Tag: Jesus

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Magi surrender

Wise People’s Gifts

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?

Categories
being real no agenda

Tis The Season Of The Resolution

I’m randomly scrolling through Facebook and watching TV and entering into 2026 with a sense of chilledness with a dog either side of me snoring gently.

As I Facebook-scrolled I came across two contradictory posts. Now as a Christian I know there is an expectation that I should follow this one

but something in this made me uncomfortable. I also find it amusing because it is posted by a church leader. I wonder how he’d feel if I went into his church and did things to upset him????

Also I do think religious leaders are doing a great job and I wouldn’t want to deliberately upset them. There are times when, yes they do make mistakes, get things wrong, get too caught up in one theology or way of doing things, but I know I wouldn’t like the job. I’d love doing the sermons and hanging out with people but I’d hate to try to lead an organisation full of fallen, sinful, often unpopular people. So yes there are times when I know I’ve upset religious leaders but I didn’t set out to do that. Also I’m not sure Jesus did.

I think Jesus loved those people so much that he wanted to help them see that their rules and religiosity weren’t doing them any favours. Though my daughter used to say that she thought Jesus was upsetting the religious leaders of his time by doing healings on the Sabbath. To me that is a great question to debate. Maybe another blog post???

Also if we take the verse “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” [Romans 3:23] means that everyone we hang out with are sinners. Though I’m sure this person is meaning noticeable sinners, those ones we can chalk up as “look at who I’m being friends with”.

For me I choose my friends by who God places across my path and who I feel led to be with. Some are people others like and some are ones others don’t, but I can’t think of any who would be labelled “unpopular”. Also by the time they are my friends I wouldn’t notice whether they are popular or not. They are just “my friends”, the lovely eclectic mix of them. Also it is why I did personal new year messages to my close friends, because they are not a generic “friendship group”.

Unfortunately this isn’t the post that I reacted to initially but by the time I tried to find it -and it was almost directly opposite of the above about being careful who you’re friends with because you need to look after your own heart and well-being. That old adage of “put your gas mask on first” which I’ve seen many Christians think isn’t “Christ-like” and have charged in hurting and being hurt.

Anyway this the nearest I can find. It’s from Tiny Buddha – and often I find I can relate to the Tiny Buddha posts more than the evangelical Christian ones.

To me this is the God I follow, this is the Jesus I see in the gospels – someone who noticed what was around them, who loved people so much he was willing to give his whole life to them, was grateful always even to the end, saw the beauty in things and took things slowly. I think Jesus did what he did because he was going slow, was deeply observing things, and did as he knew needed to be done at that moment in time. I don’t think Jesus picked his friends because they were “sinners” or unpopular or any other criteria. I think he picked them because he saw them and knew them for what they truly were. And that’s how I want to be.

Yes I will do my best this year to walk with kindness, love and mercy, but also with peace, dignity, gratitude and trust. I’ll be my best not to pick those I see and the things I do with any agenda other than what I notice as I move gracefully through the day – with a manic dog on each arm [Definitely getting a 3 year old chug is a lesson in patience and perseverance!!! 🙂 ]

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Willow and Renly, Newborough Beach 28th December 2025

Categories
Rachel Weeping

Belated thoughts on 28th December – Murder of Innocents

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?

Categories
Advent joy

Joy

It was interesting on Sunday because our church’s “Joy” candle struggled to light. I think it was a prophetic sign that joy is one of the hardest things we can grasp this year. There’s so much going on – wars and rumours of wars – and has been really since 2020 [the year of perfect vision] things just seem to have been spiralling downwards, or so the media would have us believe.

Even if we don’t grasp it for ourselves I think we find praying for peace and love in the world is something we can and should be doing. I think even when we get to hope we can manage that. But joy when things like the Bondi beach shooting happens, when children are kidnapped to be child soldiers, when sea levels are rising that poorest are losing out, then Joy is a hard, and feels almost callous to pray.

Interesting too that it is a different colour. I wonder if that is because whoever picked the colours in the first place knew that Joy would be of a different nature?

But I do wonder if the reason we have to keep coming back to Love, Peace, Joy and Hope is that we keep forgetting it. And we keep thinking it is up to us to manufacture it. But it isn’t. It is by leaning on God that we find these things. And at this season we need to be leaning into the promised Joy that was promised with the birth of Jesus which gets hidden further and further from the actual Christmas.

Much as I do not agree with the things Tommy Robinson is saying around his slogan of bringing “the Christ back into Christmas” I do agree that we need to bring Christ back into Christmas. When I was young all you seemed to be able to buy were Christmas cards with some from the Nativity story on them. Now it is harder and harder to find anything remotely Nativity based. And it isn’t people of other religions, young people, etc who are shying away from this. I was at a local writing group, made up mainly of white middle class retired men and women and we had 3 writing exercises over a 2 hours workshop, all Christmas based, and yet, apart from one I did, there was not a single nativity based story came from it.

So I do wonder if, in and out of Church, we forget Jesus and we try to muster all these things in our own strength which is why that poor old Joy candle spluttered and went out and had to be relit a few times. I think maybe we need to put the Real Jesus – the one of love, of acceptance, of caring for the poor, the fatherless, the refugee, the one who loved the WHOLE world – back into Christmas.

I’m going to finish with a quote from Christine Sine that helped me make sense of what is being asked with Joy

Then I realized: Is the problem that my understanding of the joy of Advent is all wrong? This is not a joy of happiness or of fulfillment, but a joy of anticipation. It is best expressed in the middle of disaster and heartache and violence that destroys nature and people and cultures. In the midst of these things, our hearts long for the fulfillment promised in the birth of Christ. And in that longing we respond in whatever way we can

Meditation Monday – What’s All This About Joy?

So I will take joy in the anticipation that what was promised at Christ’s birth – the joy to the whole world, the Christ at the beginning, middle and end of Christmas – will come to pass and wars and hatred will cease. In that I place my joy this season.

Categories
light sunrise

Light Banishes Darkness

Sunrise over my park but not this morning

This morning there was a sunrise very much like this over my park as I was walking the dogs this morning. What struck me was that all of us said “wow look at the sunrise” and no one said “look at the darkness”. We were all focused on the light.

I think this is what Jesus wants for us all. Not for us to focus on the darkness within us or within our world but he wants us to focus on his light shining and chasing away the darkness.

One of the things my QEC practitioner suggests is to not try and analyse why we feel a certain way – as in not try to look at where it comes from – and to not blame self or others or our past or our memories or whatever, but to change the now. Basically to look at the light of where we are now, to put in those new beliefs and to move on changed and healed.

I think Jesus, Light of the World, wants us to focus on their light, on the new creation we are growing into, and to let go of the darkness; our fears, anxieties, our not “enoughs”, our shoulds and oughts. Basically to let go of guilt and shame and to walk in the freedom and healing that light brings.

As we all know from dog walking as the sun comes up it is much easier to see not only who else is in the park but also to pick up dog poo when it gets lighter. We focus on the light and things are easier.

So even though the days are getting shorter I am going to do my best to focus on the 8 or less hours of daylight we’re getting but also focus on the light that is Jesus even in the dark.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John 1:5

Categories
Appreciate freedom

Jesus Light Of The World

 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John 1:1-5

Too often, I think, we see the “darkness” as the world around us – wars, greed, poverty, world leaders, etc etc and we pray that “they” will change. Yes those things are darkness things. But I think too often we forget the darkness within each one of us, the darkness that makes us fearful, anxious, worrying, not able to give freely, not able to fully lean on God and trust them, that makes us always need answers rather than to live in the mystery.

For me this video from Instagram says much clearer what we can be like when we let the darkness take over and also how we can be. [Do try to watch it all because it helps make this post make better sense if you watch all of it]

So are we willing to do the work, to let Jesus, who is the light of the world, shine into our own dark places? Are we willing to surrender our dark places to a God we cannot see, often cannot understand, and who sometimes seems to do things we rather they didn’t do?

But if we are willing to do that via whatever means that change the thoughts that are so deeply imprinted in our minds then we can be like the guy on the video – at peace and appreciating what is around us.

Categories
change prepared

Perhaps it just is!

An excuse to put up a photo of my two dogs!

In the book of Matthew there is a piece Jesus is supposed to have said about not knowing when he will return and how we need to be ready. Matthew 24:40-41 says ….

40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.

Common preaching is that this means that the one believing will be taken to heaven or the one who doesn’t believe will go to hell. All quite clear and simple. And it comes with the warning [in the preaching] that we who believe should be evangelising like crazy so that we don’t lose the person who is working beside us.

But what if it just means that life is full of unexpected turns and that we don’t know when our end or those around us – colleagues, friends, family – will die and go to whatever comes next?

Death is one of those things that, even if expected, still comes suddenly. My friend Tessa knew roughly when she was going to die, and put a lot of things in place, still didn’t know the exact day. I remember when we took her to the seaside in November she was planning to come back again in the spring but died in the February. Those of you who’ve been following me for a while know there are friends I’ve lost suddenly. [My end of year newsletter talks of a collections of sudden things that happened this year]

So we do not know when so we need to always be prepared for the unexpected – whether that is the person next to us being whisked away to wherever or things we’d hoped for not happening. In all of it we need to be in that Still place and be knowing that God is God and they are in charge.

Yes I think that section in Matthew 24 from verses 36-44 is about being prepared I think, as we seem to do too often when exploring the Bible, have made it too clear cut. I think it is simpler but deeper and puts God, not us, into the centre.

Categories
simple Still

Be Still And Know

“Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

Psalm 46:10

This was a verse that was given to me on a bookmark over 30 years ago when I first met with God and I’ve been pondering it every since.

What struck me in church on Sunday was – this is not a moment in our day when we take a “mindfulness moment” but it is a lifestyle. The whole of our life and our existence should be still, calm, at peace, knowing that God has it all covered and that our whole role in the whole salvation of all the peoples of the world is just to be still and to know that God is God. But I think too often we see this as a moment not a whole.

So we take a moment to be still and then we go back to worrying, doing it in our own strength, stressing, when we can just still our whole minds and bodies and believe

This isn’t easy but, from what I’ve learned from QEC and being able to bring my autonomic nervous system into line regularly then it is possible to keep “resetting” and returning to that still and trusting place whenever we notice we’re not there 🙂

So simple!

Categories
Father trust

True Fathering

From bbc.co.uk online news

The story focuses on Faye, a five year old girl, who climbed Ben Nevis in a blizzard to raise money for Glasgow Children’s Hospital. But if you read this and other articles they says how her dad, Craig, is an experience ice climber, meticulously planned the route and made sure he had all the necessary kit needed. This does not detract from Faye’s amazing achievement but she couldn’t have done it without good fathering. And I suspect a father she trusted, who encouraged her and who she’d done lesser climbs with beforehand.

This, to me, seems to fit in with the last two posts of mine. If we “yoke” ourselves to Jesus and trust God knows what’s going on we can scale any difficulty. God has done all things before us. Like with Craig, God isn’t surprised when bad things come our way. We just need to tuck in behind our perfect Father/Parent and know they will not let us come to any harm.

Looking at Faye’s face I suspect she wasn’t worried at all because she knew she could trust her Dad not to let her come to harm. I am suspecting Craig gave her words of encouragement to keep her going; words she could hear because she knew he meant it. Even though it was an arduous climb in bad weather Craig knew they had the right kit and the right stamina and knew they could do it and so he passed this on to Faye.

Too often we get to a place where the going looks too tough and we stop listening to the voice of God encouraging us. Some of that, I suspect, comes from parenting we’ve received where we haven’t been encouraged, where at times our parents are the ones who’ve put the limits on us, passed on their fears and worries, not walked that path so don’t want us to because we might get hurt.

I know as a parent I was guilty of doing that but that came from me not listening to God as I parented. So I put in my fears, my limitations, my expectations, etc on my children instead of trusting God with parenting my children and letting myself take on that easy yoke that Jesus promised.

We could all do with being more like Faye with our heavenly Father and trusting that they know the route, have got the kit that is needed, and hear their words of encouragement so we can make it to wherever we are meant to be going without fear.

Photo by Sonny Vermeer on Pexels.com
Categories
let go Trust God

The Greatest Sin

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.

God is good when we acknowledge that they are.