Month: July 2024

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house of the lord paradise psalm 23

Psalm 23 – part 9

Various pictures of my house taken over the last couple of month by myself

First big cheer to me!!! I’ve made it. I’m not great at committing to doing something from beginning to end so I am feeling pleased with myself. Perhaps I might even do it again. I have discovered on thing that has helped me – scheduling posts. Some days I have ploughed on and done 2-3 in a day. I am writing this on 6th July and it won’t be posted until 11th. So maybe I have learned something about myself through this?

and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
    forever.

Psalm 23:6b

So this last part – I don’t think it just means a “happy in heaven living with God” experience. David says “forever” not “forever after I’m dead”. In fact this line comes after being in green pastures, calm rivers, dark valleys, making peace with enemies, being refreshed, knowing one is anointed, knowing God loves us unconditionally and that love and goodness follows us all the time and watches our backs.

I think that “the house of the Lord” is the green pastures, is the still rivers, is the dark valleys, is the room/table where we can make peace with our enemies, is the anointing, is the being kept safe from anything attacking from behind by goodness and love/mercy. I think it is all those things.

I think this might just be the “room” Jesus talks about when he says he has prepared a room for us in his Father’s House [John 14:2]. It isn’t a tiny bedsit room but it is the whole world – with pastures and rivers and dark valleys and hard places.

This is the room – the space – God has for us. This is the “House of the Lord“. And we live in it now – if only we open our eyes!

I am just blown away by this. I am grateful that my house group started this journey off for me. I have tears in my eyes as all this settles into my heart. It isn’t just that God is so much bigger than we too often make them to be but that what we have got by being with God is so much bigger, safer, amazing, than we could even imagine.

This takes me back to the song one of our house group mentioned last time – Pure Imagination from Willy Wonka especially the lines

If you want to view paradise simply look around and view it

Paradise is here and now, this is the House of the Lord – if you would simply look around and view it

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goodness mercy psalm 23

Psalm 23 – part 8

“Come on. Let’s go this way!” Photographed by myself July 2022

Surely your goodness and love will follow me
    all the days of my life,

Psalm 23:6a

One of the things public speaking teaches is that if you make something visual people will remember it. Well about 20 years ago at Cross Rhythms Festival, even though I don’t remember who the speaker was I do remember the great skit they did about this verse.

The speaker got two young people from the crowd up and got them to follow him. He called one Goodness and the other Love or Mercy [some bible translations have “surely goodness and mercy will follow me …”]. These two people followed him as he wandered round the tent where we were gathered. His point was that whether we went, the right place or the wrong place, going where God wants us or off doing our own thing, God has promised that goodness and love/mercy will be right behind us.

Often we don’t realise it because we don’t look. We career about on our own thinking we are totally alone and that it is all up to us. Or we are so fearful to “get it right” so we get God’s goodness and mercy that we don’t realise they are with us all the time anyway.

How much different would your life, would my life, be if we truly believed that whatever we did and wherever we went God’s goodness and love/mercy were hot on our tails, were there ready for us to fall into, were there to protect and support us?

All we would have to do is stop, rest by those green pastures – because often even though God leads us into those green pastures and beside still waters we don’t see them because we are rushing past to the “next thing”. What if we stopped and let God’s goodness and love/mercy hang out and minister to us?

So first we need to believe they are there. How do we know that? Well … because God promised us. Maybe we don’t believe really that God promised it to us too. Maybe we think we need to do something more to get God’s goodness and love/mercy and probably also God’s unconditional love????

It all goes back to that thing that if you don’t believe God loves you unconditionally and you don’t believe God has your back – which we see here God does because it says his goodness and love/mercy follow us, which means they watch our backs. Duh! – but if you don’t believe that then you maybe don’t notice the still waters, the green pastures and don’t believe that all that love and goodness are with you in those dark places?

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anointed blessed psalm psalm 23 unconditional love

Psalm 23 – part 7

You anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows.

Psalm 23:5b

I went for a long walk on a very windy beach to ponder this one.

I get the first bit – that God anoints me as his special person, his ruler, his one who can rule in his place. I am anointed and special to God even when I have to make peace with the enemies without and within, even when I’ve walked through horrid, depressing, dark, death-like things, even when I’ve been made to lie down in a calm place and do nothing. In all those things God says “you are anointed. You are important and special to me”.

It’s not what I do or don’t do but it is all about God’s unconditional love for me. See I’m back to that again. This does seem to be the crux of everything – God’s unconditional love for me in whatever situation – good, bad, busy, still, being important or not being noticed – in all of those things I am God’s special anointed person that they love for who I am. Amazing.

And I think it is once we realise that then are “cup”, our lives, our way of thinking, will overflow with blessings and gratitude. But, I think, we need to be willing to let God lead us wherever they want always knowing we are loved unconditionally, that God sees as us awesome, and that God has our backs and we can trust them with our lives – however good, bad or indifferent our lives are at the moment.

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peace psalm

Psalm 23 – part 6

lovely wine bar in Cardiff that used to sell oysters on a Tuesday along with toasted cheese sandwiches. Photographed by myself Sept 2023

You prepare a table before me
    in the presence of my enemies.

Psalm 23:5a

What does table mean to you here? Too often we’ve been told by the preacher that it is a food table. And yes The Message version of the Bible does say ” You serve me a six-course dinner right in front of my enemies” which actually sounds a bit smug!

Of course being told it is a meal table conjures up images of having to be hospitable to your enemies, or smug to your enemies because God is feeding you and they are just looking on. But what if this table is a table for parleying around, a table for making peace around, like used to done between kings to end battles? What if it is for inviting in those things that are against you – your fears, your needing to be loved, your needing to “get it right”, your needing to believe you have “enough”, your lack of trust in yourself and in God, your issues and traumas?

It comes right after the shadow of the valley of death and before being anointed.

You anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows.

Psalm 23:5b

I think we presume it to be a food table because of the “cup” line that follows. I wonder how often we forget that the Psalms are poetry and are to be read as such. And not – as I am doing – dissecting them line by line.

At the house group we’ve started my friend pointed out that verse 5 is where the psalm changes from God doing [He] to becoming more personal [you]. But this gets missed if we don’t read it together.

It’s almost like a “yes yes I can understand with my head that God leads me and I don’t need to fear” but then switches to “oh my goodness it’s you leaving space for me to make peace with my issues and fears”.

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fearful psalm

Psalm 23 – part 5

LLandulas beach 1st July 2024 Photographed by myself

This little tree appeared after a landslide took down the nearby cliff which had two large conifers on it. The thought is that this was a seed from one of them. When we had huge storms here in April all this coast was under water, with the stones being thrown on to the coastal path. This little tree, because it is on its own, was unprotected, covered in sea water, and yet it has survived.

Do you sometimes feel like that little tree? Not in your true environment, alone, drowning, covered in something that is toxic to you? That dark valley place? Well as we saw in part 4 God understands and David says in his psalm

I will fear no evil,
    for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
    they comfort me.

Psalm 23:4

I’m not sure about you but I fear lots of things. I know I shouldn’t because I’m comfortably off, have my own home, have enough money to not only eat well but to go away on trips, to run a car, to have friends round, to go out for meals. I have a good husband that I get on with and we can have a laugh. I get to write, to walk my dog safely, and to grow as me. I live in a safe neighbourhood where crime is reported because it is rare. But I do fear.

I can fear not being liked, not getting these posts “right”, not having “enough”, worry about my children, my mum, my in-laws, my friends, what I should be doing with my life. Sometimes I even wake up in the night worrying about what to cook for eat and will those eggs have gone off! Oh yes that’s a genuine one.

But God says do not fear many many times in the Bible and here it comes right after walking through that dark valley, which is much worse than what am I going to do with the eggs in my fridge!

I know when I fear that I am not trusting God – whether that is with the eggs in my fridge or my children and the things they go through. If I fear then I am trying to hold on to control. I am trying to keep things in my ways of doing and being and not handing them to God who can then do as God knows best.

Why then follow the fear line with the rod and staff line? Now I’ve heard all sorts of sermons about the rod and staff being discipline and guidance but this morning, whilst I was pondering what to write, I felt God say that the “rod and staff” are the tools of a shepherd’s trade. No shepherd in the Middle East would go out without his rod and staff.

This line is to remind us that God always goes out with the tools of their trade – whatever that happens to be at any given moment. We aren’t always compared to sheep in the Bible. Sometimes people are compared to fish, coins, eagles, wheat, weeds, etc. and the tools of the farmer, fisherman, housewife, etc are all different to those of the shepherd but God is more than able to change tools as the metaphors change.

But in all this I have to remember that if I am fearful then I am not trusting God and probably not believing God loves me unconditionally. or that God knows what the right tools for this situation are. Perhaps when I am fearful I am trying to be god????

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death grief psalm

Psalm 23 – part 4

Photographed by myself Jan 2022. A lonesome tree on the top of the hill

How often do we feel like that when we are going through something awful? Something tough? Like we are exposed and alone?

He guides me along the right paths
    for his name’s sake.
4 Even though I walk
    through the darkest valley

Psalm 23:3b-4a

Do you know we only split the Bible into chapters and verses because some bishop decided it? The divisions started to happen in the 9th Century but really came into their own in the 13th Century. David, when he wrote this Psalm would have just written it as a poem with the lines as they are but to be read as whole.

For some reason this jumped out at me – of us being guided along the right paths for God but that sometimes they would lead us through a dark valley – through the valley of the shadow of death, as it says in the NKJV. For those who have gone through dark times, whether the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, a redundancy, a lost opportunity, etc, it can feel like walking in the shadow of death. I believe any time of grief is a time of death – death of a dream as much as loss of a person.

Someone I care about deeply is going through a dark time but, standing back a bit, I can see that if they don’t go through this dark valley they will never be freed from certain things. This dark time for them will cleanse them.

I can’t find it but in one of this last week’s Henri Nouwen meditations he talks of how grief can be a place of growth. In Richard Rohr’s blog someone talks of how in our culture we try to ignore grief and dark times and run away from them. That we just want to get over it. But here if we run these verses together and don’t allow for the verse break it says that God, our Shepherd, will guide us this way. So does this mean that it is good for us?

Perhaps this is why we we are lead in those calm quiet places first – so we are refreshed but also have developed our relationship with God. Dark times are hard if we don’t know we are loved unconditionally and don’t know that God “has our back” so to speak. We need to get to that place where we can trust that we are being led – that we will be led through not left there. But that in the going through we will …

I will fear no evil,
    for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
    they comfort me.

Psalm 23:4b

Maybe then we can support and lead others through their valley of the shadow of death at God’s pace rather than rush them through because we don’t like them being sad and depressed.

God lets people grieve so should we – and that includes ourselves.

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thanksgiving Trust God UK Elections

The Day After Election Day

A day break from working through Psalm 23 because yesterday was election day in the UK. It has been a tough choice.

How many people left like this yesterday? A little bit confused and feeling on their own? Photographed my myself 4th July 2024

Do you vote with your heart? Or your head? Tactically? Or just closed your eyes and put a cross?

I can’t tell how many people voted but I’m hoping its a lot because we need to vote. In this country all women did not get the vote until 1928 and it was only in 1969 that the voting age was dropped to 18. This is a democratic right we should all use. At my polling station they were pushing the votes deeper into the box with a big official looking stick so I hope that means lots of people turned out.

The results are nearly all in and in the UK we have a change of government and have moved fractionally to the left. Even if, in my opinion, the UK Labour party are not as left wing as they used to be.

love bit of graphics from Aljazeera news at 8.45am 4th July 2024 with most of the seats in

As you can see it is a great time for those who play with computer graphics. I’m sure if they added some council funding and a few creatives we could go crazy with it.

But seriously what happens now? How much will change? What difference will it make?

The Bible says we are to pray for those in authority. Remembering that when most of the New Testament verses about this were written it was at a time when the Romans were persecuting Christians. Actually before the Romans the Jewish authorities were persecuting followers of Jesus. Even the Old Testament verses about praying for those in authority are written when the Jews were in exile.

So we don’t pray only when we like the government. We don’t pray only when we get the rulers we’ve prayed for. We pray for whoever is in a place of authority.

It doesn’t tell us what to pray which I think we forget. I think there is often a misconceived idea that we can manipulate our leaders by our prayers. I’m not saying we shouldn’t pray that they see the poverty on our streets and eradicate it, or see the mess of our health services and our schools, and our welfare system, and the greed of many. Yes we should pray about that. But I think the big one we need to do is to give them to God and trust that God can speak to them.

For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.

Romans 13:1

I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.

1 Timothy 1-3

So all institutions exist because of God but we are to pray for them with thanksgiving so that they know how to govern so we can lead peaceful lives.

Now to be honest I think that’s much easier than having to tell God what these governmental leaders should be doing. Of course in my nice comfy house in a quiet North Wales seaside town I think I know best. But like most things, whether ruling the country or knowing what’s best for my family all I can do is give them to God.

So with this new government I am hoping that I can also enter a new phase not just in my prayers for the government but in the prayers for my family and friends and can pray with thanksgiving giving them to God and trust God knows best.

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nutrition psalm

Psalm 23 – Part 3

River walk at St Asaph. Photographed by myself April 2024

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
2     He makes me lie down in green pastures,

Psalm 23:1-2a

If I was being good and doing things in chronological order this one should be part 2 but hey ho! This is how I do things. Like I say I don’t promise to even do the whole Psalm but you never know. I am learning to be me more and more and more.

When we were talking about this at our house group last Friday one of my friends said something along the lines of “God leads us, we just have to follow. We don’t have to go hunting for our own food stuff“.

How often have we stressed and pondered and angst to know where to go and what to do when all along we just needed to stop, listen to God’s voice – which we are promised as his sheep we will hear [John 10:27] – but how often do we stop and listen to that voice? How often do we think we know best? Or that we don’t really hear that voice?

Perhaps we don’t trust that God cares enough about us, that we aren’t loved unconditionally. That’s a lie of the enemy! God loves each and everyone of us unconditionally and knows what is best of us. God knows where the best grass for me is – hence quite forcefully nudging me to put a very vulnerable prayer request on a WhatsApp prayer group I’m part of. But God knows that will help me as much by articulating it in WhatsApp as getting my dear friends to pray about it.

My lush fulfilling grass and yours or someone else’s won’t be the same because even though we are compared to sheep we aren’t really. We are uniquely made human beings with different personalities, different needs, different past hurts, different expectations, different skills. But all of us need to stop angsting and start trusting that the Creator of the Universe wants to lead us to the best grass for our needs because God is our parent, our carer, our maker, and our friend and wants to best for each and everyone of us no matter what circumstance we are in.

So just

STOP/WAIT

LISTEN

TRUST

and believe the Good Shepherd knows what is best for you.

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psalm

Psalm 23 – Part 2

Close to where I live. Take 1st July 2024 by myself

  He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
3     he refreshes my soul.

Psalm 23:2-3a

So the sky was grey and it was too cold for the first day of July and it wasn’t where I intended to walk. Do you ever get it when you are driving along and you take a turn because you go there often but really you meant to go somewhere else? This is what happen in 1st July for me. I turned down a regular route and then remembered I’d intended to take the dog somewhere different. Well we were here now so I thought we’d walk anyway. This helped with the pondering about being lead by God.

It was very much God led me to this spot, a spot I do love, but still I was led. And you know what it did refresh my soul. I took photos. I prayed for some stuff going on that hurts a bit. And I let God refresh my soul.

Note in all these it is God who lies me down, God who leads me, God who refreshes me. It isn’t that I go where God leads and am refreshed, lie down, go beside, but all the while I am being taken.

But I think to gain the refreshment we do need to let God do it and we need to go willingly. I think it I’d done this walk begrudgingly then I would not have received the refreshment. If I’d done this walk thinking that it was a place where I could place all my burdens and issues on to God I still don’t think I would have been refreshed.

There is a lot of talk about mindfulness now, about being present where you are, but I think that I had to be present, be mindful, during this time of being led by still waters and green pastures to fully receive my refreshment.

Thankfully I was that day.

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enough psalm

Psalm 23 Part 1

We’ve just started a house group in our dining room. One thing that stayed in my mind from last time was Psalm 23. Yes we all know it off by heart but I thought, for myself as much as anything, I fancy doing some short [maybe] blogs around it.

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

Psalm 23:1

As a child I remember learning it as “the lord’s my shepherd I’ll not want” from the hymn. And did think it was odd that we were singing about someone we didn’t want. Though now I do think that often we do not want God to lead us through quiet calm places but want them to lead us to our “ministry”/”our calling”.

Now as I read this version from the NIV I know that it means that by allowing God/Jesus to lead me as a Middle Eastern Shepherd would I have enough.

That word Enough again. I have enough of everything I need always and forever and I will not be “be in want” of anything else.

And here is another quote to help us remember that with God we have enough, that we want for nothing.

“Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul. Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground.”

PSALM 143.8,10 (NIV)