lent25

 Today a couple of friends of ours John and Lou turned up with their van to help us shift furniture out of our rented house and into the farm where Keith grew up.  John jumped out of the van when they arrived and charged towards me to plant a big kiss on my cheek.  He has always done this since the first time I met him (Id met and loved his wife a while before I met him)  John is a cheeky chap with a twinkle in his eye and I suspect he kisses most of the women he knows.  But he is also a kind and lovely friend and it always tickles me immensely when he greets me with a kiss.  He isnt a Christian.  And that's funny isnt it, because we, the church, are actually encouraged to greet each other with a kiss and so seldom do.  Ive just been to look up the verse for that and to my surprise discover that there are five different occasions in the New Testament when we are told to greet each other with a kiss!  Who knew?  (Romans 16;16,  1 Cor...

 Just a quick update on what happened today.  Before I left home to pray I felt it was important to ask Keith to pray with me.  He hasnt been involved with the situation until now so I gave him a brief update as to what I was hoping to pray for and he covered me in a powerful prayer.  I can only think of one or two times in the 25 years of our marriage when I have 'submitted ' to Keiths authority as the spiritual head of our house (not because Im unsubmissive!!! but because the situation rarely arises where it seems overtly necessary)  I remember discussing our marriage vows before our wedding and opting to say that I would obey him.  I genuinely believed that I would probably never need to 'do as I was told' in my marriage because we were aiming to be a partnership.  And right enough, despite a few heated discussions and disagreements, there has never been an issue over which we couldnt work out a middle way.  But I did also believe that spiritua...

 Had a bit of a moment yesterday.  The sun was shining and I wanted to try to get focused on my prayer appointment today so I went for a walk.  Its about half an hour to the local garden centre which has a large cafe.  I was listening to worship music on the way and the playlist just happened to be perfect to help me pray. I got to the cafe which was chock full of elderly ladies - literally bus loads of them. It was so busy. But I got my coffee and found an empty table where I continued to listen to music.  All of a sudden, in the middle of the noise of the coffee shop I felt the presence of Jesus. I saw myself kneeling in front of Him and He had His hand on my head.  It has been a long time since Ive had that experience - many years, but I have felt it before and the last time it was all about the favour of God being with me.  It was a moment of incredible peace and weird intimacy in a busy public place I dont think its any coincidence that yesterday ...

 Im going to do something I dont think Ive ever done in the 11 years of writing the blogs - take one whole post to ask you all to pray for something very specific Tomorrow (Friday) Im going to go and pray with someone who Im pretty sure needs deliverance. This is really important. The person concerned has been struggling with their identity (not gender identity) for about a year, believing all sorts of lies about who they are and their value to Jesus, their family and the world.  A negative spiral is now becoming a suicidal spiral - and whilst I genuinely dont believe that all mental health issues have demonic roots Ive been pretty sure for a while that this one has. The issue thats going round in my head is to do with my Messiah complex 😂😂 In my head I am pretty confident about going into a deliverance situation - I know what to do and I absolutely know beyond a shadow of a doubt that no amount of darkness is a problem for Jesus. This person is a Christian, so we are talkin...

 Im currently running at about 6 out of 10.  Which is better than last week when I was in danger of falling below 5.  I usually maintain about a 7.5.  Which is perfectly acceptable but obviously could be better. A few years ago I adopted this scoring system with a friend of mine who was going through a mental health crisis.  I didnt want to keep asking how he was. But I really did want to keep asking how he was.  So in order to have a shorthand which didnt involve any need to explain we would just send each other a score every now and then.  At that point he was only managing a 4 at best.  When he got down to 2 I started shouting about getting to the doctor and started checking in every day.   Id like to be a constant 9 or 10 obviously. But having spent quite a long time hovering around a 2 or 3 Im now happy enough to be cruising at a content but not wildly euphoric 7.  With the help of the pills.  There is so much focus on men...

 Two things happened yesterday.  Rory won the Masters and I had to sit at the gate of the dump for fifteen minutes waiting for the truck to pick up the massive skip things and move them about. This was somewhat annoying. But it enabled me to watch the process which involved a huge hydraulic crane thing picking up the container and dragging it onto the back of a big lorry.  It made me realise that I dont know how hydraulics work.  So when I got home I looked it up. Im sure you know this cos you are cleverer than me. But hydraulics work on the principle that a stable liquid put under pressure can exercise a much greater force under the right conditions. Somehow in my head this relates to Rory McIlroy spending 14 years going back to Augusta again and again trying to win the elusive green jacket which was going to put him in the history books.  His talent is unquestioned but its probably no greater than the talent of all the other players on the tour.  The tale...

 I dont know about you but these days my Facebook timeline seems to just be full of adverts and competitions.  Every day someone is telling me that if I like and share something I can be in with a chance of winning anything from a house to a chicken coop.  There is something very enticing about the thought that we might win something just by clicking a link or buying a ticket - and I have to confess that Ive won my fair share of random things over the years. Todays thought is short and sweet. Jesus offers us the dead cert win of eternal life if we just like, follow and share Him. Its a no brainer isnt it? 😁

 I happened to switch on the telly yesterday to find Kenneth Brannagh as Henry V giving Shakespeare's wonderful St Crispins Day speech This story shall the good man teach his son; And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, from this day to the ending of the world,b ut we in it shall be remembered- We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,  this day shall gentle his condition; And gentlemen in England now-a-bed shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks t hat fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.   Listening to the rousing speech and the cheering of the soldiers reminded me of Mel Gibson , all blue and tartan, riding out in front of the rag-tag band of soldiers in Braveheart to give his ' Freedom' speech.  And I started to ponder all the great leaders of history ( the ones who havent been given dramatic lines by playwr...

 Did you see this the other day?   https://fb.watch/yU1_xHu6EZ/ There was something so delightful about the whole thing.  Firstly all the golfers had their kids with them and all the kids were wearing jumpsuits with their Dad's name on the back.  All the kids got a chance to do a bit of putting on the greens = and some of the older ones were clearly pretty good already.  But Rory McIlroy's little girl, Poppy, is only 4.  When she hits the ball it barely looks as though it is moving at all. But it must be on a bit of a slope because it picks up speed.  Scotty Scheffler is Rory's main rival in the Masters championship but here he is totally invested in Poppy getting the ball in - and when it does he is more excited than either Poppy or her Dad.  All of this is just wholesome and good. This is how God wants the world to work.  He wants all His kids to be clothed in jumpsuits with His name on the back.  He wants us to be involved in wha...

 Yesterday Chris commented that technology enables this blog to reach people all over the place without me having to write it all down multiple times on paper and post it to people. That made me smile but it also made me think about all the people throughout history who wrote down the entire Bible by hand.  Way back I presume the Old Testament was written on papyrus or on clay tablets -which for a start cost money and secondly took a lot of time to do.  They were fragile and vulnerable to damage.  In order to be disseminated they had to be laboriously copied by scribes and carefully transported from place to place.  As time went on more copies of scriptures were made and technology moved on.  Engraved tablets became papyrus and then paper.  But by the time of the New Testament writing was still being done with a stylus or a quill. Dipping your feather into ink every minute or so is slow and laborious work.  Writing presumably was done outside wher...

  Whenever Im sitting at the end of the runway in a plane which is about to take off, and I feel the engines starting to roar and there is that moment of thrust before the brakes come off and the plane starts to hurtle along - these words always come to mind Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the  works  I have been doing, and they will do even  greater things than these , because I am going to the Father.  John 14 :12 Im not sure that Jesus was primarily thinking about air travel when He said that to His disciples, but nevertheless, the fact is that Jesus never flew in a plane.  😊 I was watching a documentary last night about a guy who was rowing up the west coast of Ireland.  Amazing photography captured dolphins and puffins and basking sharks and even hump backed whales!  I had no idea there were so many fascinating sea creatures on my doorstep ( so to speak)  It made me want to get a boat and go out there myself. ...

 I was listening to a radio programme the other day. Its a couple of forensic psychologists who interview people who have been in prison to dig into what leads people there, what they learn whilst locked up and what helps people rehabilitate afterwards.  Ive heard a few episodes and its covered a wide range of people and crimes. Its interesting . If you want to listen to it if is here.    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0029xr7 This week I tuned in half way through.  The chap they were talking to had a very rough start in life, bi-racial, dyslexic  abandoned by his mother , violent father, self sufficient from a very young age.  Circumstances led him into a life of crime - he considered performing robberies to be his job.  He talked very openly about resolving disputes with his fists and quite often seriously injuring people.  But then he spoke very beautifully about his partner, who is clearly from a different background, works in banking...

 Sitting in church on Sunday being very distracted by the children running around and a million things on my mind when a sentence that was running through my head stopped on the word 'attitude'.  So much of what we do and how we do it depends on our attitude.   On Sunday I was tired and distracted and not really focused on Jesus.  My attitude probably wasnt the best.  But then I started to ponder,.......being a bit of a word nerd my thoughts get hijacked in this way quite often and usually it starts with me wondering what the word actually means and where the word comes from, So.... attitude Origin late 17th century (denoting the placing or posture of a figure in art): from French, from Italian attitudine ‘fitness, posture’, from late Latin aptitudo, from aptus ‘fit’. This is interesting because our English word which the dictionary defines as 'a settled way of thinking or feeling about something' actually started out as being more about aptitude (ie being ...

 How often do you pray for yourself? Im  just wondering because today as my prayer request list fills up with other people, mostly older than me, Im thinking about ageing and decline.  Sorry to be so cheery (not) but we are all living longer and the likelihood of infirmity therefore increases.  So I think I need to be praying for myself every bit as much as I pray for other people.   Did you know that the Jews have a prayer they say when they are on the toilet.  😁  That might sound a bit ridiculous, but what they are doing is thanking God that they have a digestive system that works well and praying that it stays that way.  Here it is  Translation from the Hebrew probably renders it a bit clunky in English but this, I think, is a good prayer to pray.  And whilst we are at it, I think it is good to refute the words of the optician who tells you that after the age of 40 your eyesight will inevitably start to deteriorate.  Well e...

 I was in the bank yesterday standing in a queue waiting to be called to the teller.  The guy in front of me was probably a bit older then me - maybe mid 60s?  There was music playing in the background, and the guy in front of me was dancing. 😀  He wasn't just swaying ever so slightly. He was properly dancing.  And it made me smile so much.  I mean, why shouldn't we dance in the bank?  Or anywhere for that matter?  I whistle to music in shops. I dont realise Im doing it most of the time, but in one charity shop that plays Christian music the shop assistant always says - Oh you're the whistling lady!  😁 I think its supposed to be a compliment. (Thats how Im taking it anyway) If the joy of the Lord is our strength and we can spread a bit of joy by expressing ourselves freely then we should be doing more of it.  I dare you to dance in the queue or sing along to the soundtrack or whistle a happy tune when you are out and about today. ...

 We have been living in a rented house for just under a year. The last time I was renting was when I was a student so very long ago. It's a weird thing to be doing, as someone who has owned property all my adult life.  Todays thought is short and sweet and it's about how we treat borrowed things.  My Mum had a mantra 'neither a borrower nor a lender be'.  Until today when I looked it up I had no idea where she got that from (its actually a quote from Hamlet!) but she was true to it all her life. And I've been the same. I have never borrowed money for anything except a mortgage. And I've never really lent anything either. I give things.  Even books - which I have attempted to lend in the past. They rarely come back. So nowadays a book is given with no expectation of getting it back.  We are about to give our borrowed house back to its owners. I'm also a landlord and I know what it's like to walk into a recently vacated property to find it filthy and damag...

 I was in a shop today just aimlessly dandering up and down the aisles when a grey haired lady walked past me saying ( loudly) ' Bella! Bella where are you?'  She disappeared down another aisle and the voice got louder and a bit more panicky.  She re-appeared at the bottom of the shop as I reached the end and she said ' Have you seen a little girl?'  I said no I hadnt but Id keep my eyes open.  She started to shout more loudly.  By this time she was definitely in quite a state and everyone in the large store could hear her yelling ' Bella! Where are you?  Bella!'  I was about to join in the search when my eye just happened to notice a display stand wobble ever so slightly.  I walked over to it and discovered Bella, on her hands and knees, very neatly hiding in between two large cardboard merchandise containers.  I shouted that Id found her and then told her to come out of hiding, by which time her distraught adult had arrived and grabbed...

 This has absolutely nothing to do with Lent or Jesus but it actually happened to me on Monday and I thought I'd share it cos its funny. The house we are renting has some large storage boxes in the garden which hold various bits and pieces including tubs of bird food for the bird feeders, outside toys for the owners kids and firewood for the winter.   I havent been into the boxes much in the year since we have lived here, but on Monday I noticed the birdfeeders were empty so I thought Id fill them.  When I opened the lid I was met with a scene of devastation.   In the bottom there had been an old beanbag which the owners dog had obviously slept on at some point.   Over the winter a mouse ( or mice) had decided to chew through the fabric - and a billion trillion polystyrene balls were now filling the box.  They had also shredded a couple of pool noodles so the white snow was interspersed with pretty shredded blue and orange foam.  The sme...

 I was watching something on the telly the other night about the Prince and Princess of Wales.  There was a clip of the Royal Family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace at the recent coronation and the commentator said ' This was the first time we had seen Catherine in royal robes'.   It was a sentence that jumped out at me.  Because I wear royal robes too.😊  (Im just not as sure I look as good in mine as she does in hers 😂) The Princess of Wales in an undeniably beautiful woman who on occasion has worn some truly stunning clothes.   But Ive only seen her in one outfit that caused me to write to her to tell her how amazing she looked. And that was the day she wore this The blue robe with red trim indicates that Catherine is a Dame Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian order. On top of a white dress embroidered with the four flowers of the four kingdoms, the red white and blue of her outfit of course highlights the national significance of the occa...