch  and station myself on the ramparts;
I will look to see what he will say to me,    (Habakkuk 2:1)

After looking last month at posturing ourselves under the Godness of God, it was not my intention to look at another aspect of God’s character this month, however, I was reviewing this book for our church and I realised that there were situations in my past which I had to revisit under the lens of the Sovereignty of God.

So, in reworking a past experience I realise that had I known and been gently guided by the sovereignty of God through a much earlier , painful experience I may have saved myself many years of heartache and disappointment with God.

I would have seen that God’s ‘no’ was not a rejection of me, but my own ideas and will, that He had something much better planned. I would have been able to forgive and move forward with those others involved who had caused me hurt. I wouldn’t have let that hurt define me for numerous year; I wouldn’t have had the company of the twin sisters Bitterness and Resentment, whose hands I clung to tightly along with my hurt.

The famous and much quoted verse from Romans 8:28 used to discourage me, but I realise now that it is a promise

We know that for those who love God ALL things work together for good,for those who have been called according to His purpose.

It is not that all things are good, but that they ultimately work together for good because His purpose is to make us like Christ. (Pg 32)

And this distinction makes all the difference.

So bringing it into the present; where today, do I need to submit to the Sovereignty of God, where do I need to remember that God is God and I am not? Who can I gently guide along the path of faith and trust in the resounding fact that God is Sovereign and that His love guides every plan He has ordained for us?

May’s Posture

I will stand at my watch  and station myself on the ramparts;
I will look to see what he will say to me,    (Habakkuk 2:1)

Despite the fact that I experience God’s goodness everyday, it is something I have struggled with, so this month I have postured myself to look deeper at this goodness and how it manifests itself. I realise that I have been listening to that same whiny voice Eve listened to in the Garden, ‘did God say’; or for me: ‘is God really good, if He is good why does He allow bad things to happen’.

In our ladies’ bible study we have been looking at the attributes of God and so this theme of God’s goodness came up. We saw, firstly, God is good – it is His Nature, His character.

The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abounding in goodness and truth (Ex 34:6)

And because He is good, He does good towards His people:

Oh that men would give thanks to the Lord, for His goodness and for His wonderful works to the children of men! For He satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry soul with good things(Psalm 107:8-9)

Secondly we saw that His goodness is seen in His works:

The Lord is good to all and His tender mercies are over all His works (Psalm 145:9)

Thirdly our praise and worship should focus on the goodness of God as seen particularly in the Psalms.

I will meditate on the glorious splendour of Your majesty, and on Your wondrous works. Men shall speak of the might of Your awesome acts and I will declare Your greatness. They shall utter the memory of Your great goodness and shall sing of Your righteousness. (Psalm 145:5-7)

God is good, no matter what our circumstances may look like He is still good and He still intends good towards us. It is a matter of turning our focus on Him, recognising the folly of our own thinking & ranting and making that decision to stop listening to those voices which tell us the lie that He is not good.

For me, I found my wrong thinking corrected in Psalm 73:

¹ Surely God is good to Israel,
    to those who are pure in heart.

² But as for me, my feet had almost slipped;
    I had nearly lost my foothold.
³ For I envied the arrogant
    when I saw the prosperity of the wicked….

¹² This is what the wicked are like—
    always free of care, they go on amassing wealth.

¹³ Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure
    and have washed my hands in innocence.
¹⁴ All day long I have been afflicted,
    and every morning brings new punishments.

¹⁵ If I had spoken out like that,
    I would have betrayed your children.
¹⁶ When I tried to understand all this,
    it troubled me deeply
¹⁷ till I entered the sanctuary of God;
    then I understood their final destiny.

¹⁸ Surely you place them on slippery ground;
    you cast them down to ruin.
¹⁹ How suddenly are they destroyed,
    completely swept away by terrors!
²⁰ They are like a dream when one awakes;
    when you arise, Lord,
    you will despise them as fantasies.

²¹ When my heart was grieved
    and my spirit embittered,
²² I was senseless and ignorant;
    I was a brute beast before you.

²³ Yet I am always with you;
    you hold me by my right hand.
²⁴ You guide me with your counsel,
    and afterward you will take me into glory.
²⁵ Whom have I in heaven but you?
    And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
²⁶ My flesh and my heart may fail,
    but God is the strength of my heart
    and my portion forever.

²⁷ Those who are far from you will perish;
    you destroy all who are unfaithful to you.
²⁸ But as for me, it is good to be near God.
    I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge;
    I will tell of all your deeds.

For the Psalmist and for me, I found that it is a matter of perspective. It is intentionally turning towards Him and making Him the ‘strength of our hearts’. It is seeing that He is still God and still good no matter the situations which are before us. This takes submission and surrender. When we intentionally declare Him Sovereign and Lord then we also declare that He is good and all He does is good. Then we will know His upholding and guidance as well as our glorious destiny, where all wrongs will be make right and His goodness and glory will be gloriously seen by all!

I found this book helpful in exploring this subject:

April’s Posture

I will stand at my watch  and station myself on the ramparts;
I will look to see what he will say to me,    (Habakkuk 2:1)

You know the saying: ” Familiarity breeds contempt” ? Well I have been thinking this month how being familiar with certain places, situations or experiences mean that we don’t look for God in them, we don’t look to see what God will say to us in them.

When we are familiar we expect things to follow on as they did before. We stop looking to be surprised, our expectations are not heightened, we know this place, we are familiar with it, comfortable even. We know what we are doing, we know our place, we are confident and in our confidence perhaps forget our need for reliance upon God?

I went back to a place where God met with me last year, it is familiar and thought that it would be different this year, almost as if in the familiarity that there was nothing left for God to say to me in that place!!!! How wrong was I; there is still so much for God to say to me and to teach me and yes to correct me too!

I found that God is in the familiar. I found that I still need to seek Him in the familiar, I still need to listen for His voice there. I found that I still need to rely upon Him in the familiar. I found that I can’t nor shouldn’t limit Him in the familiar.

God is in the familiar and He is not silent.

This is the book which accompanied my thoughts this month, a good reminder to tend to our soils; that roots come before fruits!

Rooted: The Hidden Places Where God Develops You: Amazon.co.uk: Liebscher, Banning: 9781601428400: Books

March Posture

We have a saying about the weather, that if March comes in like a lion, it goes out like a lamb and if it comes in like a lamb, it goes out like a lion!

Well, the weather may have come in like a lamb, all quiet and lovely, but in our wee community we have been hit by much grief and sorrow that it is as if the month came in like a lion.

In our church family we were devastated by the death of one of our valued and fruitful members, it hit us hard. This was promptly followed by tragedy in our community with very sad deaths. There just seemed to be sorrow upon sorrow upon sorrow, and that takes its toll on you.

As you remember we are looking at Habakkuk 2 this year, how we posture ourselves as watchmen in the wait for the vision to be fulfilled. These sorrows made me wonder what posture I was to adopt as I stood on my ‘watchtower’, how was I to be a watchman, how was I stand alert and in my place when I was feeling so sad and heavy?

What I learnt was that it is okay to rest, to process, to allow grief to do her work. It is okay to come down from the watchtower, and let someone else take their turn at the watch. The beautiful, life-giving, healing words of Jesus say:

He said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” (Mark 6:31)

Beautiful, timely words which balm the soul.

Come away – get some rest. Be embraced by the Father.

Often we are too busy, too proud, too independent, just to come to the Father and allow Him to embrace us, just to be His child and allow Him to wrap His arms of love and strength around us. Isn’t that what a parent would do for her/his child when the child is upset? Doesn’t a child run to its parent for comfort when it’s had a fall or been hurt? How much more then as children of God should we run to Him, take our comfort from Him and allow Him to soothe, heal and reassure us that all will be well?

And having come away, having been embraced, having been refreshed and restored, then it is time once again for me to climb up my watchtower and take my place and see what the Lord will say to me, but doing it now from a place of rest.

This is the book which has accompanied my thoughts this month and which taught me about the Father’s embrace.

Take My Yoke: Amazon.co.uk: Lidstone, Chic: 9781912726943: Books

February’s Posture

Last month I introduced what would be our theme for the year, from Habakkuk 2:

I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts;
I will look to see what he will say to me, and what answer I am to give to this complaint.

² Then the Lord replied:

“Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it.
³ For the revelation awaits an appointed time;  it speaks of the end  and will not prove false.
Though it linger, wait for it;  it will certainly come and will not delay.

This year we will be looking at how we posture ourselves in the wait. How we hold ourselves; how we remain faithful, what keeps us going, what disciplines we use to hold us true to the vision.

There is patience required in the wait, unrushed, unhurried, slow. This is who is keeping me SLOW in the wait, meet Buck:

I have infact cleared my diary for the next couple of months so that I can spend time training our new pup. It is long, it is slow, it is boring at times walking round the same field again and again, being repetitive in commands, but I know it will be worth it! It is worth investing in the time now so that we have a well-behaved dog that we can take anywhere, a responsive, obedient dog.

So too with spiritual disciplines, it is far easier to cut corners, easier to let things slide, easier not to put the work in now hoping that it will be okay later.

This month I have been learning the discipline of SLOW, of not rushing, of not moving on to the next thing or next thought before I am even finished with the first one; I have been learning the art of SLOW. It has been forced upon me really and is something which goes against my nature as I am always busy, always moving on, always wondering what else there is ‘to do’. But in order for me to “look to see what he will say to me” I need to create space. Space to listen, space to hear, space to feel the wind of the Spirit.

For me, this month the posture of slowing down, of cutting out tasks, making space, is creating a posture of being able to listen, space which is not crowded by tasks, events, peoples, to do’s, but an intentional setting aside space and time to slow and that in turns leads to a listening posture. A listening posture so that “I will look to see what he will say to me”

This is the book that has accompanied me this month of ‘SLOW’ and which I recommend if you are interested in more of ‘the work and wonder of the wait’.

Posture 2026

I haven’t rushed into committing to this verse for the New Year, but have sat with it for the month to let it sink in. It is a good verse, an awesome verse and one which I want to use for reflection each month; that worked well for me last year it gave me a focus spiritually as well as in my writing.

So, join me please as we look at Habakkuk Chapter 2 verses 1-3 each month this year.

Verse 1

I will stand at my watch and station myself on my watch-tower.

I will look to see what he will say to me and what answer I am to give to this complaint.

It is about posture – standing, prepared, watchful, expectant, surrendered.

How we hear is dependent on how we posture ourselves.

It is about waiting to see what God will say – not assuming prior knowledge or going ahead with our own agenda, ideas or wisdom.

It is about being receptive – open hands, open hearts, open ears.

Verse 2

Then the Lord replies:

Write down the vision and make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it.

The vision – the Quiet Awakening which is happening in various parts of the country/world, that it would also come to our small corner.

Write it down, make it plain, pass it on, tell it out so that the news of it may spread

Speak with clarity, courage and compassion.

Verse 3

For still the vision awaits its appointed time – it hastens to the end, it will not lie.

If it seems slow, WAIT for it, it will surely come, it will not delay.

It is God’s timing, not ours.  We may get frustrated at the slowness of its coming, but we are to WAIT.

God’s promises/Word stands true – wait.  Wait in trust, wait in knowledge of Him.  Wait.

***************

The questions I am going to ask myself throughout the year are:

How am I posturing myself in this situation?

How am I waiting and what is God saying to me in it?

December Hope

At the start of the year, I took/was given the word ‘Hope’ for the year. An appropriate word perhaps considering my husband had been out of work for 3 months with no job prospects on the horizon and I was only months away from retiring!

I wanted to explore what hope looked like in such pressing circumstances, I wanted to be intentional in looking for hope, for knowing where to look for it, and how to hold onto it. So, each month I posted what I had discovered, bringing hope into focus in my own life.

Now, as the year draws to an end I take a moment to pause and reflect on what I have found hope to be, where I have found it and how to carry this forward into a new year.

Firstly, was to look at the connection between faith – hope – waiting. You only hope for something you are waiting for, if you have received it then there is no reason to hope, the thing has been realised. So it is faith that keeps you hoping, it is faith that holds you and sustains you in the wait.

In February, I found hope in having a vision, in lifting my eyes beyond my present circumstances to look to Jesus, the Lord of the wind and waves, the One who calms the storm and says ‘peace be still’.

Then, in March I found little buds of hope appearing after the tears, the wrestling and the lament. A seed dying, sown, watered by tears in the end producing a harvest of joy because of the tears that went into the sowing of it. Those buds sprung into bloom in April as the darkness lifted and I found that “waiting on God is living on what I know to be true about God, when I don’t know what is true about my life” (Mark Vroegop)

I moved on in May to have an intentional look at the Theology of Remembrance, to find that hope is deeply rooted in the past remembrances of God and His dealings with His people, that we can take encouragement and root our hope in God’s past faithfulness . Having found hope in God’s past faithfulness, I looked to also find Him in the present. I found that as we trust Him with our ‘what ifs’ and our worries, then that frees us up to enjoy and appreciate ‘the moments’!

Doing a bible study in the Psalms over the summer taught me the importance of having confidence in the Character of God. The psalmists knew Him, they knew His character which had been borne out of experience. Meditating on and memorising some of these Psalms helps to ‘bank’ up on hope and confidence in God.

As we moved into August, I found hope in relying on the Sovereignty of God in the seasons of life. Seasons are not all joy, nor are they all sorrow; they can both. In the midst of faith and belief there can be doubts. In the times of our circling confusion we can still make space for hope. We can have both a broken heart and a smile on our faces. We have have both joy and pain; grief and hope. We can be afraid, but also brave. We can be lonely, but also much loved.

We looked at transition times in September, time to pause and reflect. As we pause and reflect before God, we are acknowledging that He is the Lord over all our days, over all that has been and over all that has still to come. As we pause and give thanks we are acknowledging that all good gifts around us have been given by our Heavenly Father. As we pause to seek wisdom for our next steps, we are laying our days before our creator, we are looking to Him.

Moving on into October we looked at still being fruitful for God as we enter the ‘afternoon’ stage of our lives, because God is not finished with us yet and there is still work to be done.

And finally, last month we looked at our future hope, our hope of heaven, our hope of eternal life, our hope of seeing and being with Jesus. We look forward with joy and hope-filled hearts to what is yet to come. It may seem afar off, but it is there, and that glimmer of hope will cheer our hearts, and grow ever brighter as the ‘day of the Lord’ draws nearer.

So, what hope do I take into next year? Where do I place my hope?

I think I take a renewed confidence in God and in His character as the place to anchor my hope. The tag-line from Mark Vroegop’s book, remains with me and sums up where I place my hope:

“waiting on God is living on what I know to be true about God, when I don’t know what is true about my life”

Hope is holding on to God, lifting our eyes to the Son and trusting in the Spirit to work things out. It is trusting Jesus, who isn’t worried about a thing, with my anxieties and fears. Hope is trusting in the Faithfulness of God, that He is faithful to His Word; that He is faithful to His Character; that He is faithful to His promises. I trust that He is trustworthy; that He is able to keep us and holds us and that He will see us through.

Hope is a posture, a way to think, a way to be. It is more than gripping on tightly when things are tough, but more of an expression of who I am. Hope is a daily walk, a daily practice, a daily discipline, a yielding and surrendering to God who has all things in His control and who knows every detail of my life.

Hope is choosing to praise rather than worry; choosing to trust rather than panic; choosing to look beyond our present circumstance, to the more which is still to come.

Hope is our identity in Christ. We hope because He is. We hope because He is risen. We hope because He is coming again. We hope because He is able.

Now all glory to God, who is able to keep you from falling away and will bring you with great joy into his glorious presence without a single fault.

Titus 2:24

November Hope

This year we have been looking at the theme of hope, where to find it, how to live it and what it looks like to in the various seasons. In May we looked at hope being rooted in the past, in June we looked at what it means for the present, but we can’t let the year pass without thinking on our future hope. For the Christian this is a glorious hope which is an anchor for our faith.

Paul says, “If our hope in Christ is for this life alone, we are to be pitied more than all men ” (1Corinthians 15:19). So we look for more than what we have here in this world, we look beyond, we look for something better.

Here are some of the things in the future we look forward to:

1. Firstly the Christian hope is rooted in faith in the person and salvation of Jesus Christ (Galatians 5:5).
2. We have a future hope of resurrection from the dead, because Jesus was resurrected, then so will we 1Corinthians 15:20-23
3. We look forward to the redemption of the body and indeed of the whole of creation (Romans 8:23-25),
4. We look forward to the return of Christ (1 Thessalonians 4:17)
5. We look forward to being transformed into the likeness of Christ (1 John 3:2-3),
6. We look forward to eternal glory, to heaven itself where there will be no more sorrow, pain or dying . (Revelation 21)
7. We look forward to Jesus! Just seeing Jesus!

So when we are mourning the loss of a loved one, or the loss of a dream, or even mourning our own sin and frailty; when pain and suffering seem to be our companions; when the world seems to be in chaos or hope is almost lost in the midst of family strife and daily life; then we can encourage our hearts that this world is not our home; this pain is not forever; this sorrow will not follow us into eternity – there is a future hope!

There is a glorious hope!

There is a hopeful hope!

So, dear friend, let us look up and look forward with joy and hope-filled hearts to what is yet to come. It may seem afar off, but it is there, and that glimmer of hope will cheer our hearts, may it grow ever brighter as the ‘day of the Lord’ draws nearer. May it strengthen our resolve and endurance in the dark and hard days, as we look forward to a hope, which is both glorious and ours in Christ Jesus!

October Hope

I just received this week, hot off the press, Christopher Ash’s new Book “Not old, not young, Not Done.”

This is the book I have been waiting a decade for, about following Jesus in your 50’s & 60’s. He very kindly calls those of us this age as the “afternooners”!! We are not quite there in the twilight of our years, but here we are sandwiched between the young and the not so young. We have in fact often been referred to as the ‘sandwich generation’, many of us having both dependent children/young adults and elderly parents requiring our care, time and attention. Torn between the two in our responsibilities, trying to figure out our priorities and living with guilt that we don’t quite achieve the right balance.

What then does living and walking in hope look like for us afternooners?

Firstly, we need to see and realise that there is still work to be done! The fields are white for harvest, no matter if we are in our prime, late bloomers or now afternooners, there is still work to be done in the work of the gospel. We may do things differently, may not have the same energy levels or brain power, but there is still work to be done, we need to find our niche, our little corner and do what we can.

Secondly, God is not finished with us! We may be in a new chapter, but God is not finished with our story. “And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.” [Philippians 1:6] God still has work to do within us. We are still a work in progress, so we shouldn’t give up on our own personal sanctification.

This is also our time to ‘train the younger women’ . We have gained life experience, and a bit of wisdom, we can pass that on! Either by formal mentoring sessions, friendships with younger women or modelling godly living for others to see.

God is still faithful to His promises, they are still relevant to us today as they were in our 20s & 30s. When we are perhaps feeling our age, we can be assured that: ” those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. [Isaiah 40:31]

When we are burdened by responsibilities, and cares, hear the voice of Jesus say to us:  “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” [Matthew 11:28-30]

A final verse to leave you with, from Psalm 92, if you are a fellow ‘afternooner’:

The righteous will flourish like a palm tree,
    they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon;
¹³ planted in the house of the Lord,
    they will flourish in the courts of our God.
¹⁴ They will still bear fruit in old age,
    they will stay fresh and green,
¹⁵ proclaiming, “The Lord is upright;
    he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him.”

So what does hope look like for us afternooners? It looks like still flourishing, still fruitful, still faithful.

September Hope

September! And we are continuing to look at the theme of hope and what it looks like for us this month.

I love the month of September, I love that feel of autumn in the air, the season beginning to change and yes I love the nights drawing in and being able to coorie (cosy) in with the fire on and a good book.

September is a transition month moving from the franticness of summer, slowing the pace before the full glory of Autumn and the hardness of winter. It is a time to cut back, to harvest, to preserve the fruits of our harvest. A time to stop, look and wonder. I love the words of this old hymn:

We plow the fields, and scatter
the good seed on the land,
but it is fed and watered
by God’s almighty hand;
he sends the snow in winter,
the warmth to swell the grain,
the breezes and the sunshine,
and soft refreshing rain.
Refrain:
All good gifts around us
are sent from heaven above,
then thank the Lord, O thank the Lord
for all his love.

It is also a time to pause before launching into autumn/winter activities, a time to pause before the ‘what next’, a time to pause & reflect on the summer and what fruits you are going to take with you into the winter. It is a time of thanksgiving for safe-keeping, thanksgiving for the beauty of long summer days and the feel of the warmth on our faces, a time to praise God for the harvest. It is a time to pause before the next season, to reflect on what God has been speaking into your life over the summer, the lessons learned, spiritual growth and the fruit of the spirit taking root and blossoming, a time to seek God for the ‘next right thing’.

What does hope look like this month? It looks like a pause.

Hope looks like a pause because when we pause and reflect before God, we are acknowledging that He is the Lord over all our days, over all that has been and over all that has still to come. When we pause and give thanks we are acknowledging that all good gifts around us have been given by our Heavenly Father. When we pause to seek wisdom for our next steps, we are laying our days before our creator, we are looking to Him, we are looking for something more, something more than what this world has to offer, something more than even what we see around us. We are looking and longing for that ‘better country’, that hope of glory, we are acknowledging that we are not citizens of this world, but citizens of heaven and our journey here and now is filled with hope for that place.

When we pause we are placing our hope and trust in the God who upholds the universe by the Word of His power (Hebrews 1:3) We can trust the creator to uphold His creation, so we can trust Him in our pause.

August Hope

I’m going to let you in on a little secret – I don’t like summer! I’m just not a summer person, preferring the colours and cosiness of autumn. Also in this little corner of the world summer is not long warm, sunny days packed with picnics and BBQs; rather it is long, grey misty days surrounded by clouds of midges! I know, I know, I sound like a grumpy old woman!!

However, sometimes in the seasons of our lives we go through endless days of living in the misty flats of life. Sometimes life is just grey! We live in the tension of life in the greys, holding space for both the joys and the sorrows.

We live with tension of the ‘boths’

There can be both joy and sorrow; there can be both faith and doubt; there can be both confusion and hope.

Seasons of life are not all joy, not all sorrow; you can hold both. In the midst of faith and belief there can be doubts. In the times of our circling confusion we can still make space for hope. We can have both a broken heart and a smile on our faces. We have have both joy and pain; grief and hope. We can be afraid, but also brave. We can be lonely, but also much loved.

Mourning and dancing don’t always take turns. Whilst we mourn brokenness, we also celebrate life and beauty. There is both affliction and healing. Pain, loss, affliction are a bye product of our fallen world, but tangled up with all of that there is joy, abundance and blessing.

So, where do we find our hope in the midst of these tensions, in the place of the ‘boths’, in the midst of our misty flats, and our inbetween times?

For me, it is in the Sovereignty of God. When I am tired, confused, hurt by people or situations, then knowing that God is in control allows me to release these feelings. Often, I struggle, debate, try to fathom it out, or find answers when really there are no answers here. Then I have to just accept that I don’t know and accept that God does know.

Psalm 131 speaks of this surrendering the big, unfathomable questions to God:-

¹ Lord, my heart is not proud;
    my eyes are not haughty.
I don’t concern myself with matters too great
    or too awesome for me to grasp.
² Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself,
    like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk.
    Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me.

³ O Israel, put your hope in the Lord —    now and always.

It is knowing that God is bigger than us, Higher than us and far superior to us! It is trusting that He is in control and He knows what is going on.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
⁹ For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:8-9

We live in the tension of the ‘already, but not yet’, this in-between time when we know of blessings , but their full revelation/manifestation is still awaited. We live in the tension of the ‘boths’ knowing, trusting that God stands sovereign not only over our ‘appointed times’, but also in our in-between times, also in the greys.

“You can admit the difficult parts of your reality

AND

you can be grateful for the beautiful parts of your reality” (Jillian Benfield)

What tensions are you living with just now? How can you both admit the difficult parts and take joy in the beautiful parts?

July Hope

This summer in our women’s bible study group we are doing ‘A Summer in the Psalms’ and one of the things that strikes me is the confidence David (and the other Psalmists) have in God. They know Him, they know His character and this has been borne out of experience. You can see their confidence in God by the way they address Him – my rock; my refuge; my salvation; my God in whom I place my hope. Even in the Psalms of lament they come with confidence and boldness in the midst of their despair knowing that God alone is able to deliver them and help them in their weakness and hard circumstances.

In April Hope, I reviewed a Book by Mark Vroegop called ‘Waiting isn’t a Waste’. I continue to bring to remembrance his tagline, “Waiting on God is living on what I know to be true about God when I don’t know what’s true about my life”.

Reading through the Psalms this summer has highlighted for me some of the truths of what God is like. Truths that I would like to ‘bank’ for when times are tough, when clouds darken my thinking and doubts compound with my fears causing my view of God to be distorted.

Two Psalms in particular have stood out for me in this regard – Psalm 104 and Psalm 51.

Psalm 104 celebrates God’s creativity, His beauty, His artistry with its intricate details, it reminds me of His sovereignty over all of creation and His lavish care and provision for it.

O Lord my God, how great you are!
    You are robed with honor and majesty.
²     You are dressed in a robe of light.
You stretch out the starry curtain of the heavens;
³     you lay out the rafters of your home in the rain clouds.
You make the clouds your chariot;
    you ride upon the wings of the wind.
⁴ The winds are your messengers;
    flames of fire are your servants.

⁵ You placed the world on its foundation
    so it would never be moved…
⁹ Then you set a firm boundary for the seas,
    so they would never again cover the earth.

O Lord, what a variety of things you have made!
    In wisdom you have made them all.
    The earth is full of your creatures…
²⁷ They all depend on you
    to give them food as they need it.
²⁸ When you supply it, they gather it.
    You open your hand to feed them,
    and they are richly satisfied.

I am going to bank that God loves beauty to recall in those grey days. God is beautiful, He loves order; He is a great designer and wonderful artist. I am going to bank the fact that I can enjoy His beauty and take delight in it and that He wraps me in the beauty of his creation.

Psalm 51 is a completely different type of Psalm where David is confessing his sins to God, but what has stood out for me is that David believes and trusts that God will heed his prayer and forgive his sins. David knows that God is merciful; he knows His unfailing love from the past and He knows that God has great compassion. These are the truths He knows about God’s character and it is knowing about them that enables him to come with his sin and guilt in confession. He believes that God will forgive and restore him, otherwise he wouldn’t be asking!

“Have mercy on me, O God,
    because of your unfailing love.
Because of your great compassion,
    blot out the stain of my sins”

From this Psalm I am going to bank that with God there is forgiveness; with God there is mercy; that God has a committed faithful love and great compassion towards me. And though my sins be many, His mercy is more.

These are the truths I am adding to my ‘Bank my Hope’ this summer.

Where or what are you using to build up your bank of hope?

June Hope

Last month we looked at having our hope firmly rooted in the past faithfulness of God, this month we are looking at what it means when we have hope in the present.

Particularly, I have been pondering and trying to practice ‘being present’ in the here and now. Taking notice, paying attention, enjoying the moment.

What I have been wondering is: what does hope look like in this?

To have our hope set on God means that we trust in Him and as we trust Him with our ‘what ifs’ and our worries, then that frees us up to enjoy the moment!

As we trust the God who doesn’t worry about a thing; as we place our hope in the God who has all the details of my life in His loving hands and as I surrender to His Will and ways, then surely that means I can trust Him with the moment and be ‘present’ in the moment without the worry of the next thing.

Now, I know that this is far easier for me to do now that I have retired; I am no longer the slave to time, trying to squeeze chores and responsibilities into days off. However, I appreciate that not everyone has this luxury, but for me, in this season of my life, I can take the time to breathe, to notice, to be present, but it is a discipline and it takes practice after all the rushing years!

I am reminded of Jesus’s words from Matthew chapter 6 about worry:-

25“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life ^e ?

28“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

So, as I place my hope, my trust, my confidence in God, I learn to let go, and enjoy the special moments of life. I then build on that and learn to also enjoy the ordinary, everyday moments . I learn to be present in my conversations with people; I learn to ‘take time to smell the roses’ (as they say!); I learn to listen and pay attention to what God is saying in this season, for as Jeremy Camp says, “I don’t wont to miss what God has for me”.

Hope looks like learning to be in the moment

May Hope

Last month I referenced, the Mark Vroegrop book I had been reading, “Waiting Isn’t a Waste” and his tagline:

"Waiting on God is living on what I know to be true about God, when I don't know what's true about my life"

I have been pondering on this and I have wondered what is it that I know to be true about God and how do I fill up on that truth? What we need, I decided, was a theology of Remembering!

Although hope is for the very present and for the future; it is deeply rooted in the past and so it is to the past remembrances of God and His dealings with His people that we must turn to root our hope . The Theology part of it, is looking in the scriptures for those times of Remembrance.

The Old Testament is littered with instances of Remembrance; the Israelites built stone pillars to remember certain places where God came and intervened on their behalf (cf 1 Samuel 7:12), or they changed the place names to record God’s faithfulness seen there (cf Genesis 28:16; Joshua 5:9). They were often told, “I am the God of your fathers, the God, of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob”; in other words, God is saying: remember how I dealt, guided and provided for them, I am the same God and will do the same for you. David when he was facing the giant Goliath remembered the times when he was watching his sheep and God enabled him to protect them from a lion and a bear, this encouraged him to trust that God was also then able to defeat this giant! (1 Samuel 17:34-37). The Psalms also counsel us to bring to mind, to recall how God has helped (cf. 77:11; 103:2; 143:5).

Remember, remember, remember!

The main remembrance, of course, was the Feast of Passover; when they remembered how God saved them, delivered them and redeemed them from the cruel fate of the Egyptians. The Passover, told, retold, explained, passed on from generation to generations, down to present day – remembered.

And for us today, our place of Remembrance is Calvary, the Cross. The Cross is where we see God’s salvation, deliverance and redemption paid for us. The Cross is what we remember, it is where we see the love of God demonstrated for us. And if God so loved us that He sent His own son to die for us then surely nothing and no-one can separate us from Him. Remember the Cross. Jesus, Himself, called us to remember, And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22:19)

Perhaps, like me, you may not be very good at memorizing scripture verses; but that doesn’t mean to say that we can’t re-read and remember the stories of the Bible; the events recorded of God’s deliverance, and of the work done by Jesus on the cross.

Our hope is built on the working and ways of God, shown, revealed, demonstrated in scripture and throughout the history of the church and His saints.

So when I can’t make sense of my own circumstances, I can remember times when God has been present in the past, when He saved me. I can bring to remembrance His promises and times when He fulfilled them. And if I am struggling to find these examples in my own life, I can read the stories of others and take courage that the same God is still writing my own story and I can hope in Him and in His Word.

April Hope

This month on our theme of Hope, I’m sharing a song and a book!

Firstly, the song, this is one of Ellie Holcomb’s in her Album “Sing: Spring Songs” . The whole album is one of hope, but I have chosen this one for the beautiful , joyful and truthful lyrics that God makes all things new. Enjoy!

And now a book:

Those who follow my blog know that I have been through a long winter of waiting and this book has just been SO helpful, firstly by acknowledging that waiting is HARD! But the tagline which he comes back to again and again is:

Waiting on God is living on what I know to be true about God,

when I don’t know what’s true about my life

This I think will also become my own tagline which I no doubt will come back to again and again over the coming months.

Mark Vroegrop writes as one who has learnt the hard way, as one who has waited and struggled in the waiting. It is not a ‘how to’ book, but one where he shares what he has learnt. The chapter headings will give you the flavour of how he approaches and has laid out these lessons:

Waiting:

Honestly: Waiting is Hard

Frequently: Waiting is Common

Thoughtfully: Waiting is Biblical

Patiently: Waiting is slow

Intentionally: Waiting is Commanded

Collectively: Waiting is Relational

I cannot emphasis enough how helpful I have found this book and wish I had found it at the start of my own waiting season! The Appendix at the back with Psalm verses is helpful as a way to remind ourselves and memorise what is true about God, so that in our waiting time that is what we focus on and not our circumstances. He also speaks of waiting not only being when we are stuck and our situations dictate it, but that waiting upon God should be one of our Spiritual Disciplines which we weave into our ordinary, daily lives.

“Waiting on God is living on what I know to be true about God, when I don’t know what’s true about my life”

This is what I am carrying with me into next month. What about you, do you also need to practice this?

March Hope

This year we are doing a monthly round up of where we have found hope that month.

So, for us here in the West Highlands, March has brought the first tentative signs of spring. The snowdrops have given way to the Crocuses which have given way to the Daffodils and now there are buds on the trees. Signs of spring, buds of hope? Dare I hope that the long ‘dark night of the soul’ is over?

It has been a long dark winter, a winter of hoping and waiting but with no answers, no resolutions. A winter of crying out to God, but with no sweetness of His Presence. A winter of ‘how long?’ and ‘where are You’?

Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning. (Psalm 30:5)

Buds of hope!

There is a time, a season for weeping, but it will end, the night will end and the morning will come. The weeping will end and joy will come. It may not feel like it, joy may still feel a long way off, but joy will come again.

Those who plant in tears will harvest with shouts of joy. They weep as they go to plant their seed, but they sing as they return with the harvest. (Psalm 126:6)

Buds of hope !

That cycle of taking a seed, planting it, waiting, watching, hoping and then joy at the first signs of growth.

That cycle of sadness and joy. The cycle of going out to the bare ground to plant and the returning home with joy and full hands.

We want that joy, but for us to taste it in all it’s sweetness, first must come the tears, the wrestling, the lament. Our tears are not wasted , they produce a harvest. A seed dying, sown, watered by tears in the end produce a harvest of joy because of the tears that went into the sowing of it.

There are small buds of hope appearing in my own life now; I am taking tentative steps towards them. Hope is there.

What seeds of hope are you watering with your tears just now?

Where are you seeing any buds of hope?

Our hope – Morning will come, joy will come. Your tears will produce that.

Hope in February

Last month, January, we looked at the connection between hope and waiting. This month I have been pondering the connection between hope and vision. By that I mean where we look, what we are looking at, and who we are looking to.

In the course of a Bible Study in Corinthians I was struck by these verses from 2 Corinthians4:17&18:-

For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever. So, we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather we fix our gaze on the things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.

And another verse in the next chapter, (2 Corinthians 5:7)

We walk by faith, not by sight.

Hope then is vision

We know that when we focus on problems they seem to grow. By only looking at our immediate circumstances we get bogged down in them, so we need to look beyond the immediate, look past all that is happening and look to something bigger, better and out with the minute of our present. As Step 2 of the 12 Step programs says, ” we came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity”.

We need a broader lens.

Without minimising the difficulties of the present, there is a looking beyond our own helplessness and looking to God, the Highest Power, who holds the universe in His hand, but who also knows the number of hairs on our head!

I’m reminded of Peter, one of Jesus’s disciples, who, when he sees Jesus coming towards their boat, walking on the water very bravely says, “Lord if it is you, tell me to come to you on the water!” At Jesus’s command, Peter steps out of the boat and eyes on Jesus starts walking on the water. But … when he takes his eyes off Jesus and onto the storm he starts to sink!

Eyes on Jesus or eyes on the storm?

I’ve really had to battle to keep my eyes on Jesus. At times the storm has seemed to hinder my view of Jesus, but He’s there . I have been concerned about that wind of adversity howling around me, I have been worried about that rain of circumstances beating down me, the storm is scary, worrying. I just need to keep Jesus in my line of vision, He is not worried about a thing. I need to look beyond this present storm, placing my hope in Him, looking to the Lord of the wind and waves, to the One who says, “peace, be still”.

Where are your eyes cast just now? Where is your hope placed? How’s your vision?

Hope in January

My ‘New Year Word’ for 2025 is Hope

Normally I would have written about this as soon as the year turned, but not this year. Somehow this year I have just wanted to sit with this. Perhaps it is because I’m in a ‘hoping’ season and am still trying to understand and process it all.

There definitely seems to be a connection between faith – hope – waiting, this is not linear, but circular I think. You only hope for something you are waiting for, if you have received it then there is no reason to hope, the thing has been realised. And it is faith that keeps you hoping, it is faith that holds you and sustains you in the wait.

Now faith is confidence in what we HOPE for and assurance about what we do not see.

We know that this is true of our eternal salvation, that we have a Hope of heaven, and that it is our faith which gives us confidence to believe that this will come about, we have assurance that even though we can’t see heaven now, that we will see it one day. We live in the already, but not yet. We already believe and trust in heaven, but have not yet seen it or experienced it. We hope for it and it is faith which sustains us in the wait for it.

If we believe that, why then is it a struggle to believe and hope for some of the fulfilment of the more immediate promises of God in our present lives? If I trust the outcome, how can I not trust the process?

Following on from my pattern of last year when I did a monthly inventory and round-up, I plan to explore this theme of ‘hope’ more as the months and year unfolds. Meanwhile, in faith I hold onto hope in this season of waiting.

Where do you find hope when things are tough? What are you hoping for this year? What are you waiting for?

Showing Up in January & February

On the 1st of February I went into work and congratulated everyone – we had made it! We made it through the long, dark month of January! It felt like a cause of celebration.

But hardly had I done that when the following week brought another day of deluge of rain, followed by another day of sn0w, both which affected travel arrangements and even simply getting out.

It seems hard to keep pressing on, keep showing up through those incessantly hard, dark days.

And then this happened:

These little beauties showed up!!

Through all the snow, all the storms, all the cold, all the deluges they still showed-up!

The blankets of snow had kept them warm, like a little incubator, the rain had watered them, but not drowned them. They still were able to show-up!

So with us, perhaps rather than letting our outward circumstances dictate if we show-up or not, we just do it anyway. Rather than letting our circumstances swamp us, perhaps we could let them do a good work within us, nurturing us in the dark and lonely places so that in the least likely of places, at the least likely of times we show up and with beauty and grace to bring a smile to others!

Consume

Today I am joining with the #Five Minute Friday community of writers to write on the one word prompt of: Consume.

So, when I think of this word, I think: consumed by rage; consumed by jealousy; consumed by bitterness; consumed by resentment.

All negative, all poisonous characteristics which eat away at you and which cripple you and keep you bound in their chains. I do not want to be that person.

Or I think of being consumed by grief; consumed by sadness; consumed by anxiety; consumed by fears.

Again all emotions which keep you in their grip and stop you from experiencing any kind of beauty or joy. I do not want to be that person.

So how about instead, I think of being consumed with love for the Lord; consumed with a longing and a joy in following His ways; consumed with hope and faith in believing that this is not the end of our story, but that He can turn our negative into His positive; He can redeem even these emotions.

to bestow on them a crown of beauty
    instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
    instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
    instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
    a planting of the Lord
    for the display of his splendour.

Isaiah 61:3

That is the type of person I want to be for the display of His splendour!

Say

Joining today with the #Five Minute Friday group of writers to write for 5 minutes on the one word prompt: Say.

With my ladies group we have been doing a study in Proverbs and today were looking at pride and humility including confidence and self-depreciation, which got me thinking about what we say to ourselves. Do we speak words of confidence into our lives or are we always negative, belittling and undervaluing ourselves?

Or what about what others say? Do we listen to them? Are we able to take praise and appreciation without it swelling our pride? Are we able to take instruction without taking it as criticism?

Or what about lies and temptations, do we hear that subtle voice of the devil say, “did God really say ….”. Or do we fill our minds with what Jesus said?

What we say to ourselves, what we listen to when other speak or if we listen to the lies of Satan or the Truth of the Word of God, will determine our self-esteem, it will determine how we see ourselves in Christ and also what we then say to others.

Who am I listening to today? What am I saying to others today?

Patterns

I’m joining the #Five Minute Friday group of writers on their first writing prompt of the New Year. I am hoping to join with them once or twice a month. Today’s writing prompt, to write on for 5 minutes, is the word Pattern.

Having just had a very cold and frosty week here in the North Highlands I have seen lovely, exquisite, detailed patterns formed in icy puddles and most delicately of all in the snow and ice flakes which have crystalised and stayed on the ground and shrubs.

These just remind me that we have a wonderfully, artistic Creator God, who is a God of the detail! This causes my heart to soar in worship and in trust. If this God can so form the delicate snow flakes and clothe the flowers and feed the birds, then He can take care of me too! He can work out His pattern in my life too, I just need to surrender it to Him, trust, not fear and not give in to worry.

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 

²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life^[a]?

²⁸ “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. ²⁹ Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these. ³⁰ If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 

³¹ So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 

Matthew 6:25-34

Show-Up

I just finished reading this book, Just Show Up as the year turned from 2023 to 2024 and so it has very much influenced my thinking for this coming year. How small Acts of Faithfulness change everything!

What I want to take into this New Year is this concept of ‘showing up’ and being present in different areas of my life.

For example, I had been reading Luke Chapter 2 about when Simeon met baby Jesus in the temple. Simeon, we assume an old man, had been waiting and waiting for God to show-up, He had been promised that he would see the consolation of Israel, that he would see The Messiah.

What if Simeon hadn’t gone to the temple that day when Jesus was presented at the temple for the first time? What if he hadn’t shown up, deciding to be lazy or to make something else a priority that day? He would have missed out on seeing God’s promise to him.

That’s the importance of showing up!!

There are different aspects of this which I hope to explore throughout the year:-

🔹️What it means to show up for God – to have an listening posture and really be present during “quiet times”, so that we don’t miss what God would speak to us.

🔹️What it means to show up for others – as lights in the darkness, as representatives of Jesus.

🔹️What it means to show up for yourself even, in self-care and reflection.

🔹️And there is the whole big subject of Theophany – when God shows up in place or moment in splendour and majesty, like in the Burning Bush to Moses, in the Pillar of Fire for the people of Israel, and in Immanuel, God with us, in Jesus.

To fully show-up in our everyday lives is not always easy. Sometimes the hardest place for us to show up is in our families and work places, but these are the places where everyday, small acts of faithfulness matter and change everything!

In taking all these threads, and pulling them together into one Bible verse I have chosen this one to act as a guide to me. In seeking to show-up, in seeking to be present to God and to others whatever I do, may it be to the glory of God.

And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus,

giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Colossians 3:17

Beauty, Goodness and Truth

I like to ponder and reflect on the year as it draws to a close. This year I would like to look at it under the 3 headings of Beauty, Goodness and Truth; where I have seen these things in my life, in the books I’ve read, podcasts I’ve listened to etc.

Where have I seen Beauty this year

Every winter my daughter and I meet and have an overnight trip to the ballet, I LOVE the ballet! In my head I am that sugarplum fairy! Everything about the Ballet is beautiful- the set, the costumes, the music and ofcourse the dance! But it is beautiful just to spend that special time with my girl. Scottish Ballet put on a wonderful winter show which comes to Inverness around the end of January, a long dark month. I won’t have seen my daughter since Christmas, so I look forward with great anticipation at meeting up with her, having a posh meal together, catching up and the going to the ballet with an overnight stay before her heading back to her flat in the Fair City and me back to the croft on the West!

I am always so thankful that I live in a country with seasons. I look forward to Spring after the long, dark winter nights and although summer is my least favourite season (yes really!!) I of course love the long, long days and the chance of catching sunlight when we can. Autumn is my favourite season with the changing colours and just a hint of the nights ‘drawing in’ and there is certainly a coziness about winter and I love how although vegetation looks dead under that frozen blanket, new life is still there waiting to sprout out.

But this autumn in particular we were treated to huge spectacular displays of the Aurora Borealis, not just once or twice, but often with each display becoming more spectacular with the lights actually dancing in the night sky. Below is a photo taken locally, it doesn’t do the display justice, but gives you an idea of the amazing wonder of these displays.

It reminds me of Psalm 19:

The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
    The skies display his craftsmanship.
² Day after day they continue to speak;
    night after night they make him known.
³ They speak without a sound or word;
    their voice is never heard.^[a]
4 Yet their message has gone throughout the earth,
    and their words to all the world.

God has made a home in the heavens for the sun.
⁵ It bursts forth like a radiant bridegroom after his wedding.
    It rejoices like a great athlete eager to run the race.
⁶ The sun rises at one end of the heavens
    and follows its course to the other end.
    Nothing can hide from its heat.

Where have I seen Goodness this year?

As I have reflected on this question, nothing ‘big’ stands out! There is not one particular thing which I can point to and say, ‘this is where I saw goodness’ this year. And yet I have seen and been the recipient of small acts of kindnesses throughout the year. These kindnesses have reflected the goodness and mercy of our Father God, being shown through His people.

We have seen goodness expressed in our own communities when people rally round a bereaved family. Where comfort and support is given in times of sorrow and tragedy. All these ‘little’ acts reflect the common grace given to all mankind and show the goodness of our God.

It is when all the little things are added up that they become a BIG thing and so, in all the many, varied ways goodness has been expressed, I am grateful.

Whatever is good and perfect is a gift coming down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He never changes or casts a shifting shadow.

James 1:17 NLT

I read a LOT, which is just as well considering I work in a library! Sometimes certain books just stay with you, one I listened to in Audio was “Surprised by Oxford” . such a good, honest book about a young American woman’s struggle with coming to faith in the world of academia in Oxford, definitely echoes of CS lewis in it! A fiction author I have come to love this year is Catherine Ryan Hyde, her books just seem to shine with the goodness of people, how they accept and not judge the stranger in their midst, I have read a few of hers now and have been moved by every one.

Where have I seen truth this year?

This year I finished an Introduction to Theology course which I have been doing over the past 2 years, the course was both informative and interesting, (even though it took a lot of brain power to get through it!), and it has certainly deepened and broadened my understanding of scripture and theology and where things fit together.

I was also absolutely privileged to attend a Workshop with Nancy Guthrie on Biblical Theology. Not only is it unusual to get Women teachers over here from the USA, but for Nancy to come to Inverness was just amazing! What a privileged to be able to attend this event and have my eyes open to the Biblical Truth of seeing Jesus in the Old Testament and to be able to trace themes through from the beginning of the Bible in Genesis to the end in Revelation.

The instructions of the Lord are perfect,
    reviving the soul.
The decrees of the Lord are trustworthy,
    making wise the simple.
⁸ The commandments of the Lord are right,
    bringing joy to the heart.
The commands of the Lord are clear,
    giving insight for living.

Psalm 19:7,8

I love podcasts and listen regularly to our wider church podcasts A Healthy Gospel Church and Jesus Today , both discuss topical and relevant issues with their guests. I also really love the discussion the women have on the She Reads Truth podcast which accompanies their current Bible reading plan, I get so much encouragement just from the way they so openly and deeply discuss scriptures (I got the “Beauty, Goodness and Truth” tagline from them!!)

I have read a few of Nancy Guthrie’s books, but after being at the Workshop I do feel that I need to go back over them and do them as a study. At present I am working my way through The Wisdom of God where I find truth and beauty at seeing Jesus in the Wisdom Books of the Bible. I also read What if it’s Wonderful on holiday when I had a few anxieties, this book shows how God wants to bless and that our anxieties shouldn’t hold us back, because after all - what if it is wonderful?

So, as we turn towards the new and coming year, there are still things which seem unfinished, I’m still praying for that restoration which has yet come, I’m still holding on to that as yet unfulfilled promise, but I go into the New Year with hope in my heart, for what if, just what if it is wonderful?

Where have you seen beauty, goodness and truth this year? Do share in the comments, I’d love to hear!

Comfort and Joy

Our advent study this year is titled “Comfort and joy”, so I wanted to explore this theme of comfort and joy a bit more; do we need it, where do we look for it?

We certainly all need comfort at some time or other in our lives. When we are sad, when we are hurt, when we are weary or sore we seek a bit of comfort, or wish we could have a bit of comfort given to us, to cling onto, whether in the form of a person or food or self-defeating behaviours, or even addictions. We crave comfort and we can look for it in all sorts of places , chasing it when it seems elusive.

And joy? It can seem hard to find at times, we have to dig deep to get it and even then it seems such a fleeting thing!

Let’s take the words of the Christmas Carol and see why the writer perceives that he needs comfort and joy and where he finds it.

God rest ye merry gentlemen, Let nothing you dismay
Remember, Christ, our Saviour
Was born on Christmas day
To save us all from Satan’s power
When we were gone astray
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy

Wow! Straight in there, no beating about the bush in this first stanza, the need is to be saved from Satan’s power, we need a Saviour when we go astray! The comfort and joy is that there’s such a One, a Saviour, Jesus who was born on Christmas day.

From God our Heavenly Father
A blessed Angel came;
And unto certain Shepherds
Brought tidings of the same:
How that in Bethlehem was born
The Son of God by Name.
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy

The second stanza points us to this Saviour, He is called the Son of God. Angels proclaimed it to the Shepherds, it was good tidings, tidings which would bring comfort and joy.

And when they came to Bethlehem
Where our dear Saviour lay,
They found Him in a manger,
Where oxen feed on hay;
His Mother Mary kneeling down,
Unto the Lord did pray.
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy

The Shepherds found things just as they had been told, this Saviour was born and they saw Him with their own eyes lying there in a manger with His mother. The glad tidings were true!

Now to the Lord sing praises,
All you within this place,
And with true love and brotherhood
Each other now embrace;
This holy tide of Christmas
All other doth deface.
O tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy
O tidings of comfort and joy

There is no where else we need look, no one else we need go to but this Saviour and this causes us to rejoice! We have found the Saviour! Hallelujah! What tidings indeed of comfort and joy. Worth singing about!

So then our comfort is knowing, not just our need of a Savior, not just knowing that there is a Saviour, but knowing that Saviour for ourselves. Our comfort is found in Jesus! There is no where else we need go, there is no-one else we need look to, no one else and nothing else will comfort our hearts like Jesus. We have eternity set in our hearts and so only the comfort of the Saviour, of Jesus, will satisfy our longings and our need of comfort.

And joy?

Yes, and joy too is found in Jesus! When you know that you have been trapped by satan’s power, trapped by and in sin, when you know the freedom of being released from these things then you know joy, deep, releasing, freeing joy. When you know the Saviour who has come to set you free, then you know joy. When Jesus comes into your broken and disordered life, then there is joy.

So, let us this Christmas time find our comfort and joy in the Saviour and let us sing of it! Sing out, tell out these glad tidings of comfort and joy. Let this be a season where we embrace the comfort, embrace the joy and share it with our friends and neighbours and those around us.

Two Funerals and a Christmas

The weekend had been booked and planned for months. Excited, looking forward to spending an early Christmas with loved ones we won’t see at actual Christmas time. Menu planned and presents wrapped with a few Christmas decorations taken down from the loft and packed to take with us.

“The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry”. (Robert Burns).

First a funeral which delayed our departure, then another funeral arranged for the day after our return, then sadly at last minute our beloved boy shafted to “secure the skies” this particular weekend. 😞

But life is like that isn’t it? A mixture of sorrow and joys. Disappointments seem to go hand in hand with big expectations.

Sometimes, our joys are tinged with a sadness, our hearts can be heavy whilst in the midst of a happy time and tears don’t seem far away from our laughter.

I am reminded that “for everything there is a season and a time”.

And yes seasons do come and go, but when you get all those seasons at the one time it is A LOT!!

500+miles, 5 days, 2 funerals and a christmas is A LOT.

Yes, I am tired, yes I want to stop the world so that I can get off for a while, yes I need time to process, but my overwhelming feeling at the moment is one of thankfulness!

I am thankful for safe travels, I am thankful for the lives lived well, I am thankful for our short & small family time and I am just so thankful to the Lord that He sustains us in our days, especially when they are A LOT.

My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.

2 Corinthians 12:9

Tired, but thankful.

Hope

This post is written as part of the Resilient Hope series where we are looking at various aspects of God’s Character, His promises and Spiritual Disciplines in order to build up our depleted reserves of resilience and hope.

Whilst in our Bible study group we looked at many other subjects in our study on ‘Resilient Hope’ today, we will close this series in the Blog by looking at hope itself.

Hope – not a vague hope that ‘things will be good again’, but a deep assurance that all will be well because God is in control and God is with us. It is a trust in the living God who is working on our behalf.

Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians says:  “And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world“. (1Corinithians 15:19)

Hope then is both placed in a person and a place.

Jesus is the person who has prepared the way for us into eternity. Jesus, ‘Who for the joy set before Him endured the cross’. (Hebrews 12:2) He endured the Cross because He knew eternity was better; He knew that there He would be able to wipe away all tears from our eyes; He knew that there is where we would find ultimate fulfillment to all our hopes. The person is Jesus and hope placed on Him and His saving work of redemption provides us with security and stability and anchors us to God in this life.

The place is eternity where we find all our hopes fulfilled, and where we ourselves meet our ultimate fulfillment. Because we have eternity in our hearts, then that is where our hope lies.

We live in a broken world, full of injustices, sorrows and pains, so where do we place our hope? We place our hope in eternity where every wrong will be righted; where every sickness is healed and where our very tears are wiped away.

So to build up our resilient hope, we remind ourselves that it is in Jesus that we place our hope and we recall that it is in eternity that all our ultimate hopes and fulfillment will be realized.

Here and now though as we struggle with life’s disappointments, oppressions and sorrows we echo the words of the Psalmist:

Send out your light and your truth;
    let them guide me.
Let them lead me to your holy mountain,
    to the place where you live.
⁴ There I will go to the altar of God,
    to God—the source of all my joy.
I will praise you with my harp,
    O God, my God!

⁵ Why am I discouraged?
    Why is my heart so sad?
I will put my hope in God!
    I will praise him again—
    my Savior and my God!

Psalm 43

Endurance

This post is written as part of the Resilient Hope series where we are looking at various aspects of God’s Character, His promises and Spiritual Disciplines in order to build up our depleted reserves of resilience and hope.

Endurance is something which is built up over time, it is something that is forged through hardships, which rather than break us, make us stronger

We can rejoice too when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead us to disappointment . For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love’

Romans 5:3-5 (NLT)

So, we are not to be surprised nor caught unawares by the trials and hardships which come to us in our lives. Instead we dig our roots down deep so that we are stayed on Jesus and not swayed about or thrown off course.

We keep to our patterns and disciplines of prayer and bible study. We keep going out to church, we cultivate Christian friendship and support systems. We build good pathways to God, so that these things are already there in our lives for the hard times.

Endurance builds strength of character, no spineless jelly fish here, but strong-in-the-Lord Christian men and women who believe and trust in the face of hard times!

This strong character goes on to develop confident hope of salvation. By looking to Jesus we see how much God loves us, that He was willing to send His own dear Son to die for us, in our place. When we see the extent of God’s love for us then we can be assured that nothing, not one thing can separate us from God’s love for us, not even hardships and that encourages and strengthens us and enables us to endure, to keep on keeping on.

So, let us set our face then, let us stand firm in our faith and keep on standing, building character, building endurance, building resilience.

 Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? ³⁷ No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.

³⁸ And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. ³⁹ No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8: 35:39 (NLT)

Praise and Worship

This post is written as part of the Resilient Hope series where we are looking at various aspects of God’s Character, His promises and Spiritual Disciplines in order to build up our depleted reserves of resilience and hope.

There seems to be something powerful which happens when we turn to Praise and Worship. We read in the book of Acts of Paul and Silas singing and praising God in prison; we read of Corrie Ten Boom and her sister singing in the concentration camps in Auschwitz and hear of other instances of believers singing when captured and persecuted. We see then that there is something powerful and strengthening in singing, that there is power in praise.

Worship declares the goodness of God, who He is and what He has done. It focuses us on God and opens our spirit to Him, allowing us to receive His comfort and love.

Lifting our eyes off our own immediate situation to turn and praise permits us to see past the problems and find that God is bigger than they are. Worship acknowledges that God is Sovereign, that He is still on the throne and that He is in control.

Being thankful is also important in our Praise and Worship as thankfulness reminds us of God’s blessings and mercies to us; it reminds us of our dependence upon God, keeping our hearts soft and humble towards Him.

Sometimes, praise is an act of our will, e.g. we may not be ‘feeling’ joyful or happy, praise or thanksgiving may not automatically be on our lips, but when we do it, it is then that it becomes our sacrifice of praise.

These things build up our resilient Hope as we turn to God in praise, as we recount His hand on our lives in blessings and as we declare His greatness our hearts follow, our faith is strengthened and we are encouraged to keep on going and keep on hoping.

 I will exalt you, my God the King;
    I will praise your name for ever and ever.
² Every day I will praise you
    and extol your name for ever and ever.

³ Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise;
    his greatness no one can fathom.
⁴ One generation commends your works to another;
    they tell of your mighty acts.
⁵ They speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty—
    and I will meditate on your wonderful works.^[b]
6 They tell of the power of your awesome works—
    and I will proclaim your great deeds.
⁷ They celebrate your abundant goodness
    and joyfully sing of your righteousness

Psalm 145

Promises of God

This post is written as part of the Resilient Hope series where we are looking at various aspects of God’s Character, His promises and Spiritual Disciplines in order to build up our depleted reserves of resilience and hope.

Of all the things which will build up our reserves of resilient hope, it is to have a bank of promises which we can memorise, meditate on and call to mind and place our hope on.

The Bible is full of God’s promises, there are far too many to recount them here, but you could get a note book or a’ promise jar’ where you write down these promises as you come across them. Then when you are in need of reassurance you can delve into your jar and recount the promise God made to you.

One of my all-time favourite promises is found in Isaiah 43:

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire, you shall not be burned

Isaiah 43:2

What I love about this promise is that God Himself will be with us, even through all the turbulent waters of life, and even when life seems like a fiery furnace, God Himself promises to be here and to see us through the trial.

If God is with us in this thing, then firstly God is bigger than the thing and secondly with God on our side we have nothing to be afraid of!

So why not start a promise jar today, putting in a promise and pulling it out when you need to re-hear it?

God’s Faithfulness (Resilient Hope)

This post is written as part of the Resilient Hope series where we are looking at various aspects of God’s Character, His promises and Spiritual Disciplines in order to build up our depleted reserves of resilience and hope.

It is important to know that God is faithful; that He is faithful to His character and to His plans and promises. God’s faithfulness is the fundamental foundation that we need to build our hope upon.

The nation of Israel knew that God was faithful because they had a strong connection with God working in their His-story; particularly when He saved them from slavery in Egypt and brought them through 40 years in the wilderness into the land which He had promised them.

Not one of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass”

Joshua 21:45

But what about us?

What about today?

How can we know that God is still faithful to His Word?

We have the Cross of Jesus and there we see God faithfully pour out His love for mankind. At the Cross we see all the promises of God fulfilled in sending us a Saviour who would bear our sin and make peace for us with God. In Jesus, God is faithfully showing His love and favour towards us. In Jesus, God is reconciling us to Himself; bridging the gulf between us.

If we don’t have much personal experience of the faithfulness of God or are unable to recount His faithful provision or help in our own lives, then we can look to Jesus and be assured that God is faithful – faithful in His love; faithful in His plan of redemption and faithful to His promises.

We can build our hope on the fact that God is faithful, we can make it the foundation of our hope and faith and that in turn will increase our resilience as we trust the facts.

The Sovereignty of God (Resilient Hope)

This post is written as part of the Resilient Hope series where we are looking at various aspects of God’s Character, His promises and Spiritual Disciplines in order to build up our depleted reserves of resilience and hope.

The first thing we need to recognise in order to build upon our reserves of Resilient Hope is that God, the Lord is Sovereign. We are not in charge of the world, nor even of our own lives – God is.

So often we think and act as if we need to be the fixers and act like God. We want to ‘lend a hand’ to usher events along to our preferred outcome; we manipulate and plot to get the outcome which we deem to be both right and fitting. BUT God says-

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:8-9

God’s ways, plans and designs are so much higher than ours. Often we only see the situation before us, we can’t see past it to the bigger picture. Or perhaps these are not the situations we would want to find ourselves in, so we want out, pray for a way or for a change to happen.

Yet, what if this exactly the place we are meant to be in at this time? What if in this awkward situation we find God in a way we hadn’t before? What if God actually has the whole thing under His control and He is working His purposes out?

Knowing God is Sovereign is to submit to Him, to His Higher Power, Higher Ways and infinite grace. It is accepting that we don’t have the answers, that we can’t do life on our own and that we need to rely on God. We need God in order to make sense of life, we need to rely on Him and trust that even though we don’t see the next step – He does.

As we recognise God’s hand in His-story and see Him sovereign of the universe, then we are relieved of the pressure to fix, to manipulate, to be responsible for bringing about a good outcome. As we learn to trust God with the outcome, we can also trust Him in the process as He writes His-story in our lives. We build a resilience as we trust our situations to God and we have hope as we believe in His Sovereignty.

Resilient Hope

Hope was my “word” for this year. I was unsure how this word was going to unpack for me or what the significance of it would be.

Throughout the year, I have stopped and pondered, “Hope” with no further enlightenment .. until now, until it has converged with the word Resilience to give us ‘Resilient Hope’; a hope that builds up our resilience as well as a hope which carries us through, giving us a hope for better days.

John Eldridge, in his book, ‘Resilience’ calls it “the longing for things to be good again”. He goes on to relate that during the early stages of the COVID pandemic, he asked his staff what their levels of resilience were and found that the trauma of the pandemic had reduced their operating strength to 30% of their normal strength. He further went on to ask that if another major crisis was to hit what reserves would they have available. Their answer – 15%.

Wow! But not only wow, I also so identify with that. Do you? Do you feel that you are no longer operating at 100% and that your reserves are severely depleted?

That, “longing for things to be good again” leads me back to ‘hope’. A longing without an expectation is just that – a longing, an unmet desire with no firm foundation. Whereas hope, godly hope is firmly rooted and grounded in Christ, there is a surety with it. Hope has a confident expectation.

My desire then to build up hope, to build up my resilience in the face of trauma or even just in the general low anxieties of life, led me to Bible Study on ‘Banking Resilient Hope’. This study lead us to ‘bank’, i.e. add to our reserves, to put more in than we we take out, through the study of God’s Character, His promises and spiritual disciplines.

Over the next month or so I will be sharing some of those things we looked at in our study, and how both our hope and resilience have increased as we have trusted in God and banked His promises to us. I am grateful to the ladies in my study group who have walked, shared and banked these promises along with me.

Deliberate

Joining today with the #Five Minute Friday group of writers to write on a one word prompt. Today’s prompt is: Deliberate.

I love when the prompt ties up with my day’s Bible reading!

I was reading today in Colossians 3

 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. ¹³ Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. ¹⁴ And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

Colossians 3:12-14

This whole chapter is full of verbs; doing words; actions. Some of the things we have to be deliberate about:-

Set your minds on things above.

Put to death whatever belongs to your earthly nature.

Rid yourself of all such things.

Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

Bear with each other.

Forgive one another.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.

Be thankful.

We have to be intentional about these things, they don’t just happen by chance. We have to be deliberate, we have to work at them and that often means making a choice.

Do I choose to satisfy my own desires instead of those of Christ?

Do I choose to show compassion instead of judgement.?

Do I choose to forgive or to hold resentments?

Do I choose to be thankful instead of grumbling?

Where do I need to be intentional today? What do I have to deliberately turn away from and turn towards? What do I need to put off, so that I can put on the better?

Where can I heal instead of hurt? Where can I bring peace instead of pain? Where can I reach out today and show the love of Jesus?

Is there a place you need to show that same intentionality and be deliberate in showing the love of Jesus?

Realize

I have the privilege of joining with the #Five Minute Friday Community of writers, to write on the one-word prompt, which today is: Realize.

My bible reading this morning was from John Chapter 21 where it recounts the night when Peter with some of the other disciples had gone out fishing and caught nothing. As they were coming ashore in the morning, weary, tired, hungry, dispirited, the risen Jesus call to them to let down their nets on the other side of the boat and they then caught 153 large fish!

They only then realized it was Jesus and not only that but He had breakfast already prepared for them on the beach and invites them to “come and have some breakfast”!

How amazing is that! Tired, weary after a night of fruitless toiling to have Jesus waiting there for you with the invite to come and have some breakfast!

We often feel that we are toiling away, fruitless, empty, but like the disciples when we come to the end of ourselves how wonderful to realize that Jesus is there waiting for us, inviting us to come, to rest, to refresh, to be sustained.

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
²     He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
³     he refreshes my soul.

You prepare a table before me
    in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows

Psalm 23

Easter

Easter conjures up all sorts of pictures and images doesn’t it?

On one hand there are pictures of bunny rabbits, bright coloured eggs and cute little yellow chicks.

On the other side there is depicted the horrors of the cross.

Perhaps life is like that though, full of contrasts.

Sunny and bright. Dark and Gloomy.

At the start of Holy Week we see the throng shouting, ‘Hosanna’, proclaiming Jesus to be King, contrast that to 5 days later they when they call for that King to be crucified.

Contrast the confusion in the Garden of Gethsemane amongst the soldiers and guards to the composure of Jesus as He steps forward declaring, “I AM He, let these men go.”

Contrast Peter’s actions a few weeks before, full of bravado, declaring that he would die for Jesus and then during the trial denying Him three times.

Contrast Pilate, the Roman Governor, saying that he has power to let Jesus go or let Him be crucified and Jesus declaring that he only had that authority in the first place because it was given to him by God.

We want to sanitise everything, we want Easter to be full of fun, bright and happy. Whereas we should be humbled, brought to our knees that Jesus was there hanging on that cross bearing the price for our sin.

What contrasts do we find in our own lives?:-

The spirit being willing, but the flesh being weak.

Wanting to follow, but counting the cost.

Saying we trust, yet trying to take control.

Over this Easter weekend, let us take time to pause, to reflect, to repent as we think on this great Redemption story, not culminating at the cross, but at the Resurrection.

Let us afresh lay down our own contrasting and conflicting emotions and thoughts as we look to the Cross, to the One who died there in our place.

And let us on Resurrection Sunday, look and rejoice at that empty tomb and rise from that place committed afresh to live, work and serve by the power of the Risen Lord.

Choose

I am joining with the #Five Minute Friday group of writers to write for 5 minutes on the one word prompt: Choose.

We choose all the time. We choose what to have for breakfast, what to wear that day. We choose our friends, our clubs and activities (though sometimes we may feel that they choose us!)

However, that is not where my thoughts are going this morning!

My Lent Bible Reading was from John 15: 18-25 about the ‘world hating us’ and I have been pondering that. We don’t like to be hated, we like to be liked! Yet, does friendship with the world mean enmity with God and if so, who do I choose?

I am reminded too that:

God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:16

God loved the world, but the world hated Him.

God loved the world and sent His son, but the world crucified Him.

God loved the world and sent His disciples to show and share the love and the world persecuted them.

So who do I choose the God who loves or the world who hates?

The God who loves every time.

Every single time.

And so what do I choose – to continue to love the world as Jesus does, even though it hates?

That is perhaps a harder choice to make.

Assume

‘Assume‘ is the word prompt we are writing on for 5 minutes today in the #Five Minute Friday community of writers.

We assume all sorts of things in our daily lives, we make judgements, decisions based on our assumptions whether we have evidence or not to base them on.

One thing I do assume though is that I know! I assume I know what is best; what is best for me; what is best for those around me and occasionally even what is best for my country and the world! And when I assume I know what is best I often by-pass God. I know what is best so along I go that road which I think is best; I assume the obstacles along the way are not right and so I try to get rid of them, go round them, even rant at them!

When I assume I know what is best for others I step in, I try to direct, I try to lift burdens, ease situations, with the goal of making someone’s life easier or happier. In my assumptions, in my actions, in my interference I am assuming that I know better than God and that God needs a little helping along to make things right or good or easy.

I assume I know better than God!

I wouldn’t normally admit that, it is audacious thing to say! Yet it is my actions which betray me; my lack of trust which leads me to want to control; my dictating to God which shows a lack of submission to His Sovereign ways and will.

Thankfully God is a gracious God and He leads me back to Himself again and again till I come to a place of acceptance and say ‘not my will, not my way, not my timing, but Yours Lord.’.

Many

I’m joining with the #Five Minute Friday group of writers today to write for 5 minutes on the word prompt: Many.

Today I have many hundreds of scattered thoughts, they are all over the place, mainly to do with all the things I have to do and that panics me; disturbs me and scatters me all the more as I wonder where to start.

So I choose to sit for a moment and breathe. I choose to be still, to center myself in God. Before running head-long into the many tasks and jobs to do. I stop; I pause; I lift my hands and I acknowledge that He is God and that He has all these matters in hand.

I pause and pray. I pause and breath. I pause and praise:

1LORD, my heart is not proud;

my eyes are not haughty.

I don’t concern myself with matters too great

or too awesome for me to grasp.

2Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself,

like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk.

Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me.

Psalm 131

Ignore

This post is written to link with Five Minute Friday: write for five minutes on a one-word prompt. The prompt today is “Ignore”.

When I see a word prompt I think, I reflect, I question what does this mean, what does it mean for me? So today the prompt makes me ask, what do I ignore and what do I give my attention to?

When there is an unwelcome task needing done it is easy to procrastinate, to ignore it, to distract and give my attention elsewhere.

What about God? Is it easy to ignore Him, to turn our attention elsewhere? Yes, often it is! I can fill my time with reading; watching TV, distractions anything but actually get before Him. Sometimes I don’t do this intentionally, it is just part of life and just happens when life creeps in and God gets pushed out.

But yes, sometimes it can be willful (sadly)! This happened to the Israelites too, they often willfully turned away from God, they willfully served and worshipped other gods including themselves:

Remember what it says:

“Today when you hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts as Israel did when they rebelled.”

Hebrews 3:15

About 7 years ago I was reading through the book of Hebrews and the above verse was really impressed upon me TODAY when you hear my voice. So a day came when I found a new on-line community bible study; I thought mmh that sounds good, wonder if any of my friends would like to do this with me, but doubts and insecurities crept in and I was about to ignore that voice when I remembered the verse: “Today when you hear His voice, don’t harden your hearts“

So I put it out there and was overwhelmed by the response, seven years later we are still going strong, meeting together on-line over the Word. We have been enriched by the daily study of the word; we have grown stronger in our faith by the support and fellowship from one another, we have been blessed, so blessed and I could have so easily ignored God’s voice and we would have missed out on so much.

What are you ignoring today? Where are you focusing your attention? Are you missing out on a blessing because you are ignoring God’s voice?

Doubt

I’m joining with the #Five Minute Friday community of writers today, to write on the one word prompt; which today is: DOUBT.

Doubt.

Friend or foe?

Doubt hangs about me as if he was my friend; he is always there when I am reflecting and thinking things through. He is always there when I have questions on my mind and even in the wee small hours of the night he seems to be there.

So is he my friend? Does he actually help me? Is he a positive influence on my life?

No, he is not!

So why do I still court him?

Why do I still allow him access to my inner most thoughts?

We are always told nowadays to get rid of those ‘toxic friendships’ which are harmful to us.

So I need to get rid of this Mr Doubt fellow! I need to cut him off from my life.

I guess the fear is if I don’t have him to cling to then who or what do I cling to; who will be my new friend?

The song comes to mind, ‘What a friend we have in Jesus’

What a friend we have in Jesus,
all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry
everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit,
O what needless pain we bear,
all because we do not carry
everything to God in prayer!

2 Have we trials and temptations?
Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged;
take it to the Lord in prayer!
Can we find a friend so faithful
who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness;
take it to the Lord in prayer!

3 Are we weak and heavy laden,
cumbered with a load of care?
Precious Savior, still our refuge–
take it to the Lord in prayer!
Do your friends despise, forsake you?
Take it to the Lord in prayer!
In his arms he’ll take and shield you;
you will find a solace there.

So I need to court Jesus as my friend! I need to seek Him out.

Jesus is a good friend; His friendship is healing; His friendship is wholesome; His friendship is peaceful; His friendship is freeing.

I need to go to Him for advice when reflecting and questioning and it is Him I need to find in the wee small hours of the night and Him I need to go to for my solace.

So today I say goodbye to Doubt and welcome my friend Jesus.

Receive

Delighted to be joining #FiveMinuteFriday group for the first word of the new year! And the word prompt we are writing on today is: Receive.

So after a short ponder to see where my thoughts would take me on this word and concept of receiving I thought of this verse from John where Jesus is talking to a Samaritan woman at a well and he says this to her:

Jesus replied, “If you only knew the gift God has for you and who you are speaking to,

you would ask me, and I would give you living water.”

John 4:10

If you knew.

If you knew the gift God has for you.

And who you are speaking to.

Your would ask me

And I would give you ..

So is our asking too small, are our prayers to small, is our God too small?

If we really knew God to be the Majestic, powerful God, creator of the universe that He is, then we would not be limited in what we ask Him for!

Do we really believe that He is able to do ALL things, that nothing is impossible to Him?

Then we would ask and we would receive.

Much to ponder about this today!

HOPE

Every New Year, I have a word and a text which I carry into the year with me, I rarely know the significance of that word at the start of the year, but as the year and the word unravel I find that they greet and meet one another as faith and circumstances converge.

The word this year has been with me throughout this past Advent Season, it is the word: Hope. With every carol we have sung there has been a longing; an anticipation, even an expectation and you can’t have those things without hope.

The dictionary meaning of hope = A feeling of expectation and desire for a particular thing to happen.

So what do we hope for from life, from 2023? Peace; happiness, health; prosperity; good times? And yet do we have assurance that these things will be given? No, we have no such assurance, our hope is unsubstantiated, why? Because no-one has promised us these things, no-one has given us any assurance that these things will be ours.

So what is hope then, what can we be assured off, what have we been promised and by whom?

For that my dear friend, we have to turn to God, because He alone is the promise-maker, the promise-keeper and the one alone who is able to fulfill and carry out these promises in a way that we can place our confident hope in Him.

John Piper defines Biblical hope as: “not just a desire for something good in the future, but rather, a confident expectation for something good in the future. it expects it to happen. And it not only expects it to happen — it is confident that it will happen.”

So what are some of the things we hope for and have assurance of ?

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,

Ephesians 1:18

Hope is faith in the future tense.

Hope is looking forward to that day of Christ’s return when all the wrongs will be made right, where justice will win, when wars will cease, where sin and sickness are no more and where there are no more sorrows or partings or death. Hope holds on to that glorious day!

Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. and hope does not disappoint, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

Romans 5:3-5

So even though life may be tough, even though we have trials and tribulations, the hope that tribulation builds in us is not a hope that will be disappointed.

How?

We have assurance because God has proved His intention to complete His work in us and that proof was in sending His own Son to die on our behalf so that we may have reconciliation with God, so that we might be called His children

God is faithful to all His promises, so we can have hope.

In this ‘in-between’ time of Jesus coming as a man to die for our sins and Him coming again to bring justice and to reign forevermore, we have hope. We have confident expectation that what He has said will come to pass.

Whatever promises of His we are holding onto today or for the coming year, we can have hope, we can have confident expectation that He will fulfill His promises.

So as we enter 2023, we can have confident expectation that God will fulfill all His promises He has made to us.

So we long, we wait, we have assurance, we trust, we persevere and we HOPE.

Hope in God anchors us.

Hope in God does not disappoint us.

Hope in God brings peace.

So as we go forward into the New Year may we place our hope on the Promise Keeper and look to Him with confident expectation that He will fulfill His promises to us because He is able to do it..

Witness

Today, and for the last group of the year, I am joining in with the #Five Minute Friday community of writers, where we are writing and sharing our thoughts on the word Witness.

This is an appropriate word for us at the end of a year for we are called to bear witness to Him, our Lord and our God. Yes we are to be witnesses to Him, for our salvation, but I think also in our daily lives we are to bear witness to Him with the way we live our lives, our attitudes, our demeanour , our walk as well as our talk.

So have we ‘walked the talk’ this year? Have our lives borne witness to the fact that we are a redeemed people, that we follow Jesus, that we have a hope which is beyond anything in this world?

How have we dealt with hardships or sadnesses? Do people see that we rely on Jesus to be our help and strength in our hard times; that we are not in total despair because we trust in the sovereignty of God?

Have we shown kindness, compassion and empathy to those not only in need and struggling, but also with those who are different to us?

Have we moaned and groaned at the state of affairs in our country or have our lives been marked by thankfulness?

As one year soon draws in and a new one opens out what lessons can we learn from the past year and going forward how can we be witnesses to Jesus in our everyday lives, following and emulating Him, bearing witness to His grace and goodness to us?

Endure in the Joy

This is our last week of the review of the word Endure. We have looked at Endurance in the Mundane everyday and last week we looked at Endurance in the Hard times. This week we look at endurance when things are going well, when life is smooth, comfortable and relatively trouble free.

Now, you may think that it strange to talk about endurance in happy times, because surely that is what they are and they don’t take any enduring, we are happy, we are coasting along, life is good!

But you see, often when life is good, when we are free from pressure, that is when we can let our faithfulness slip, that is when we think we are doing okay and so we can relax, we don’t need to attend that meeting, we don’t need to read our bibles so much because life is good!

And we do praise God for those times, and I think we often don’t acknowledge them, almost as if we are not meant to be happy (or perhaps that is just the dour scots in us!!)

So another helpful book I have found this year is ‘A Long Obedience in the Same Direction’ by Eugene Peterson which is a meditation on Songs of Ascents in the book of Psalms.

In the Psalms the people are on a journey, on this journey they experience all of life just as we have looked at over the last few week, the long plod, the hardships, but also times of joy. Take Psalm 126 for example:

It seemed like a dream, too good to be true,
    when God returned Zion’s exiles.
We laughed, we sang,
    we couldn’t believe our good fortune.
We were the talk of the nations—
    “God was wonderful to them!”
God was wonderful to us;
    we are one happy people.

^4-6 And now, God, do it again—
    bring rains to our drought-stricken lives
So those who planted their crops in despair
    will shout “Yes!” at the harvest,
So those who went off with heavy hearts
    will come home laughing, with armloads of blessing.

Psalm 126, The Message

They have walked through the mundane, they have faced dangers and hardships along the way, but they arrive home exuberant “with arm-loads of blessing”; they are “one happy people”.!

We may be in that place, we may be experiencing a time of happiness! So let us be exuberant, let us rejoice, let us give thanks to the Lord. The Lord has blessed, let us give Him thanks. That pathway of prayer we have made is now filled with praise. That pathway to the scriptures is filled with remembrances of the Lord and His faithfulness. And that pathway to fellowship which we have established is now glorious as we worship God together.

It is not a time for self-reliance, it is not a time for pride as if we have arrived here in this place by our own hard work or doing, but it is a time to reflect and see how the Lord’s hand has been upon us and brought us to this place, a time to see how God has been faithful at sustaining us and upholding us. And from this place to have a deep sense of gratitude and thankfulness.

My dear friends, I don’t know what you have faced this year or the path you have walked, I’m sure at times it may have seemed like a long hard slog, at other times down-right hard, but I hope too that in the midst of that you have also experienced the joy of the Lord and can end the year with thankfulness. Whichever it has been may we walk on in that long obedience in the same direction day in and day out – “he who endure to the end will be saved!”

Endurance in the Hard

Last week we looked at enduring in the Mundane Everyday. But what happens when life throws a curve ball and we are plunged into the unexpected, the frightening, the unknown? How do we endure in our faith, remain faithful, remain obedient and trusting in the hard times?

We keep to the paths we have trod. Those paths we trod in the mundane, those paths we trampled on faithfully, perhaps every wearily, are the ones which will keep us when times are hard.

Remember the path to prayer – we go again, now in desperation we run to that place, we are glad we have established it and know the way to the place of prayer and we go pouring out our souls, our troubles, our anxieties, our fears. And we find grace to help in our time of need.

We tread that path of scripture reading – those words which we instilled within us in the everyday are the ones we now cling to in our need. Those words of truth are what overcome the lies of our doubts, those words of our Saviour, our suffering saviour are what comfort us in our need, we see our faithful God never forsaking His people and we see His love poured out for us on Calvary.

And that path of fellowship which is now established means we are able to go to our brothers and sisters in Christ and share our burdens with them. They are able to minister to us, feed us, hold us, pray with us because we have persevered over our shyness and trusted them with our every day, now we trust them with our sorrows, with our hearts.

We are able to endure in the hard because we have already laid the ground-work of being faithful in the everyday, of enduring the mundane, so that we have the well-worn paths to tread when hardship stri

Endurance in the Mundane

So, as the Name of my Blog suggests I’m very much into ‘finding God in the everyday’. God has got to be real, He has to be there in the everyday, there is no use having a faith for the hard times, or a belief in a distant God, but God here and now day in and day out.

So it is no surprise then that in following on from my new year word ‘endure’ that I have to apply that in my every day.

So what does it look like to endure in your faith in the every day when mostly your every day is mundane? Most of us the majority of the time don’t live in times of crises, they may come and go, but thankfully the majority of the time we are just plodding on going to work, keeping house, looking after family, attending our church. My question is not so much where is God in this, but where am I? What can I do to keep my faith alive, bright and growing?

At the moment I am reading ‘Everyday Faithfulness’: the Beauty of Ordinary Perseverance in a Demanding World by Glenna Marshall where I am seeing her echoing and articulating my own thoughts of this faithfulness in the everyday. She says

“Faithfulness to Christ is a daily, lifelong pursuit. A lifetime of daily faithfulness will be full of unremarkable single days of faithfulness. And what encourages us to be steadfast on a daily basis is keeping an eye on this lifelong perseverance Jesus spoke of in Matthew 24:13. Rather than fading from following Him because our love has grown cold, ‘the one who endures to the end will be saved'” (Pg 22)

A lifetime of daily faithfulness will be full of unremarkable single days of faithfulness – yet, yet it is those daily unremarkable single days which are really laying the foundation of our faithfulness, so that in the good and the bad we are able to endure and remain faithful.

How? By treading a path to prayer, so that it is well worn, so we that know the way, so we will know the way in the dark, so we will know the way through our fears, we will know the way to the Father and will be no stranger coming to Him in our time of need.

By treading a path to scripture every day we are reorienting our hearts onto the truths of God’s Word, we are learning the truths of His character and His ways, so that when ill winds blow and doubts assail, we can stand on the truths of His Word and His character.

Another path we tread in our everyday faithfulness is the path of fellowship. We commit to a local fellowship and we turn up, we commit. If we neglect this path we will not know what it is like to ‘stir one another up to love and good deeds’, we miss the opportunity to encourage and be encouraged by others.

Building habits, treading paths of discipline, walking the long road, takes discipline and patience, it requires vigilance and endurance and commitment to the long view of faithfulness and our sanctification. We need to pace ourselves, we need to be steady and committed and to keep on going. Growth doesn’t happen in one big decision, but in the hundreds of daily little ones we make. We need to keep before us Jesus, looking to Him, knowing that each step we tread in the long plod is worth it when we become more like Him and when we see Him more clearly.

Endure – A Review

It has been a while since I have met with you here on the blog, but absence hasn’t meant that I haven’t thought of you and wanted to reach out, but I’ve had a necessary ‘time apart’, a time of reflection, a time of learning, leaning in and listening.

I have been reflecting on my New year word ‘Endure’ and as we fast approach the end of this year, 2022, I want to take this month of November, before all the Advent Reflections begin, to reflect on that word and how it has unfolded for me over the year.

I began my new year post with a definition of ‘Endure’ which is = The ability to continue with an unpleasant or difficult situation, experience or activity over a long period of time.

And throughout the year I have come to experience that endurance is ‘long obedience in the same direction‘. I had felt at the time that the endurance wasn’t that the year was going to be full of difficulties which had to be overcome, but more in the sense of being faithful and keeping on being faithful, keeping on being obedient whether in the ups and downs or just in the daily plod of everyday life.

So over the following 3 weeks I want to look at:

1) Endurance in the mundane everyday ;

2) Endurance in the Hard things and

3) Endurance in the Joy and happy things.

Hope you will join with me in these next three weeks!