Friends

If you would like to read the whole passage click here or in the NIV  

One daughter had a friend. Both brothers said "Do not encourage this friendship. I know what the older sibling in my grade is like". Rumour had it that the older brother went into the bayou with a gun to kill snakes but that might have been the least harmful of the rumours. Another friend, I was convinced the mother was a witch. I do not think that I really had any grounds for this belief. There was another friendship that for a reason I cannot now remember I tried to discourage. We met this girl quite a few years later, she seemed to have developed into a mature and responsible person. God has plans a person whether they get my blessing or not.  I need to keep off the judging,
I included two versions of the passage as I had based what I intended writing on the oremus Bible Browser link from the Satucket Lectionary page but when we read the NIV version this morning I think that Sarah might have got a point which is why I included the first story. That girl ended up in a car accident drunk or drugged or both in a ditch on the other side of a hedge for hours before anyone found her. I met her mother in a grocery store soon after the accident. We chatted for quite a while. (The mother only told me about the outcome of the accident. It was bush telegraph that filled in the cause). Sometimes our friendship can make a difference and sometimes not. I hope that my sympathetic conversation was know to be the result of my friendship with God and might have been a faint gleam of light in a dark world.

Look, listen, learn

Remember the endless questions from growing infants. Or trying to explain a piece of homework that had not been understood in school and still was not being understood? Or how about being on the other side of the situation? I remember explaining the theorems of triangles to my friend Jane and her trying to tell me how easy it was to follow French. Never would I understand that language. it was necessary to pass O level to go to university and that I did. Just pass, understand no. Now I am surrounded by French. I have to understand or live in isolation, though many anglophones in Belgium do seem to live in a little England. We do not and if I want to buy bread in the village I am forced to open my mouth and speak in French. With practice I am improving. Last week I visited a shop where I had also been a few months ago and the assistant commented on the vast improvement in my French.
Jesus said "Look around you. There is plenty of evidence of who I am but you ask for something special, a special message individually designed for you with a label on it and given to you by the Archbishop of Canterbury."
It is the same for us. Jesus is here in our everyday life. We need to practice looking for him and listening to him.



To view the whole passage click here

Space

I have read this passage many times but never before noticed this difference. On the one hand Paul gives us 'the acts of a sinful nature' and on the other hand 'the fruit of the spirit'. Acts are done, usually the result of a deliberate decision. Fruit grow and develop over time, their presence is not instantaneous recognized. Fruit need a plant to grow from, a parent from which to develop.
The acts of the sinful nature are our inheritance from Adam and Eve- she was not blameless.  I am not habitually drunk and am so averse to witchcraft that the thought of celebrating Halloween as a cute festival really annoys me. Oops. I have difficulty getting my mind around the concept of a sexual orgy. What a good girl am I.
Not doing bad is not good enough. That is not sufficient for fruit to grow. The fruit is the fruit of the Spirit, not of me. I can only give the Spirit space to grow its fruit.







To read the whole passage click here 

A postcard

On Thursday I wrote about Easter Minto, how she wanted to know what God is doing in the here and now, not only what he did 2000 years ago. Today's passage from Genesis reminded me of a moment when I think God 'sent me a postcard'.
Stephen and Matthew were born as planned, between my Open University examination and the beginning of the next course. In fact Matthew died on the day of my first tutorial of a new course. We had decided to have three children. It would only be a matter of time before there was a different baby. I avoid the word replaced because no person can be replaced. Matthew was and is special.
Fairly quickly we were expecting another baby, not quite at the right time of year but to have the little life was most important.  I miscarried the baby at twelve weeks.  I recovered from the miscarriage, we were on vacation at the time so no doctors were involved. In the weeks, months and years ahead there was no baby and no baby again. My plans were thwarted. I was getting a trifle frustrated. Friends had their third and fourth baby, some planned, some not. And I was not pregnant. I was annoyed with God. Here was I, a regular church goer and daily Bible reader and I was being ignored. It was two years since Matthew's birth and death.
One day I was reading, I think this passage from Genesis and the words "by this time next year you will have a baby" leapt out from the page at me. Approximately a year later Becky was born. And she is well worth the wait.

To read the whole passage click here

I assume we all have memories that we would rather not have- an unwise decision, a flow of words which should not have been said, an action that was best not done.

David did most of these things and yet was described as a man after God's own heart. Keep going, God does not despise, only encourage.

Easter's Love

When I was sick Easter Minto made soup and drove it out to my house. This was in the days when the rest of the church was worried about Easter being behind a wheel. The soup was delicious and fed my family for two days. I never got round to asking her for the recipe. Now the world is without Easter but I can tell the story of her love, her practical love. The love that sacrificed her time and got her through the Houston rush hour traffic to demonstrate that the fact that she knew that Jesus loved her and to share that love with me.
Easter often said "I don't want any more Bible Study. I have read my Bible. I want to know where Jesus is in your life. I want to hear about Jesus in the here and now."
Yes we can search the scriptures to discover how God wants us to learn about him and come closer to him. But to use a cliché, something to which I have a great aversion, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating".

Search, yes, but live the love that you know too.

Waiting, waiting, waiting

"Où est le tram? Le tram n'est pas ici."*  This is the song that Becky devised to enliven the wait for the tram when we lived in Brussels. The tediousness of  the wait was replaced by banality of the song. Eventuality the tram arrived.

How do we wait? There is the nervous wait in the dentist's office and the excited wait at the station to see the friend of long ago. Or waiting at home. Either find yet another cushion to straighten or convince yourself that everything is ready then sit and wait. 

Waiting for Jesus, sit on the sofa, make pointless adjustments, nervous, excited, tedious, don't give it another thought? I need to start to consider this waiting, this eagerly awaiting.

To read the whole passage click here

The gospel is also about Jesus' return but it was the 'eagerly waiting'  or rather lack of eagerly waiting that resonated with me. Read the gospel  John 5:19-29

*Where is the tram. The tram is not here.

Website for tram

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/5862736

Give me, give me

God appeared to Abram in a dream. Wow. God told Abram that he would reward him greatly.
Abram has just come home from war, been blessed by Melchizedek, given a tenth of his winnings to  the priest king, declined gifts from the king of Sodom. No wonder he was tired and fell into a dream-filled sleep. Abram's response was "Why bother to reward me, anything you give me will only be passed on to one of my slaves." Abram thought that any reward God gave him would be material wealth.
I think that is also how I often live. I see a warm and well-fed life as a gift, it is but eternal life and Jesus are the main gift and ones which are not usually foremost in my brain. When I consider my prayers too materialism and comfort are there on the shopping list.

Boasting

Sometimes life just does not seem to go the way I want it to, everything is much greener on the other side of the fence. People of whom I do not approve seem to get all the nice houses and Persian carpets and time to do what they want and...
And me. I fail to keep the little house clean whilst wearing my daughters' reject clothing. Everything seems to be one sweep forwards and two full boxes back. There is no progress. I take the dogs for a walk and then this afternoon I have to take them for another walk. There is little time to check off a small proportion of my to do list for the week or even the day.
Yet yesterday I was singing to you the praises of how God moved David out of a job which was full of distaste.
May I continue to boast about your big deeds of the past and not overlook the little deeds of the day because I am so engrossed in my own agenda.

To read the whole passage click here

Secrets

When we were moving house we told nobody. Well almost nobody. It was such big news that we had to tell somebody and then they inadvertently let it slip to a few other people. In general it was kept fairly quiet, mainly because of complications with David's employer. Some news is just so good though that one just has to ell th whole world.
I am sorry to say that most of the time I do not keep telling everyone what Jesus does in my life. Though I am really glad that a head hunter from Paris called my husband to Belgium.

Harvest

Before I published my post for Thursday I sent my writing to Katrina so that she could approve it or otherwise. That seemed the fair thing to do. Her reply was a real confidence booster, not for writing a blog but for our friendship and all that has passed. She is thankful for all the many people who have fallen into her life and helped her to get  where she is now.
Yes being an instrument in God's plan keep one going. I shall continue to look strangers in the eye and maybe even speak.
Perhaps today I will telephone Genevieva. I met her at a concert at her church. She said "I have been to many concerts but nobody has ever spoken to me before". The downside of course is the language problem but fortunatelt God is multilingual.

To read the whole passage click here

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

This is one of David's down days. Nothing seems to be going his way. Everybody seems to be against him. He has some really unfriendly feelings for his colleagues. In fact he is very eloquent in his desires for their comeuppance. But once he has had a good old moan to God, there is no other close person to lend an ear, his wish is that his detractors shout for joy and acknowledge God's care for his followers.
I think this is why I try to befriend those who seem to want to alienate me.

Do I speak or not?

The question is if Jesus had not been thirsty would he have spoken to the infamous woman at the well? It led me to think about chance encounters  in my life that have a lifelong effect. Friendships that have been formed that would not have happened if one of us had not spoken. I will tell you one such encounter.

The first is Katrina who I met at the post office in Katy soon after we moved back to Texas in 1992. I was parking, two daughters strapped into their seats and saw a lady about my age with a young girls walking into the post office. I thought "I could be friends with her". That post office is always busy with a long queue snaking round the hall. That day was not except though at the time I did not know it as it was my first visit to the post office. I waited in line, as usual daughters dancing around to occupy themselves, me slightly embarrassed. On her way out the lady who I had noticed came and spoke to me. She was Scottish and had noticed my accent. Since then we have shared many cups of coffee and tea, the last being in London last summer. That is not all. Katrina left school when she was 14. She decided to study for a degree but had preliminary exams to take in order to be accepted on the degree course. Mathematics was one of her sticking points. A lot of our coffee drinking was accompanied by mathematics from factoring to university statistics. Katrina taught mathematics, went on the do a masters degree and now is a school counsellor. She also started going to church but there were many churchgoers who God placed in Katrina's life. There were other people too who helped her on her path to her current job.

To read the whole passage click here

Thorns and thistles

One of the favourite desserts of our family is blackberry crumble, a delight that would be impossible without thorns. We also have a good thistle plant. I tried to take a photograph of it with a bird eating the seeds but failed. 

I have to disagree with the writer of Hebrews whoever it might be. Thorns and thistles are not useless. If the birds are eating thistle seeds then maybe they will leave the blackberries alone so that we can harvest them. 

We have a rockery. I am not too pleased with the thorns that grow there and have pulled  them out so that now I can see the flowers. It is not a useless patch of earth. If anything its uselessness is caused by the preponderance of rocks which naturally occur in the area and the consequent lack of soil. 

With care the barren soil has been rendered useful and the harvest of the useless plants utilised.

And I believe it is thus with people too.

To read the whole passage click here

Jesus Prayed

Jesus is the son of God yet he found it necessary to pray, especially when things were tough. We know that he prayed when he healed, I believe that when he got up early in the morning to pray that was to discuss the day's agenda with his father. He prayed for God's safe keeping of his followers. He wept over Jerusalem. And we definitely know that he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane before he was arrested. There he told God what he thought of the plan; he prayed for strength to go through with it.
Therefore pray.

Slow

I think I wish I could remember what it was like to be born, or maybe not with all that pushing and squeezing, leaving the familiar dark wetness for dry light. A whole world to explore, an ever increasing radius of exploration, concentric circles of knowledge. Food, drink, something in my tummy. The tender nurturing of our parents. Growth, no that was not new.
So it is with the spirit. A time of awakening arrives, for some premature in their early life, for others much later. For some the birthing is easy, for others it seems to take an eternity. For some there is an almost instantanous awareness of the 'spiritual world', for others there is no immediate change- just a creeping change. One begins to see life in a new way, through the eyes of Christ. One begins to live in a new way, seeing other people as God sees them. One begins to feed on the words of God. One sees his light and feels his love.

To read the whole passage click here

My Christmas Present

Bongo is big in Belgium. There are special stores devoted totally to Bongo. You can also buy them in the grocery store. The name has a special place in our family as our first dog was called Bongo. I suspect that is part of the reason David bought me a Bongo for Christmas. Mine is a gift certificate for three nights on the coast- The Netherlands, Belgium or France. I am spending a lot of time on TripAdvisor weighing the relative merits of hotels and villages. Currently Vlieland is winning. Vlieland is an island off the Netherlands which is almost motor vehicle free. Visitors have to leave their car in Harlingen. I like the idea of having to walk or ride a bike, of using my power rather than fossil fuel. Think how much more I can eat though I suppose one will have to take into account the cooking of the extra food. Making the most of the gift is no light matter.

God gave the world to mankind. Those beautiful forests and wild seas are mine.


To read the whole Psalm click here

20-20 Vision or Rubbish!

"I can build the temple in three days". What a load of rubbish, it took forty -six years to build the Temple. Maybe it's just another of his funny doings. Thirty years later they remembered the quote and saw that it was true. How often it is with hindsight we see how events as God saw them with foresight.
This is what I wanted to write today but Noah keeps coming back into my mind. It is a really uncomfortable thought.
God said "Build a boat". Noah did not say "That is stupid. I will look a fool to the neighbours" or "I'll never get the wife to agree to that."  He made the investment in wood and time. He followed God's instructions to the letter.
Other people have looked a fool for God too. Jackie Pullinger for one went against all logic in following the prompt to leave the security of Sutton,  Surrey and went to Hong Kong. Not me, I might change my plans for a day, make a telephone call, write a letter all sort of prompted by thoughts from God but build a boat or travel the seas-no. I did do a degree course nudged by a Christian friend but that was not out on the same league of limbs as an ark.
However I hope that the world is a little warmer because of the small things that I have done at God's beck and call.
To read the whole passage about the disciples click here and Noah here

Would you like a glass of wine?

Would you like a glass of wine? Oh sorry, we only have water.
Bizarre. How strange. That's different. They had run out of wine and the young guy said "Fill the water jars with water". As if he thought the guests would drink water instead of wine. Anyway what else would one put in a water jar?
Surprise! The water that came out of the jars looked and tasted just like wine.

Follow the bizarre prompts, speak to the stranger...

Milwaukee/Nazareth

Milwaukee, where is it? Wisconsin. I knew that. Perhaps it is the capital of Wisconsin I thought, that begins with an 'M'. No that is Madison. I could recall nothing about Milwaukee other than it is on Lake Michigan and a long way from The East Coast, a long way from almost anywhere, certainly Texas. I had even forgotten the beer, but of course I live in Belgium now and never have of a matter of course drunk beer. Nothing special about Milwaukee. Polish people maybe but that is all- we have a friend of Polish descent whose parents live in Milwaukee.
Nathanael seemed to have a similar problem with Nazareth when he heard the news about Jesus from Philip.
Philip took a risk telling Nathanael that he had seen the Messiah. Nathanael saw Jesus for himself and changed his mind.
A proverbial metaphor? Lead the horse to water,show it the trough of cooling drink,  give it free rein to drink and taste the water for itself. There is no need to force its head into the trough.
I know Jesus is my friend, companion, saviour. Come and see.

Cousins

John and Jesus were cousins. No doubt John and Jesus had got up to whatever trickery little lads do and then as teenagers too. I spent hours hiding in haystacks at Rowthorne with my cousins and building sandcastles with my other cousin. My cousin-in-law (cousin's cousin) and I had own version of Cowboys and Indians - Allied Forces and Germans-on Castle  Hill at Tenby. We were the allies, tourists were the Germans. We were outnumbered but always won. Now we are grown, even getting old, we have drifted apart and seldom meet.
Twice John says "I myself did not know him". Perhaps they also had drifted apart with age. we do not know but we do know that John needed God to reveal Jesus' true identity to him.
There are people we meet daily but we do not know them as God knows them. He is the only one to know the truth inside a person.

For the complete reading click John 1:29-42

Photograph from
http://www.tenby-bed-and-breakfast.co.uk/

Driftwood

The word "drift" caught my eye. It brought to mind hours watching bits and bobs bob around on gently flowing water. I seem to have a fascination for the past-time. Stand on a bridge and play pooh-sticks, watch other sticks wending their way downstream. Find a pool in a woodland stream, there are fallen leaves passing by, lodging in overhanging tree roots. Or tube- nothing to do with underground systems in London but rather lounging in an inner tube and being carried down stream by the Guagalupe or Blanco river. Effortless, just drift, an ideal way to wile. No effort just carried carried along by the flow, taken at the river 's will. But watch for snakes that bite and boulders that bang and tree branches that scratch. Now my mind is drifting.

This afternoon I rode by the canal. I like that. I can watch the bits and bobs on the gently flowing water, the twigs and plastic bottles as they sail from Ittre to Hal. Today the water was more brown than usual burdened with mud and debris. Water flowing over, water flowing around, water buoying up, mud eroding, banks catching.

What shapes were my driftwood when they first hit the water? I know not. Now they are smooth, no hint of a previous life.

May I not drift from you Lord. May I be recognized as yours. May the life around me not erode me into a bland and shapeless form.

Be silent

No instances come to mind, perhaps because I try to follow the advice of the psalmist. Things, in particular people can upset my emotional equilibrium but somehow the next day the problem does not seem so extremely uncomfortable.

A good prayer for being baptised

'Nuff said.

Brought to God and sealed with the Holy Spirit- for life.

Strange Language.

We had a choice of foreign language in secondary school- welsh or French. All those who aspired to leave that western tip of South Wales and move east to the big cities of Swansea and Cardiff or even further to England and London chose French. Out of a class of 72 girls 5 chose welsh yet it was the native language of the country in which we were living.

I attempted to learn French. My friend attempted the geometry of the Greeks. Neither of us could fathom the foreign language of the other. To me the theorems followed a natural progression, highly logical; French could have been Double Dutch. Now I live in a French speaking area within 10 km of the border with Flanders where Dutch is the native tongue.

There must be some reason why we spent 20 years trying to fathom the reason for the differences in English and its american cousin and now live in this country to two very different languages. 

Only God knows.

Yesterday the wind blew, almost hurricane strength. The noise was so great that I thought there was a lorry rushing down the lane after me. The trees were not singing they were shouting. It was scary. I hurried home. Singing is so much more welcoming. God is going to judge us with righteousness. That does not sound very scary.

The Gospel of Peace

In November 2010 many houses in our village flooded. The commune has since caused extensive work on the little stream which flows under the main road. We seem to have had a year of mud. The grassy glade under these trees is now an ocean of mud.  I usually wear sensible shoes, whether I am walking or riding the bike to the farm for the milk. The thought of slipping off into that mud as I traverse the narrow ex-path between the ex-forest and the brook does not appeal to me. The Girl Guide (Scout) in me is not dormant. I am prepared. Elegance is left at home for the journey even though most ladies in the village wear what I would refer to as "town shoes".

I am prepared for the mud. Am I also prepared to open my mouth, put my foot in it and share the faith that I have in Jesus?

Standing Stones

Google Street View of Standing Stones at Fishguard

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=ml&authuser=0

51.996917,-4.97362

The view is much better from the real map

"What do those stones mean to you?" I remember asking this of my mother at Fishguard. There is a circle of stones overlooking the ancient harbour, houses on the other side of the street. "Something to do with the National Eisteddfod" was the answer. That meant a return to the pagan worship of the druids, something weird and celtic, for the members of the Gorsedd of the National Eisteddfod are called druids. At that time Wales and the welsh were an alien and inferior culture to my mother.
"The Eisteddfod is a  celebration of Welshness, of our culture, of the concept of belonging to a community and of priding ourselves on our country and its achievements." *
My mother grew to understand and appreciate the Welsh, partly through the friendliness and acceptance of the people she met whilst going about her daily business. I have a fascination for the land where I was raised.
Every year a new circle is built. It is a sign to the future generations that the Eisteddfod has been held in that area. That here for about a week life was not normal. Thousands of people visited, met together, competed in arts and crafts, literature and poetry. None of this is evident from the circle of stones, it took me a long time to discover the truth behind the circle.
Israelite children would ask about the stones standing by the Jordan. Why? The answer was a story about God's deliverance from Egypt and safe deliverance to the Holy Land.
What stories am I going to tell my children? What mementos do I have that will trigger curiosity into God's involvement in my life?
For more about the Welsh National Eisteddfod
http://www.eisteddfod.org.uk/english/content.php?nID=2

Little Things

God was not in the hurricane force wind.
He was not in the earthquake.
Nor was he in the fire.

I am one of the people who half jokingly said after the lightening hit York Minster 9th July 1984 three days after David Jenkins had been consecrated bishop of Durham in the minster. There is of course no proof that God was in the fire. He was probably in the love and devotion that people showed in the following four years of repair.
The wind howled through the gap between the frame and door of our Houston house. It was quite peaceful whilst we had tape around the door for Ike. I doubt if God was in that moan though it was always a talking point with my students.
We live near a fault line. I hope we do not discover God in an earthquake. Our veterinarian here seemed to find the Ittre tremors amusing. He has lived here a long time.
Where do I find God? In the spectacular, maybe. Perhaps one day I will tell you about the avocado and the hurricane. Usually I see God in the quiet helpfulness of the people He places in my life. The friend who fed my daughters and I dinner every Tuesday for a year or two whilst we were waiting for the other girl at dancing. Or the one who lent us her car this Christmas whilst she was in England and we had too many 'sit-upons' for the seats in our car. Or Stephen who gets up from the dinner table everyday and without being asked washes the dishes. Or...
Lord thank you that you are in the quiet ways of life.

What's in a name?

The BBC is showing a lot of Morecombe and Wise this Christmas. We have seen the sketch with André Previn  more than once. One of the jokes is that they call Mr Previn "Mr Preview" on order to get a laugh- and we obeyed- each time. Of course neither Morecombe or Wise are their own original surnames. They started as Eric Bartholomew and Ernest Wiseman. Both changed their name to get laughs. Getting laughs was their business.
Isaiah foretells the name of the Messiah as "Emmanuel" meaning "God with us". Joseph is told by the angel to call the child to be born to his betrothed  "Jesus" or  "Yaweh saves". 
That is his business to be God with us and to save us. 






Webpage for photograph
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Morecambe_and_Wise.jpg