I have noticed the more our new rescue dog, Willow, hangs out with us the more she trusts us. But it isn’t just that. The more she hangs out with our old dog Renly, the better they get on with each other. We are all getting to know each other and learning to trust each other.
With Willow too, the more often we go round the park the more she gets to know it and the regular people and dogs who walk there and so the more she is comfortable and trusting there. There is also the thing that the more she trusts me on a walk the more she trusts where I take her.
It is the same with God. The more we hang out with God the more we learn to trust God and the safer we are. I can’t remember who it was, maybe Henri Nouwen, who said that we need to get to know God in the calm times of our lives then we can trust God in the rough times.
Fourteen years ago now we went through a very tempestuous time and I know if I hadn’t built up my hanging out time with God before then, spent time devouring my Bible, praying, worshiping, reading about God, then I know I would not have been able to trust God during that time. Like Willow I build up my “hanging out getting to know God” time and knew then that I was safe with God wherever.
Again it is not about throwing requests at God, not about being busy doing things with God, but it is hanging out with God and just “doing life” with God, which is how the trust is built up.
[Though back on the Willow front – it is now 4.30pm and she still doesn’t quite trust that I will remember to feed her and Renly, which just goes to show we all need to work on trust 🙂 ]
this is the first stage of looking longingly but by this one she’s talking to me
and how often do you sit calmly for long enough to listen? Or can you only really hear your heart’s desires if you are delighting in God?
Aber Falls footpath March 2016
According to Googlephotos it was ten years ago today that we first walked to Aber Falls. This was a side path so we took it. That’s what we were like back then when Renly was only 4 years old and could walk for miles and miles and miles. Interestingly we’ve not walked this path since that day. Some of that is because Natural Resources Wales have been doing a major replanting scheme so the fir trees that were beyond this path have been removed and new native to the area trees are being replanted.
Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
What struck me was – how many of us really know the desires of our hearts? And how many of us stick to a plan we got 10, 15, 20, 40, etc years ago and keep trying to get there even though we have changed massively since then? This is why I’ve used the above picture. Only ten years ago our dog could walk miles and now, much as he enjoys his walks, he is much slower and cannot walk as far. But also this piece of land looked like it was going to be conifer trees forever but now there are struggling beeches and ash, as a more native forest is re-established. The desires and plans have changed both for my dog and this piece of land.
We moved here 10 years ago. Back then my desire was to run our house as an Airbnb house, offering hospitality to low-budget travellers. Even before Covid the ethos of Airbnb travellers was changing and I was thinking of stopping. The desire of my heart had changed. Also a around that time I was doing lots of work with children and teens around Creative Writing but again my desires have changed.
Though in both my “desires” it was Covid and Lockdown that accentuated my need to relook at my heart and what it really wanted. And as my regular blog readers know I have done a lot of QEC healing since Covid too.
My heart has changed. My desires have changed. My circumstances have changed. My energy levels have changed. So much has changed that I cannot expect to keep slogging on with what I believed my heart wanted back then. I am always changing and always evolving.
I was emailing with someone the other day about relationships and of how hard marriage is because we are in to for a very very long time and yet we are not the same people who got married back then, and neither are our spouses. We have changed. We have evolved. Circumstances have changed us. Circumstances are often a driving force for changing the desires of our hearts.
So back to the verse – I think there is a connection too. I think the psalmist is saying that it is as we delight in the Lord that we learn what the desires of our heart are. Not what we think they ought to be, or what we think they should be, or what we think would please others, but what we really really really desire deep down inside. And I do think we need to do loads of healing to get beyond the “good girl/good boy” scenario and the people pleasing, or the “what would look good to others/friends/family”.
But I honestly believe as we hang out with God, delighting in God, delighting in the fact that we are forgiven, delighting that we are loved unconditionally, and that if we mess up on those desires we can pick ourselves up and start again and that the Creator of the Universe will still be by our side. But we have to give this time. We can’t fit it in around other things. It has to be a part of all that we do, all day, every day. Back to what the Apostle Paul calls “praying continuously”. That’s just hanging out with God and delighting in them, not mithering at them to change things. A bit like something I talk about with my writing group – of not striving but of allowing things to ponder, to touch those Alpha waves, those Eureka moments – all of which come when we are delighting in something not striving to get an answer.
This verse isn’t about telling God what we want them to do but is about being with them and enjoying them. Delighting in them.
It is ok for our desires to change and change and even change back again but if we delight in the Lord then we can step out with confidence and do what will make us glow with joy and peace.
I’ve just been reading Butter by Asako Yuzuki translated from the Japanese to English by Polly Barton. It is much more than a book about a serial killer and food. It is a book about misogyny supported by other women, about finding one’s true self, of breaking with the norm; a coming of age book but by someone in their 30s.
But the page I am going to share comes towards the end and it is when Rika’s best friend takes her to an end of Ramadam meal put on to help Japanese people learn about Turkish culture.
It is these two pages where the women read from the pamphlet that stuck me
I’m not sure how well you can read it – maybe photographing pages from a book and editing them with a small dog sleeping in the crook of my arm isn’t the best way of doing it but …. well here it is.
I wasn’t sure where to go with these when I thought of this post last night but knew I wanted to share but then this morning the Vicar I work with phoned me up for a chat about a couple of people we know but then we moved on it trusting God and the importance of knowing one is forgiven and how there are many Christians who don’t fully believe that. As we said this hinders them not just in their Christian walk but in how others perceive Christianity to be.
Now I know this pamphlet the women are reading is about Islam but I think this is what God is like in Christianity too. But like way too many religions how we out work the love of God become a rule rather than a love based.
I’ve missed it off that first page but it is when Rika says “…It is enough if the people who can do it do it ….”
And then on the following page Reiko says,
“… God … won’t take joy or satisfaction in the sight of suffering. Which means, you don’t have to go through everything alone. You don’t have to always be growing as a person. The far more important thing is to just get through every day.”
This is what, I feel, we need to keep remembering as Christians. Firstly that God loves and forgives us, that God doesn’t take joy in our suffering, that we need to remember that God is with us so we don’t have to go it alone. Also that God has put precious friends in our way too so it isn’t just us and God, but us and God and our friends, family, those who support and encourage us with no string attached.
Too often in Churches we see rules – of having to go, of having to be involved, of having to be a part of, of having to pray, of even having to be nice to people, and of having to “grow” in God – when, especially after reading this, I think God wants us just to get through every day – and if possible in peace and knowing we are loved and forgiven.
And as happened with the unexpected phone call, God so often has some unexpected plan to help us on our journey if we are willing to stop striving and be willing to let God lead us – which only comes through trusting and believing.
I’ve been looking at different thoughts and things around those wisemen that came to visit Jesus and their gifts. What if those gifts don’t represent what we’ve always been told they represent. There is nothing in the Bible that says why they gave the gifts, it just says
On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Matthew 2:11
Then they go home again a different way.
So what if GOLD, to these wisemen, represents their worldly wealth? What if they prophetically looked at this baby and were willing to trust all their worldly wealth, all their earning power to Jesus? These wisemen must have been rich because they travel from Persia to Judea and Herod welcomed them as equals – and he was a proud, image-focused human. These wisemen could afford to take time off of making money to journey for weeks with an entourage – not just the 3 of them that we see on on Christmas cards – but a whole entourage of baggage, of guards, of food, of water [yup you need lots of water to cross a dessert] It says too that they “open their treasures” not that they just slid over a few presents. But they looked in their treasure chests and they decide from there what to give. That took a camel or two of its own to carry plus guards so they weren’t robbed.
So maybe Gold represents trusting God from now on for earnings, for wealth, for the financial security that gold, that jobs, that money brings to us all.
I wonder if FRANKINCENSE represents one of the tools of their trade. These were astrologers, star gazers, fortune tellers. A lot of the people I know who tell fortunes, who do divining, and those sort of things use incenses in many ways – to help with the atmosphere, to help calm, to help even open a portal to another dimension. What if these wisemen were giving this gift to Jesus because they were saying that they no longer needed to create an atmosphere by altering states of mind, they didn’t need to even keep the illusions of their trade up any more? Maybe they were handing the tools of their trade over to Jesus and trusting that God would do whatever with their skills and talents.
Now to MYRRH which we’ve always been told they gave to Jesus foretell his death. Myrrh is an embalmer. They were also a wealthy class of people living in a culture where tombs were built and prepared long before the recipient died, and generally orchestrated by the person who was going to be buried in there. The living person was keeping control of their death and afterlife!! What if they gave myrrh to Jesus because they were saying that their death – the timing, the manner, how they were buried – was no longer in their hands, that they no longer had control over it. That as they had given over control of their wealth, their earnings, their trade to the living God so they were giving control of their death to God.
Maybe all three gifts were to show that, rich and important as they were, they were letting of all that and giving it into the hands of this baby who they knew, through their prophetic eyes, was God Incarnate – someone they could trust not just with their lives but with their deaths?
A belated post due to lots of dog training, beach and mountain walking and inertia!
I wrote a really fun play for my youth group which they performed on Christmas Eve looking at the nativity story from the point of view of Mary’s donkey, the Shepherd’s sheep and the wisemen’s camel. I also added in a dragon to show how the enemy tried to thwart God’s plans without success. Though there was always the bit that I had to miss out because it was a family/children’s service – and that was the murder of the innocents by Herod after Jesus and his family escaped to Egypt.
16 When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. 17 Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:
18 “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”
Matthew 2:16-18
There’s been a lot of talk this year about Jesus being a refugee and how one needs to be generous and supportive to refugees [which is only right and proper] but how do we deal with those babies who got murdered?
Many Bibles headline this piece “the murder of innocents” – so here’s my question “What do we about the continued with the murder of innocence?”
Yes still today, and possibly more so than ever, the innocence of children is being eroded. As I write this I’m also watching TV and seeing the contrast between the innocence of the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the adverts. The adverts are telling me that taking my children to a regular playpark is boring and that I should be taking them to Butlins where there is light and noise and implied fun. The simplicity of swings, slides, overcast days, regular cornflakes, is now seen as boring. The innocence of childhood continues to be eroded.
I read a great piece in a book called “Going Home Another Way” a devotional for the Twixmas time. For the 28th December there was a piece by a man who’d lost his leg when he was five and he talked about the youth he worked with and why it was the more difficult youth who were attracted to him. And he says he believes it is because he lost his innocence at five when he had his leg amputated and they have lost their innocence with things like their home life, their parents, their friends, etc.
These were children in poorer areas but I think so many young people lose their innocence due to expectations, materialism, “having to do well”, and more. I’m sure we can all name things that took away our innocence long before it should have been and it has caused us to make many of the life choices we do.
I got this via an email on 28th December and I think the first bit is great but I’d change the last line
Innocent’s Song by Charles Causley
Who’s that knocking on the window, Who’s that standing at the door, What are all those presents Lying on the kitchen floor?
Who is the smiling stranger With hair as white as gin, What is he doing with the children And who could have let him in?
Why has he rubies on his fingers, A cold, cold crown on his head, Why, when he caws his carol, Does the salty snow run red?
Why does he ferry my fireside As a spider on a thread, His fingers made of fuses And his tongue of gingerbread?
Why does the world before him Melt in a million suns, Why do his yellow, yearning eyes Burn like saffron buns?
Watch where he comes walking Out of the Christmas flame, Dancing, double talking:
Herod is his name.
But I think by saying “Herod is his name” we’ve missed out on being responsible for the loss of the innocence of our children – whether we’ve given birth or not. I think “Herod” could easily be changed to “materialism/expectations/being too busy” and I’m sure there are many more.
Perhaps the Rachel’s of this world now need to keep weeping for our son’s who have lost their innocence and refuse to be comforted until something changes?
for getting to put God and Jesus in the centre of all we are and all we do.
The sky on our drive home on Tuesday looking towards Eryri photographed by myself whilst in the car hence why it is a bit blurry.
When we go to the Anglican church there is always a prayer of confession which talks about repenting for things we’ve done and things we’ve not done but last week it stuck me that one of things we don’t repent of is not putting Jesus in the centre of things, of not trust that God has a plan through it all. Surely that is one of our main tenants of faith – that God works all things to good [Romans 8:28] – yet too often we don’t believe it. Instead we try to do it on our own, with our own skills, with our own strength. Ok so we might pray that prayer “Jesus help me with my work/family/this situation/this decision I have to make” but then we get back to working out the answer, of putting together pros and cons, putting together contingency plans, and worry and worry and worrying. And so we get stressed, grouchy, and of course that can lead to various health issues if we read Gabor Mate, etc.
Over the last month or so we’ve had loads of curveballs thrown our way from family issues to car issues to boiler issues to getting a rescue dog – something we wanted but maybe the timing was out? I found I was getting more and more stressed and so not being able to see through things and not being able to truly enjoy the new dog.
This is our something good – a new dog called Willow who our old dog Renly gets on well with
We all have deep-seated different motives for why we take on board what we take on board. For myself I wanted to “get it right”, to “please everyone”, and to “be a good girl”, and to “prove myself”. None of which are what God wants.
So how does one put God at the centre? It is really hard work but also really easy. For me it was to trust that God knew that all these things were going to happen at this time. God also knew I could handle them, but not in that way that I had to sort it all out by myself but that I was able to rest with God and let them deal with all the curveballs. I don’t even need to catch the curveballs. That is God’s job.
I do have to be willing to let go of controlling outcomes. Not that any of us can control outcomes anyway but, oh my goodness, we all do try very hard to keep control of all situations, which just leads to more stress. If God was willing to give each of us freewill surely we should let our family and friends have freewill, even if we think we know best or could do better.
So once I’d let go of it being my responsibility for sorting other people I could hear what God wanted me to do in those situations – to be able to leave my old and new dog peacefully with a friend as I went away, to leave relationships for God to sort and not see them as a reflection of me. And I do think we too often see the way our children, especially, behave as a reflection on ourselves and how we brought them up. Instead of being as gracious as God is with us and letting them have the freewill to do what they want. That doesn’t mean we don’t pray for them but it must be a freewill prayer filled with love and grace. I think we can pray “your kingdom come” in both personal and world situations but we cannot pray “your kingdom come and it looks like X,Y,Z” because, for one, that is controlling and, two, we really really do not know the whole situation but God does.
So for me with all that was going on I was able to turn my heart toward God, to trust them in all things, to let go of trying to control and to hear what I am to do. Interestingly this has made settling the new dog into the family much easier and has helped me sleep better. Has it sorted the other things out? No! But, even though I care, I know they are not mine to sort.
So I have put Jesus back into to the centre of my heart and my life – though of course have to keep turning back to doing that again and again and again – and my life becomes much simpler.
AI has created this angelic picture of Jesus as a boy in the temple. It seemed intent on making sure he had a beard. Perhaps for AI Jesus with born with a beard??? Who knows!
I was reading Luke 2:41-49 in which Jesus is about twelve. The whole wider family has all gone to Jerusalem for Passover and on coming home, when they stop for the night, Mary and Joseph notice Jesus isn’t with them so they travel back to get him.
Now I’ve heard sermons about this which say that because Jesus was now twelve he would have been traveling with the men and no longer with the women and children so Mary wouldn’t have been keeping an eye on him. But this sort of shifts the blame then to Joseph for not keeping an eye on him. Almost back to that thing you hear about fathers “baby sitting” their own children. I like to think that Joseph was better than that. I mean after all he gave up when Jesus was born – not just his reputation by marrying a girl who was pregnant, but also going into exile in Egypt and probably losing his business and having to restart when the family returned to Nazareth – would he really have forgotten to keep an eye on his eldest who had now entered the company of the men? I don’t think so.
I’m suspecting as all good parents we would have just presumed our lad was hanging out with his mates and would join us when he was hungry. And that’s where my next point comes in – so it says that they’d travelled for a day before they noticed he was missing and then when they got back to Jerusalem it took them three days to find Jesus. The throwaway line is that he was “sitting amongst the teachers and asking them questions” – for the whole time? Really?
We are told that Jesus was fully human, well I remember my son, his friends and teenager boys of my friends and they never seem to stop eating. My son would eat a whole meal then sneak tins of baked beans into his room or eat a whole block of cheese. I’ve known others who can demolish a packed of Cornflakes in an evening or a whole loaf of bread. If Jesus really was fully human then he would have needed food. Also where did he sleep? Was the temple open all night? Did someone take pity on his and take him home when it got dark? Did he really really sit for three or four whole days with nothing to eat and no sleep asking questions all the time?
Also was it the same learned men he spoke to or did they come and go? And were any of those learned men still alive twenty years later when Jesus was doing his ministry? Was one of those learned men in the temple back then Nicodemus which is why he chose to follow Jesus?
And what were those questions? Was he doing what he then did in later life and asking questions that challenged and made people think?
Then I always wonder when Mary and Joseph find him what was his tone of voice when he responds? I know how my teenage son would have responded to an obvious question – with a touch of sarcasm. I’m hoping Jesus’ response was compassionate and that he was sorry he’d upset his parents even though he did need to be in the temple but we aren’t told.
There are so many details that are left out. Why? I often wonder if the Bible had been written by women instead of men would it have had more details in, more of those day to day things that I’d like to know? I remember using the bible once to try to do a kid’s writing workshop and in the end felt that it has so many plot holes and details missed out it made it hard work to use.
Although I often think it is these lack of details that give us space to ask God to help fill in the gaps and lead us to their truth – though also can lead to disagreements over the whole argument of “this is what the Bible REALLY means” – which people have killed and died for.
So as AI decides Jesus must have had a beard from boyhood we have to make up our own pictures of what went on, not just over those few days at Passover twenty odd years before Jesus died, but through so much of Jesus’ life.
Interesting aside – one of the few details is it took his parents three days to find him. Was this detail to correlate to the three days he was in the tomb from crucifixion to resurrection? Another question! Another detail missing!
My daughter now works at Everyman cinema and when I was visiting her recently we went to enjoy the decadence that is Everyman Cinema – comfy seats, free popcorn with one’s very expensive ticket, a cup of mint tea with real mint in it. And we watched One Battle After Another It is fun, cliqued, predictable in places, and gently shoot-em-up. Very escapist.
But this is what struck me. So when they go into hiding Bob is told codes and passwords that he must remember just in case. But he gets disillusioned, fed up, complacent, and becomes an alcoholic drug addict and forgets the codes and passwords. So when their old enemy resurfaces years later he can’t remember what to do.
It made me think about our Christian life. Along the way we do learn ways of keeping in touch with God, of casting our burdens, families, problems etc on to God. Then life gets easy and we get complacent. We often think it is how we do things and that we can pray harder, be better, work harder, do more, etc and then things will sort themselves out. We forget the “codes and passwords” that hold us there with God. We forget that there is something more out there than just us and it is “not my might nor power but by [my] Spirit says the Lord”[Zechariah 4:6]
Like Bob we fill ourselves with things that numb us rather than keep us alert. We miss what is going on around us, miss when the enemy swoops.
As the film unfurls and the enemy gets more intense so Bob connects with others who, even though they don’t know the codes know honour and friendship, and it is through this that slowly but surely he remembers the codes at the right time.
We all need people around us who are going to befriend us, and that we befriend, whether we can remember the “codes and passwords” back to God or not. Care and love for each other whether we say we are Christians or not is one of the key codes, I think.
I am grateful for this film for reminding me to keep myself awake and remembering all that God has done, is doing, and will do for me. Just a few days after watching that I’ve been hit by the enemy’s tsunami and could so easily have been sideswiped but I remembered that there is someone greater than I who created the whole universe who knows the beginning from the end, who knew this was coming and knows what the outcome is, who has promised to work to the good of all who love them. So as this latest tsunami tries to sweep away my foundations I shall remember the codes and passwords and will pray, will hand everything to the Creator of The Universe who loves me unconditionally and will hide in the shadow of their wings. [Psalm 57:1]
This is my faith mustard seed grown. As you can see it has grown really fast but it is a bit limp. That, and a message I got from a friend asking for prayer this week, got me thinking about my little old mustard shoot.
Often we set off with great enthusiasm with our faith in what God can do with us, through us and for us. We plant that faith and it sprouts. But then instead of growing into a tree it goes a bit limp and wobbly. That’s because we can’t go it alone.
Look at these healthy mustard plants all crowded together
Lots of mustard plants on farm with cleared sky
They are all holding each other up, supporting each other. We cannot be a lone mustard seed. We need others to help and encourage our faith.
Like with my friend, not just the one who messaged by many other of my friends, we don’t need to go to the same church. We don’t even need to go to church at all – though that helps. But what we need, whether we attend a church or not, is faith-filled friends who will help us stand strong in God, stand strong in our faith. We need friends on a similar wavelength to us that we can share openly and honestly with, who won’t judge us, or label us, or box us, but who also know us as well as it is possible to know someone else.
Faith isn’t meant to stand alone. Yes it can and it will but it will get tired. Faith stands better and stronger in communities.
On Sunday our vicar gave us all a small packet with a mustard seed in and used it to expanded on the story Jesus said about having faith the size of a mustard seed.
He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
Matthew 17:20 and Luke 17:6
And we were all told to take this home, plant it and see how big it had grown by Christmas.
I worried the whole time I was going to lose it so as soon as we’d had lunch, and before taking the dog for a walk, I made sure mine was safely planted and watered.
When I pondered my attitude to this, it reminded me of when I first really met with God and how I knew from that moment on the The Creator of The Universe loved me unconditionally even though I was a single mum and not living the best life. The faith I got from that moment I was terrified of losing and so I did everything I could to water it, to grow it, to nurture it – reading my Bible, praying, going to Christian conferences, reading Christian books, going to church, being involved with church, going on mission, etc, etc. Ok there have been times when I haven’t done any of those things and have wombled on with God in a contented way still. I have never lost that faith, have seen it grow, have seen it tested, have seen it wobble, but, for the most part, have always trusted.
So I got to wondering what other people might have done with their mustard seed representing faith. [this is all speculation and not about anyone specific]
some left it at church – which is often where we can all leave our faith and do not take it home and use it at home.
some have it in their pockets still and will find it on and off when they put that coat on again – again a bit like we do with faith and find it and then forget it, then find it again but never really take it out.
some will keep it in their “going to church jacket” and will bring it out each time they are at church – which again we are all great at doing, of having great faith when we are with a company of other believers but struggle when we are on our own.
some will have lost it as they walked home – which again is what happens to faith often. The hassles of life get in the way and we lose our faith that God can.
some will have seen it as just another daft thing and won’t have engage with it – again that is what can happen when we talk about things like God working all things to the good of those who love him [Romans 8:28]. It can seem a daft thing and so we ignore it.
some will plant their seed but then will forget about it and it won’t grow, or it will grow a little bit but won’t be nurtured.
some might expect someone else to plant it for them, a spouse, friend or someone else they know – and again we all too often lean into someone else’s faith rather than our own. It is important to have friends with faith around us to hold us up but we cannot rely just on their faith. We do need our own too.
And some won’t have believed in it at all and found it all total nonsense.
Interestingly I was reading that the mustard seed is an easy seed to grow. It doesn’t need much to grow from this tiny seed to a plant that you can then use the leaves of in all sorts of cuisine. Though interestingly the article also says that economically there is no reason to grow mustard seeds, although the novelty value is good – being able to produce a jar of your own mustard to share with friends. Again this is an interesting point to take back to our mustard seed of faith. How many of us think what’s the point? Nothing will change, nothing will happen, or even “I can do it quicker myself”.
Maybe the “novelty value” has something to say to us about our faith, and about that inner feeling of connection with something higher than us.
Faith is the moving of those mountains of sickness, of poverty, of inequality, of war and aggression. But it is also that inner peace, inner, tranquillity, inner joy, inner trust, inner knowing that I am not alone, that I am love unconditionally by the Creator of The Universe. And that with that tiny bit of faith I can grow, I can flourish and maybe it is because of my faith that the birds can find shelter?
Then Jesus asked, “What is the kingdom of God like? What shall I compare it to? It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds perched in its branches.”
Luke 13:18-19
Or as David Marks says in Garden Focused – key reasons for growing mustard in the UK is to use it as a green manure on the soil. Now I’m all up for being a fertiliser for all things God!
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