Stourhead gardens, Wiltshire, just before the rains came. Oct 2023
I am reluctant to say … but as you may have noticed … the blog posts are not so frequent at that moment. I’m reluctant to say that I’m taking a break from posting to process things because often once I do a post like that it seems to release a dam and I start posting again. But at the mo it looks like I’ve got some stuff to process around family stuff.
Being in my 60s with one parent gone and another coming up to mid 80s it is inevitable that thoughts move on to becoming an orphan, what ties there are with parents, what ties there are with my children, and such like. All those things need to be process. And processed slowly. And with God who sees much more clearly that I do.
So there is a lot of taking breath, of rethinking, of not speaking out too soon, of waiting. So I am allowing myself to process and to think and to have time. I also need time to visit with my family because for me one of the things I realise is that as my parents age so do I and so not only does my time with them start to come to an end I realise that my time with my children is finite and I want to make the most of that.
It is interesting to me how one of my big realisations as I see my parents age is that I want to make the most of my time with my children.
But also I realise how grateful I am to have got to my 60s and still have parents. Too many people have lost them much sooner than that.
So as I ponder, as I think, yes I’m sure thoughts to blog will come out so please don’t give up on me, but also please be kind as sometimes I’m not ready to share my thoughts so readily.
New Forest ponies photographed by myself June 2021
Too often we put the proverbial cart before the proverbial horse and wonder why nothing happens.
For instance we pray for world peace, for people groups to forgive each other, for people to consider the earth and the climate change issues, for people to stop abusing each other, yet I have realised that with the stories I read with my youth group Hagar and Gideon only changed when the had an encounter with God.
Hagar could only forgive Abraham and Sarah for their abuse of her and let go of her own anger and pride when she had met with the God who fully saw who she was. Gideon could only go and do what God asked of him calmly and without anger when he had met with the God who calmed his fears.
I think too often we expect ourselves and others to forgiven, to do just as God says and no more or less, to walk in peace and deep joy, when they had not had an encounter with God. I also think it often needs to be a regular different facet of God we encounter to fit with the things we are dealing with at the time.
So I am going to try to start praying for my friends, my family, world leaders, situations, and asking if these people will have an encounter with God. That sort of encounter that makes them feel fully known, as Hagar did, fully trusted as I think Gideon did, fully loved just as I am as I did and do regularly.
I also think that to be able to have those true encounters we need to be healed so we can truly see God when they come visiting. As you know I’m very pro QEC and also Sozo, but there are other ways of allowing those false beliefs of self-doubt, unworthiness, expectations of life, etc, changed and replaced by Godly freeing ways. For Gideon it was giving a sacrifice. For Hagar it was believing God say her.
So let’s get praying for people to have God encounters and then trusting God will change them, will speak to them, will be with them, in the way that is right for them and their situation rather than telling them and God what they should be doing.
Last night’s youth group was a great follow on from my blog yesterday and, for me, helped me know how to move in this crazy world we live in.
We have been looking at the names of God and last month I was encouraged to note that it appeared that Hagar could only forgive Abraham and Sarah and go back once she had seen a side of God.
Last night we were looking at Jehovah and one of the verses was Judges 6:23-24 – The LORD our peace. Although in my version, the English Contemporary Version, it says “The LORD who calms our fears”. Now to me that really says something.
Gideon has just been told by God that he has to go off and tear down the idols to Baal and then kill the Midianites [of which if you read on in chapter 6 God has an awesome plan on how to do that]. Gideon has told God that he is weak, his tribe is weak, and basically he’s not up for this. God responds by say “oh yes you can” and Gideon’s response is to make a meal for God. Then when God consumes the sacrifice Gideon is terrified but God says “Don’t be afraid” and Gideon believes God.
Again there is this encounter with God; this meeting with God; this knowing God is who God says God is. The reassurance and the knowing comes from meeting with God. Once Gideon has met with God and been told not to be afraid he can say he has met with “the LORD who calms our fears.”
Now my youth group aren’t really afraid of world wars, of poverty, and at the moment they are not quite concerned about making the right choices, but they are afraid of grandparents dying, of pets dying, of fellow pupils on the bus with them and how to handle certain remarks, of coming to new things, etc. These are important to them. It was great to be able to say that God will calm their fears of this because it says so in the Bible.
So in follow up to yesterday I think what we need to remember most of all that in the midst of this chaos, in the midst of our fears, whether about world events or personal events, God promises to calm our fears. Let’s claim that. Let’s live in that. And then show the rest of the world that God has something to offer to our hearts, to our peace of mind, to ourselves. And once we do not fear then we can go and do as God wishes us to do.
This was my dog’s latest crisis – being trapped on the stair by the cat whilst I hoovered downstairs!!!
We seem to lurch from one media reported crisis to the next. All of which are pretty scary to say the least – whether it is the Russia/Ukraine war or what is going on with Hamas and the Israelites in Israel and Gaza, as well as our lurching UK NHS and education system crisis and the cost of living crisis. We are constantly being pulled to worry about things outside our control. I think this is why in my area at the moment there is so much focus on a local council threatening to ban dogs from its beaches all year round to the new 20 mile per hour speed limits. These are things we can control, things we can do something about.
I had been planning a post about how trivial these complaints are when so much else is going on but over this past week I “got it”. Yes we can send money to UNICEF for Ukraine, Gaza and Israel but we can’t do much to change the situation. But we can sign petitions for both the 20 mph changes and the dog ban on the beaches. We can moan to our local councils, who more often than not will listen to us and definitely will not shoot us. We are so lucky in this county to be able to do that. And, especially with local matters things often change because we could bump into our councilors in the park, in the pub, in the supermarket. And many of them are where they are because local matters are important. We can make a change
We cannot stop the atrocities in the Middle East, in Ukraine, with modern day slavery, with drugs, with all sorts of awfulness that actually we do forget about once it has moved away from the headlines. Even with our own health and education systems, if we are not affected personally we do forget about them.
The media encourages both that feeling of panic and of worry but once we “get used to” what is going on they find something else to cause us panic and worry. So we do then look to something, like dog bans or 20 mph speed changes, to vent that worry and panic on. It is all short term but it does sometimes help.
Prayer is one way to go. Although sometimes that can feel like God isn’t listening. How long does one pray for peace and watch people die? For people to stop abusing those more vulnerable than they are? For people to not need drugs and alcohol to find peace of mind and wholeness? It takes a certain type of person to keep hammering at God on those subjects when nothing seems to be happening.
So how do we trust that God is listening? This I cannot answer. I’m hoping when I get to heaven I will. But I have to have faith. Faith that my little, often half remembered prayers, get heard and thrown into the bigger pot.
He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all God’s people, on the golden altar in front of the throne. 4 The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God’s people, went up before God from the angel’s hand.
Revelation 8:3-4
Though, like with much of the book of Revelation this is confusing because all these prayers get sent up and given to God then the angels cast down all sorts of nastiness on the earth. But I do have to have faith that God hears, that God listens and most importantly that God knows best.
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see
Hebrews 11:1
This isn’t easy in the small things – like the death of a fellow dog walker, the death of an acquaintance from stomach cancer and another acquaintance from secondary breast cancer in this last month. But if my hope and faith isn’t in God then where is it? It can’t be in the media because that is fickle, as are the politicians, the economists, the world leaders, the leaders of terrorist groups, even my employers, parents, etc. They are fickle all of them. All are searching for keeping themselves safe.
God on the other hand doesn’t care what we think of them. In fact God doesn’t care if we give them a gender or not. God made us all so that we can love them completely, love each other completely and unconditionally, and they can love us with relentless conditional love. When we don’t do our part because we are scared, wanting our own way, fickle, fearful, etc then we to often pray “my will be done because I’m scared if you don’t do it my way things will get worse” rather than “your will be done because you know best and I trust you”
So with all this madness of people hating each other, of people fearing each other, of money being the biggest goal, are you, am I, willing to trust handing things over to God? Whether our worries are the wars and poverty in the world or personal things like 20 mph speed limits can we tell God our worries without telling them how to sort it. And will we be able to trust they have heard and trust that they can sort it?
Cobwebs interconnected. Photographed by myself Sept 2023
Hands up who has been upset when a church you attend uses the phrase “we are family” and then you feel shut out? I’ve been there. One of the most recent times was when the large congregation we were attended kept going on and on about how we were all family and then announced a very messy divorce by someone in leadership that those of us in “the family” knew nothing about.
My first thought was that surely if we were family then we’d know before it was too late so we could be helping, supporting, praying, etc. But this morning on my dog walk, out of nowhere, because I wasn’t even thinking about church and family, though was pondering what I should be putting in blog post today as it had been ages since I’d done one, I got this revelation that I felt I had to share. And it was that my disappointments and hurts over this whole “church being family” thing was because of my expectations. [I have pondered expectations before]
As I have found that God is the perfect parent, beyond my wildest expectations of what a parent could be, so I expected when a congregations says that they are “family” I expected something way beyond what I knew of family, something I had hoped and dreamed of. But it isn’t that at all.
My family is small. I don’t remember ever meeting any of my dad’s wider family, apart from a cousin and his children, and that was for a short time only and I thought he was very rude anyway. On my mum’s side I knew my grandmother until she had a major stroke when I was about 6 and then my mum’s uncles who came to visit my grandmother, but then I never remember seeing them again. My mum talks about a cousin and his children but I’ve never met them. My sister and I drifted apart as we got older and of course now she’s died well …. And her son doesn’t keep in touch and really I don’t keep in touch with him. So family and the mechanics of it I really don’t quite understand.
But as I was walking God showed me that this whole “family” thing that the church talks about has nothing to do with being close but has to do with being “related to”. In fact it goes way beyond just a congregation. It goes way beyond those who profess to being Christians.
If God made the whole world and everyone in it, if we are all made in God’s image not just if/when we say we’re trying to follow Jesus, then we are all God’s children. Thus, whether we like it or not, we are all family. Some of this family we will be close to, will get on well with, will spend time with, will know each other’s deepest thoughts and feelings, but others we just won’t.
My husband’s family does a good example of this. The parent generation all knew each other well and the cousins all played together as children. Then the cousins all drifted apart and got on to doing their own thing and not communicating. But the parents kept hanging out, kept phoning each other, kept in touch with each others lives. But when something happens, when there is a need, the cousins appear and help out, or the siblings form different cliques to help and support depending on their schedules, their needs, their space in their lives. So sometimes it looks like they don’t get on, don’t spend time together but there is always that thread of “family” running through.
Once one starts seeing the whole of human kind as “family”, as God’s family, then one does start to realise how much time we do connect and we are part of something. Like my friend who bought a homeless man a pizza the other day, she was just feeding her brother when he was in need and when he came across her path. I was deeply affected by the death of a fellow dog walker, went to his funeral and have been grieving his loss, but that is because he was a brother I got close to.
My revelation was that I need to stop thinking small. Stop wanting to part of some small congregation, even large congregation, some clique where I can “fit”, and realise that I fit into this whole world and I need to be aware of the God prompts when I’m pushed to connected with a brother or sister. This isn’t always to give to them. Sometimes it can be to receive. Or in the case of the fellow dog walker, and with many of my friends, it is to give and to receive in mutual friendship. It is about being there for others but also realising there is a whole world of fellow “relatives” whether they say they are follow Jesus or not, who are there to support me too.
As I walked in the large open park, that is my special place each morning. I felt God was saying just look at the big because that’s what I’m part of, but then like with the spider web to also look at those small connections. Those small connections that make something strong.
Perhaps I need to be looking at connections rather than craving the impossible of some close knit family? Perhaps we all should?
Aspirational Adventures 