Tag: Jesus

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acceptance joy peace

Acceptance

Renly accepting that he has to be wrapped up in a towel after he’s been outside in the rain. Photographed by myself November 2024

I was chatting with a friend the other day about how she realised that she had to accept the limitations of what she was going through – her health, her personal situation, etc – and only through that could she feel at peace.

We talk about the Peace or Joy of the Lord [depending on translations] being our strength but very rarely do we look at what that entails – to settle into the peace and/or joy of the Lord during tough situations. But it struck me as we were chatting that accepting things instead of fighting against them makes such a difference.

That isn’t to say we settle back and go “oh well that’s it and I won’t try any more” or as I’ve found from certain people “you can’t expect me to do that because I’m an X personality” or “because I’m such and such diagnosis”

But it is being honest about the situation and saying “this is where it is and I am going to learn to live with that as best I can. I am going to accept the limitations of that [mental health issue, physical health issue, relationship that isn’t going as I’d like, insert your own] and am going to rest in that Higher Power and see what they want to do with me.”

From this place will come peace and that deep joy that transcends understanding.

We all know people who are going through some real tough times but they radiate something that is so gentle, so peaceful, that we want some of it. And we also know people who are going through things that you have to gird yourself up to see because you know you should because they are going through stuff but, boy, are they giving off some negative energy.

Having been through some tough stuff I’m not coming from a place of not knowing. But I also know there have been times when I gave off total negative energy and blamed and hated what I was going through and the whole world. But I also know there have been times when I have been sad and hurting but have lent in to something/someone beyond myself and trusted. Not so much that they would change the situation but that they would hold me through the situations. Whenever I do that I know I feel better, more peaceful, more calm, less blaming, and I’m sure those around me can feel that energy shift.

I don’t say it is easy but I do say it is worth it.

I’ve pondered this many times before. If you do a search of “joy” you will find many other posts linked to this one.

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families Stir Up Sunday

Changing Traditions

I was challenged by a friend about my origins of Stir Up Sunday from yesterday’s post. This is what comes, on my part, from going with tradition and hearsay rather than doing a bit of research myself. It wasn’t like I didn’t have the time as we still hiding inside from Storm Bert – which even though it sounds like a benign uncle caused a lot of damage and flooding across Wales. Even in our park the wind had pushed over 3 little fir trees which a friend and I helped to become upright again this morning.

Anyway it turns out the Stir Up Sunday originated from the 1549 Book of Common Prayer Collect for that day

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

But by the mid eighteenth century this Sunday had become the traditional Sunday for families to make their Christmas puds. Tradition states that all the family got together to do this. A real family affair before getting caught up with the busyness of Advent. It was also where the adults taught the children their family’s traditional Christmas pudding recipe. As with all things each family always puts their own twist on things.

I think this is a lovely mixture of being Jesus and family together. Too often in the Church we can almost separate families or at least family life. We come together to look at a person at the front tell us how we are meant to be with Jesus/God and often the children are whisk away to Sunday schools, along with the adults who will run those groups, and there is a separation between family tradition and hanging out with God.

So even though this might look like another thing that could be seen as secularisation I do wonder if it was more about keeping family connected and also keeping God in the centre of the family. I wonder if there was chat about that day’s sermon, or whether that gave family members, old and young, a chance to ask those awkward questions. I know my kids used to ask all sorts when either we were in the car [no eye contact] or cooking together. I ran a youth group where we used to play lego or do craft things and the subjects those young people were questioning and questioning where God fitted into them was amazing.

Sad statistic –

In a 2013 survey, two-thirds of British children reported that they had never experienced stirring Christmas pudding mix

So I do wonder if Stir Up Sunday, with the stirring of the puddings was a great way of “bringing forth the fruit of good works” and learning about what a life with Christ as King looks like for the whole family? And I wonder what we could put in now to replace that?

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clanging bell right energy

Furthering The Kingdom

We went out in the snow and then the following day in Storm Bert and this is the little dog afterwards wrapped in his drying robe! Neither picture has anything to do with the blog content 🙂

Today is Christ The King Sunday. I know this because my mum sends me her zoom links for her early morning church service, which I then forget to click on to but I still read the liturgy!

I love on the Sunday that many denominations acknowledge Christ as King it is also Stir up Sunday. No this isn’t a day for stirring up the congregations to become more Christ-like, to put Christ more in the centre of their lives, to give them a poke to get them out of their comfort zones. No! Stir Up Sunday was the day when all the women of the parish would stir up their Christmas puddings to get the alcohol evenly distributed so the puddings would taste great for Christmas day!

Fascinating that they are on the same Sunday!!!

But it got me thinking about a question that came up on the study we were doing with the youth group. The study had been about the Book of Revelations and the question was “what could you do to help make God’s kingdom come?”

Some of the answers were – giving toys to HomeStart charity, being kind to school friends, saying thank you, or for myself, writing.

It got me thinking about how we should be using our gifts and talents because I still think that it isn’t what we do but how we are that makes God’s kingdom come and I think that comes about when we know our talents, our strengths, our weaknesses, and take our areas of healing to God so they can heal us.

So even if we are being all out evangelical and preaching Jesus to people if we are not doing it from a healed, safe place but doing it because we ought to, or are fearful of what will happen to them if they don’t meet with Jesus, then people won’t notice. Great though it is giving toys to those children who don’t have enough if we do it with resentment or even with hoping we look good then we aren’t doing it with the right spirit, with the right energy.

I believe it is all about the energy that comes from us.

In 1 Corinthians 13 Paul says that if we do things without love we are like a clanging bell, an out of tune bell. In terms I understand I would say he is saying that if we do things with the wrong energy, with the “trying to look good” energy, with the “still hurting inside” energy, with the “needing to be needed” energy, then we are like an clanging empty out of tune bell. We hit the wrong note with others.

So I think whether today we are stirring puddings, trying to bring forward God’s kingdom, acknowledging Christ as king, or like one friend has just shared on FB, speaking gratitude over her battered kitchen, if we do it with the wrong energy then it will be clanging, but if we do those things and even the most benign things with the energy of love and acceptance things will change.

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fig tree Seasons

Fruitful – When?

Aberlleiniog Castle, Anglesey. Photographed by myself October 2024

I am not going to attempt to unpack the story about Jesus cursing the fig tree [Mark 11:11-25] though too often it has been used to say that we should be fruitful in all seasons. Well just is daft.

The trees in this picture are coming to the end of their fruitful season. There berries are being eaten by birds and other wildlife, their seeds falling to the ground either to be stored by squirrels or to maybe grow into new trees. They will soon lie fallow with no leaves and nothing much going on that we can see. Though as we all know a lot goes on with both ourselves and wildlife when it looks as if we’re sleeping. Then the spring will come and leaves will slowly appear and soon the trees will be covered in leaves and flowers or catkins or something that attracts the pollinators. They are still not fruitful. It is a very short period in a tree’s life cycle when it is fruitful.

So if The Creator of The Universe made the natural world like that why on earth do we, in our busy 21st Century minds, think we should be fruitful 24-7-365? Surely The Creator intends for us to have fruitful periods and fallow periods, periods of rest and periods of growth? Isn’t that what being “natural” looks like? And I don’t know about you but I would like to look as natural as possible.

But to be natural we need to be like the trees and plants and animals and be in touch with our bodies and what they are asking of us. And because we are human beings too we need to be in touch with our hearts and be able to hear what they are saying without all the dross of “shoulds” and “oughts” of upbringing and culture.

So let us all be brave and be restful when we should be, bursting with new growth when we should be, and then, I think when it is time of us to be fruitful we can be totally committed to being fruitful because we’ve done the rest and the new growth we were meant to do beforehand.

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altruistic Love

The Power of God!

Stones thrown from the beach to the coastal path after a storm in April 2024. Photographed by myself

The picture above shows a small part of the power of the sea. There were bigger stones thrown around too but I was obviously in awe of it and didn’t take any photos.

The power of nature, whether wind, waves, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc are easy to see but what does the power of God look like?

 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth

Acts 1:8

One of the last things Jesus says to his disciples is about receiving power from the Holy Spirit. [Read all that story in Acts 2]. But Jesus never actually says what this power actually is.

Now having come into following God through very charismatic churches I was always told that you could see if someone was “filled with the Spirit” if they spoke in tongues [this was seen as a definite sign in some circles and if you couldn’t “speak in tongues” then you were asked to check if you were a “real” spirit filled Christian!!!!], healings were another sign, raising people from the dead, deliverance of demonic spirits, discerning of spirits, and noticeable signs like that.

So last night was youth group night. It is Anglican not charismatic and is a small group of church raised young people with the vicar co-leading with me. We have been using the Bible Society’s Six Beats by Dai Woolridge which is great for opening questions. Sunday we were at Beat five which was about the starting of the Church and the coming of the Holy Spirit. There was no mention in the rap about all the above things that I’d been taught about in my early Christian life.

But then the vicar unpack the above verse and said that showing the LOVE of Jesus to people is the greatest power we can offer. Not just doing good deeds for whatever reason – and often we are all guilty of doing things to get noticed or to get the rewards, the pats on the back, the “thank yous” – But actually asking what people want, not just presuming we know, and then being willing to do what that person wants.

I remember as a single mum getting fed up of being given furniture I didn’t want or need, or food that my kids didn’t like, and then having to either give or throw it away. It was very rare for anyone to say to me “what do you need?”

Too often we presume what people want and even if they say we don’t hear.

Jesus says to the blind man “what do you want?” [Luke 18:35-43]. For the rest of us it was a bit of a no brainer question. The guy was blind. Surely all he wanted was to be able to see. But Jesus doesn’t presume he asks. And this is what true love is.

To truly love the someone we need to be willing to sit with them, to feel their joy or pain, and to ask “what do you want me to do for you?”

A totally different way of thinking! All this healing, deliverance, talking in tongues, etc are just outworkings of that power but the real power is to be willing to show the Love of God to others. And that, I believe is so much harder than just laying hands on someone and praying for them!

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hard outer shell made good

And God said it was Very Good [Gen 1:31]

This dog totally believe he is good, where he is is good and life is just good, especially if I am with him. Photographed by myself at Newborough beach, Anglesey October 2024

Renly believes that wherever I am is good and that he is good and that life is good. Did you know God is omnipresent which means God is with us all the time? So surely we could then at least believe that we are good – very good.

So Genesis 1:31 says God made humankind and said humankind is good; very satisfactory, our best, pleasant, interesting, better than anything else we’ve made. [paraphrase]

Meaning of “Good” thank to https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/good

very satisfactory, pleasant, interesting, better, best

But do we believe it? Do we even get taught it in many of the churches we’ve been to? Too often we get taught that we are sinful, that unless we accept Jesus [whatever that might really means] we are condemned to eternal damnation, and need to repent.

I will go back to the whole idea that sin is just missing God’s mark, which we all do, but isn’t about not being made good.

Sometimes, I think, good can appear a bit of a weak word. A bit like nice. A word that is used more when things are not bad but not great, which is why I’ve added in the Cambridge Dictionary definition.

I think God looks at us and when they say good they mean more on the amazing side of ok than the “just got through” side. How about if we looked at that verse and realised that when God says good it means that we are pleasant, interesting, very satisfactory, the best for the Creator of The Universe to want to hang out with. And not just when God first made Adam and Eve but when God made each and every one of us!

But too often we get caught with the things we’ve done wrong, the hurts we’ve endured, the traumas we’ve picked up, the intergenerational stuff that hasn’t been cleared, and we look at ourselves through all this hard outer shell stuff and we forget that we were made good.

I also think it is this hard outer shell that can make us do horrid hurtful things to ourselves and to others.

I think the amazing thing about healing and learning to trust and hang out with God – whether this is through QEC, Sozo, Freedom in Christ, other trauma healing stuff from wherever, hanging out with friends who see through our hard shell and enjoy being with us, or even a phrase or sentence that slides into our hearts and chips away at that shell – is that we do see that shell for what it is; something that kept us safe from stuff that was going on around us but it is not us. And we will be safer without it.

So as we see the shell for what it is and even get to chip away at it we learn to see ourselves as was originally intended; without the “good/bad” judgements we and others place on us; without those epigenetic tags our ancestors and ourselves picked up; without the mistakes we have made. We start to see ourselves as good, very satisfactory, interesting, pleasant to be with, the best.

And I for one think that if the Creator of the Universe thinks I am good then who am I to argue????

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Jesus support

Sit By Me

My friend’s daughter adores Renly and, as you can see from the photo, he’s keen on her. She just wants to be with him, to have him all to herself, to sit, snuggle, lie with him. And she kept saying “I love Renly”.. Photographed by myself August 2024.

I love having friends who are open and who chat and challenge me and make me think. My friends might be very diverse in many things [eg the troll/tinkerbell image] but what they have in common is the way they challenge me – and also inspire this blog! The majority of posts come from thoughts others have inspired in me. I am constantly evolving and morphing as I have open, free conversations with people who I love and trust and who love and trust me!

So here is one that grew from the other day –

We’re struggling with someone and we say, in our heads, “Jesus go and sit with them” when really we could do with Jesus giving us a hug because we are the ones struggling. The “difficult” person could be fine in their own eyes. Yes they do also need Jesus to sit by them and give them a hug but so do we. Too often, I think, we offer Jesus to others and don’t grab him for ourselves.

I got me thinking about my friend’s daughter with my dog. What if we were like that with Jesus?

I think that one of the reasons we do the “sit with that difficult person, Jesus” is because Church tells us that. So many sermons are about asking Jesus to go comfort someone else but very few on asking him to comfort, be with, encourage us. So, I think, we get to a place where we don’t think it right that we should ask Jesus to sit by us when someone else is struggling.

The other reason, I think, is because we don’t think we are “worthy” enough – the enough word again! – for Jesus to want to be with us. And sometimes I think that is because we think we should be the “sorted” ones and we should ask Jesus to be with those we don’t think are sorted.

I wonder if we think that if people we are “reaching out to” saw that Jesus was sitting beside us and giving as a hug of reassurance then they would think we weren’t up for the task of supporting them? A thought!

So we, not so much push Jesus away from ourselves but we do keep pushing him towards the “needy” person when in fact we could be much more supportive, much more helpful, much more giving if we had that support with us.

[Also – and I don’t get how this works – Jesus can be holding our hands and holding the hands of the person we are talking to – and many many other people – all that the same time. Now that is an awesome mystery!]

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house of the lord joy peace

The House of The Lord

View from Y Shed, Melidin August 2024

I’ve been pondering “And I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever” [Psalm 23:6] ever since writing my last thoughts on Psalm 23 and the idea that Paradise is here and now if we just look around and see it.

It’s been a tough couple of weeks with family stuff and things going on – and moving into a busy period but, as I said in Control, I do have to just love on those round me, know I am loved unconditionally by The God who created the Universe, and just let what will be will be.

Then there have been some posts from Henri Nouwen about how so many things we have been taught – like peace of the Lord, joy of the Lord etc – are up to us to manifest when actually they are gifts from God and that we have to trust that we have received them.

So our role isn’t to manifest them but to trust that peace/joy/love is there for us “to claim even in the midst of our moments of despair.”

So in the midst of all this that is going on, even when I am sad, disappointed, upset, even angry, I have to believe that I have already received this overwhelming peace and overwhelming joy and I just need to trust that I can place all of this in God’s hands without worry.

Ok so that doesn’t stop me feeling those emotions but “an emotion is an emotion and then it passes“. So I let the emotion go through my body, acknowledge and accept it rather than think that as a “good Christian” I shouldn’t be feeling things like this to those I’m supposed to love.

So what if the House of the Lord is actually living in that “Peace that transcends all understanding” [Philippians 4:7] and resting in the “Joy of the Lord that is my strength” [Nehemiah 8:10]? What if the “place Jesus has prepared for us“[John 14:3] is here and now and not some unknown place after we’ve died? or what if it is both???? – accepting that we won’t live forever!

Perhaps this is the whole thing of why we need to meet with Jesus this side of death so we can live out our hard work human lives with all their ups and downs and hassles and joys and hard bits and easy bits and relationships within the House of the Lord walking in God’s peace and joy no matter what shit is going on around us?

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Lord's Prayer prayer

Prayer

Ready to pray. Photographed by myself June 2024

I’m going to be away until Wednesday visiting my daughter in Cardiff but I want to do a series next around the Lord’s Prayer. Yes I know I’ve done it before but this time I’m going to slowly work through line by line, like I did with Psalm 23, but using a version translated from the original Aramaic.

But I want to leave that space between now and later in the week with this quote from Richard Rohr

From Sunday 21st July
Prayer is a symbiotic relationship with life and with God, a synergy which creates a result larger than the exchange itself. We ask not to change God, but to change ourselves. 
—Richard Rohr  

As one of the ladies at our house group last night said “the Holy Spirit is the symbiont living within us.”

I think with this thought in mind the whole “Lord teaches us how to pray” and Jesus responding with Matthew 6:9-13 makes sense.

Here’s my PDF on The Lord’s Prayer that I’ll be working with to wet your appetite

aramaic lords prayerDownload
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judging prejudice

Prejudice

Melmerby by Carl Bendelow is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0

Prejudice is a fascinating thing. We’ve all got it no matter what we think. For instance how many people reacted to my idea yesterday of using the talents of young drug dealers and educating them for big business in a negative way? [Thank you Ritish for your positive response] But how many of us deep in our hearts react negatively about certain people groups without really thinking. If we realise then as educated people we do often check ourselves and say sorry but often we don’t quite notice.

I’ve been reading No Place To Call Home by Katharine Quamby about gypsies and travelers in the UK especially those evicted from Dale Farm in the early 2000s. It amazed me how many things I read that I went “oh goodness that’s what I thought” only to discover that this was a minority not the majority, encouraged by media and TV programs like “Traffic Cops”.

Interesting fact – Gypsies and Travelers are not seen as an ethnic minority group in their own right! I wonder if this is because they are mainly Catholic?? That old throw back to anti-Catholicism. Another age old embedded prejudice.

We all judge people, subconsciously by their appearance, what they say, how they say it, even where they live and what car they drive.

I’ve just started watching a series of the fictionalised life of Griselda Bianco, a ruthless drug dealer. But it is interesting how she gets missed when she starts in the 1970s because both other dealers and the Police cannot believe it is a woman running the operation. In this account it is a woman detective in the Miami police who first notices but the other detectives won’t take any notice of what she is saying because she is a woman. Again that prejudice of how it could not be a woman who would deal in ruthless drug related activities and how a woman could not have worked it out!

I could list many stories where the author uses that clever twist of it being a woman not a man who committed that crime, playing into our stereotypes, into our prejudices.

I am trying really hard to ponder how often I look at someone and judge them before knowing them, or judge a people group without knowing all the facts.

Take the idea of the kids hanging out in the park versus the old people hanging out in the park. Immediately we’ve got different narratives running through our heads for the reasons they are there – one more noble than the other!

Jesus says

For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you

Matthew 7:2

So let us be careful with anyone, even if we think we know the truth, let us be careful we are not stepping into our own well-worn, subconscious prejudices.