Lentblog2020

Housegroup the other night covered a wide range of topics and went to quite some depths.  One of the things we discussed was praying for healing and the whole deal about how we feel when we pray and ' nothing happens'.  There were a few good points made 1)  There is never a time when ' nothing' happens.   Immediate healing might not happen.  But encouragemment, support, friendship, care, love, committment, standing alongside.... all of that happens every time we pray for someone. 2) It's a battle.  Someone shared a picture of a person who was enfolded in the arms of a many-tentacled beast.  Each prayer that is prayed deals with one tentacle.  Eventually , after five or ten or a hundred or a thousand prayers, the last tentacle will be removed and the person will be free.  I liked this analogy and it reminded me of the time I had a bad back.  I was prayed for over and over again for a few months with seemingly no effect.  T...

If fear is one of the favourite weapons of the enemy, how is the church to respond in the face of the media madness which is going on over the corona virus? At the time of writing , of the 7,700.000,000 people on the planet,  2, 900 have died of the virus. 456,000 people die each year from malaria 56,000 people die each year from flu estimated 24,000 deaths every year from lightning strikes  ( stats are approximate and taken from various Google searches on WHO research documents) So, as it stands we have significantly less to fear from Corona than we do of the next freak weather event. In addition, not only do 80% of people who are diagnosed with the virus recover from it, but of the remaining 20% who catch it, so far NO children under the age of ten have died - it seems to be bypassing the very young altogether.  Those most likely to succumb are the elderly or those who are already imuno compromised.  The group which are also most vulnera...

A friend of mine recently told me that she stood on the scales after Christmas and was somewhat surprised, but nontheless delighted, to discover that she had not put on any weight over the feasting season.  In fact she thought she might even have lost a bit.   A couple of weeks later at the GP surgery she was asked to step on the scales and was horrified to see that the doctors scales showed her to be a full stone heavier than her own scales.  She remonstrated with the doctor that their scales must be broken and was assured that they werent.   On further examination of her own machine at home she discovered that the batteries were running out!  She was indeed a stone heavier than she had thought she was. Nightmare. Whilst we both had a laugh at the story, it got me thinking about something.   If our batteries are not fully charged we dont give an accurate reading or measurement.  Perhaps we can't correctly weigh things up. The B...

It is Lent already - how did that happen?  It's only just finished being Christmas!! Ive been writing the Advent Blog for 8 years now and the Lent one for 6.  If you have been following from the start then thank you and well done.  Im sure I repeat myself on a fairly regular basis so I do hope you arent getting bored.😊   I cant remember when I last 'did' Lent - gave something up for the 40 days.  I tend to see it as a bit of a fad I supppose.  Frivolous and somewhat pointless.   But that's only because I have allowed the world's notions of Lent to creep up on me.  I've absorbed the subliminal messages that what its really all about is giving up chocolate or facebook or alcohol for forty days in order to somehow prove my virtue or look good or ' be healthy'.   But of course Lent is nothing about any of that stuff. For the past 1000 years Lent has been a solemn and serious period in the church calendar.  It is a time f...

When I started writing the Blogs ( Lent and Advent) lots of years ago now, I wasnt sure what format they would take.  I've tried a few different things - doing a daily Bible study and using a book as a framework, but have decided that what God wants me to do is just to write about the spiritual lessons I see in my everyday experiences.  As I make a conscious effort to look for Him in my ordinary life it's amazing how often He speaks about odd and unexpected things. Teeth. I've been pretty fortunate with my teeth over the years.  Have been to the dentist every six months and rarely had to have anything done.  But a few weeks ago I started to notice a pain in one of my big back molars and , long and short, I ended up having to have the tooth removed.  It had split in two and there was no saving it.  Which was a bit of a surprise.  I went in to the dentist thinking Id make an appointment to go in the next week for a filling.  Half an hour later I...

Josh is learning to drive.   He has had two or three lessons so far and the other day he took us all out for a wee drive to the seaside - the first time he had had anyone in the back seat or indeed had driven so far.  He did really well. It's funny though ;  I've been driving for 35 years and it is so automatic to me now that I genuinely barely think about any of it - the gears, the indicating, the looking and listening, the braking and turning it's all completely automatic.  My body and mind have learned what to do through repetiton and practice and now I am a good and confident driver.    Sam has been driving for a year.  He is still careful and has not yet come across every sort of driving behaviour and situation he might encounter.  But by and large he is no longer having to concentrate as fiercely and think as carefully as Josh is doing just now. When you are in the car with a learner driver you realise a few things. 1) Learners a...