Lentblog2020

https://www.facebook.com/caroline.hamilton.75/videos/10222545069556001/?comment_id=10222545752293069&notif_id=1586553237360354&notif_t=feed_comment Song for Good Friday I was there when they took you I was there in the garden on the hill And I saw the blood drops falling on the ground I was there when they struck you I was there when they stripped you of your robe And I saw the vicious thorns upon the crown Amazing love, amazing grace amazing suffering so undeserved, my living word my sacrificial king I was there when they lashed you I was there when they nailed you to the cross And I saw your gaping wounds and tearing flesh I was there as you shouted Father God please forgive them of their sin I saw you as you took your final breath Amazing love, amazing grace amazing suffering so undeserved, my living word my sacrificial king I was there with your mother I was there when they placed you in the tomb And I saw the hand of death that sealed you in I wait, I am waiting...

Easter weekend and the news is full of warnings about not going out and staying away from holiday homes and beaches and parks.  The Police are out and about stopping drivers and asking where they are going.  They are handing out fines and enforcing the new regulations.  They can do that.  They wear the right uniforms Several years ago ( decades in fact) I was working in a full time job, renovating a house and was fully involved in church in every spare minute of my week.    I woke up one morning and God was so heavily present it was as though He was sitting on my chest.  I am NOT a morning person.  It usually takes me a good hour and two cups of coffee in the morning before I am compos mentis.  That morning the second I opened my eyes I was wide awake and God was waving His finger in my face and saying ' Caz, if you don't stop right now, I will make you stop'.    It was a scary and most serious warning about having a day of rest....

I heard myself say that yesterday.  And I thought that it should probably become the strapline for lockdown. For both good and bad the little things are now the big things.  If someone leaves their dishes on the table instead of in the dishwasher at the moment, there is the potential for nuclear meltdown.  Equally, waving at a neighbour or phoning a friend can be the highlight of the day.  Funny how priorities change when options become very limited.                                 So today this very short post is just to encourage you to do two things.  1) don't sweat the small stuff.  Try to keep the negative niggles in perspective  and 2) pay attention to the little things that can make a big difference to someone elses' day.  My neighbours on both sides are locked in with children under the age of eight.  Both families have very little outside space....

Luke 22;10   He replied, "As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters. The story of Holy Week is so familiar to us that we can struggle to see anything new in it but today it was as though this verse jumped off the page at me and begged me to look again. I suddenly saw that the man carrying the water was a whole story in himself.  I knew that men didn't carry water in Bible times.  So who was he and why was he mentioned in the story?  Nothing in the Bible is there by accident, or as a 'filler' .  It set my imagination whirring. The custom of carrying water in the Holy Land is ancient. However, it was and is the woman’s job to go to the well or spring with a pitcher and carry water to [her] home. When the Gibeonites deceived Joshua (9:3-27), he judged them and made them servants to chop wood and carry water. This punishment may seem mild to us, but how humiliating it was to a man—carry...

You always do the unexpected. Just when I think I know How you think, What you mean, Where you are, You shatter all my preconceptions. You shape-shift, slipping Through the fingers of my mind. Eye-cornered, I think I spy You, elusive yet there. And just as I settle You rattle my cage The dust flies And my card house falls I've been thinking about shaking.  And this poem was the result yesterday. It's interesting that in Haggai God says He will shake the heavens, then the earth, then the sea and then the land. Next He will shake the nations - all of them.  And then He will come. At the moment it feels as though the whole earth is being shaken by the virus, but actually I don't think it is.  Much of the world has been affected but not all of it.  This might well be more of a tremble than a shaking.  I think the shaking is yet to come. But this is most certainly something unexpected, unusual and unsettling.  We d...

The Queen always manages to make me feel a mixture of pride, huge respect and inspired.  I don't know what it is about her, but every time she speaks I feel that I've gained something.  She has a wisdom and grace about her and she never comes across as being superior or ' apart'  from the rest of us.  Im really glad she chose to speak this weekend.  I think we need her positive rallying cry to keep us focused.  We will get through this.  And we really are a great country in a crisis.  We always have been. When she was talking about her address to the wartime evacuees when she was a child it really made me think.  At the moment many parents up and down the land are thinking about what would happen if a child had to go into hospital with Covid 19.  Or a parent.  Or a spouse.  Not being able to be with someone you love when they are very ill or possibly dying would be super hard for all of us.  But if it was your child........