Lent26

Today Im thinking about a verse in Proverbs 27:6    The wounds of a friend can be trusted but an enemy multiplies kisses.   What that means is that when someone really loves you they will tell you the truth even if it hurts you or is uncomfortable.  Flattery and ignoring issues and thinking we are being kind by not addressing issues actually puts us in the enemy's camp. Judas. And Jesus.   What I cant quite get my head around is that at the last supper Jesus calls Judas out in front of the eleven and seems to quite clearly indicate that He knows who will betray Him.  Why did Jesus do that?  He must have known that it wouldn't make any difference.  Judas had already arranged the plot to have Jesus arrested.  In two of the gospel accounts Judas isn't named and the other disciples worry that it might be them  ( Mark 14:19,  John 13:24 ) but in the other two accounts it is clear that Jesus is talking about Judas.  So Im...

 Last night lying on the sofa watching the telly for some reason my mind started to freewheel on the word ' settle'   I started to wonder how one word added to another word could have so many different meanings.   To settle means to become established. to stay, to occupy.  To settle up means to pay the bill.  To settle down means to stop roaming and become permanent.  Or to settle down means to come to peace after disruption. To settle on means to decide on something. To settle for means to compromise.  You can settle an argument by coming to agreement.  A settle is a seat like a monks bench.  The more I thought about this extraordinary word the more fascinated I became.  Im a word nerd. No apologies.  Its why you love me 😂 The word in English comes from the Latin to be seated.  Which makes sense because being seated back in the day indicated permanence, authority, certainty.  Jesus is settled at the right ...

 We have had all sorts of weather this week.  Hail and snow and sun and rain.  Yesterday it was windy with some rain followed by some sunshine.  Cold.  Hard to believe it was the first day of summer.   On the way to church we pass a wind turbine and I was surprised to see that despite the trees most definitely moving, the blades of the turbine were still.  It was the same on the way home from church even though the wind was even stronger by then.   I noted that the turbine didn't have one of those little rudders which can rotate the blades to face into the wind.  So despite the fact that it was windy no power was being generated because the turbine wasn't facing the right way.  This got me thinking.  Often I know that the Holy Spirit is moving but somehow I dont seem to be moving with Him.  I can sit in church knowing that where two or three are gathered He is there,  knowing that the worship is uplifting and the...

 The clocks have gone forward overnight in the UK which means that we have all had an hour less sleep than usual. This led me to wonder what the Bible has to say about time.   As it turns out it has quite alot to say - so here are a few verses which stood out to me.  Hopefully some of them will stand out to you too. Psalm 139:16   ESV  Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them 2 Corinthians 6:2     For he says, “In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.”I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation. Ecclesiastes 3:11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Psalm 90:12 Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.  2 Peter 3:8-9  But do n...

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 Ive gone back to Jo Jingling after a 3 yr hiatus.  Im just helping out till June but I have to confess to enjoying being back in the company of very small people.   Yesterday I was in a nursery room with babies - they were probably between 8 months and a year old.  When I arrived they were having a snack and were all in high chairs stuffing toast and slices of banana into themselves.  I set up my Jo Jingles stuff and waited for snack time to be over.  Whilst I was waiting I was observing the wee ones and it struck me once again that babies understand a massive amount of what is said to them before they are actually able to speak themselves.   I watched as they responded to questions, did what they were asked to do and interacted with caregivers.  It was so obvious that they had language skills even though they couldnt yet talk. I remember feeling a bit like those babies when I was learning Spanish.  I went to Spain.  And when ...

 Some car related things happened this week.  When something unusual happens ( esp during Lent and Advent) I'm always on the look out to see if God is saying something.  I'm not sure what He might be saying through this but sometimes as I type it out I begin to see what it is..... so here goes. On Tuesday I was driving into Lisburn to work and as I came round a corner I saw two cars which had obviously been in a prang.  There were two lads wearing school uniform standing beside one car and a bloke in dark clothes talking to them with his phone in his hand.  Something in me made me stop to see if the boys were OK.  Not because I thought they were injured in any way, but because I know how irate some people can get about their cars and I wanted to ascertain that the other guy was being reasonable and that the lads didn't just need another adult on the scene.  I jumped out and asked if everything was OK.  The boys said yes.  There was an R plate...

 A few days ago a prophetic friend of mine sent me a message.  It was about an orchid which had sat on her bathroom windowledge happily flowering away for years but which had suddenly stopped flowering.  Despite her best efforts of pruning and watering and whatnot, nothing seemed to do it much good. It didnt flower for six years.  But she didnt throw it out.  Instead she recently  bought another one and placed it beside the 'dead' one.  And yes, you guessed it, the 'dead' one started to revive and re-flower  When thinking about what to write today I was looking back through previous blog posts and came across this from 2017.  This is my Gerbera.  I bought it last year at a discount as it was the last one on the shelf and a bit dried out needing some TLC.  I watered it and put it in the sunshine and it grew a lovely flower.  But  after a few weeks the flower died and then it got pushed to the back of the windowledge and I s...

 I feel I cant let the moment pass without acknowledging what has happened in the past few weeks .  Firstly we had the assisted dying bill being rejected by The Lords - and great was the rejoicing.  I dont know about you but I breathed a sigh of relief and thought that finally common sense has been brought to bear and our society really is basically decent.   And then this week the very same politicians who said that we shouldn't be able to end life on a whim, voted for the decriminalisation of abortion up to birth.   And the truly shocking thing was that apparently there were hardly any bishops present at the vote.   Along with 99% of the country I was appalled.  How on earth could this have happened?  Its beyond belief.   Of course it is easy to get carried away with the emotions of all this and forget that hopefully only a tiny tiny number of women will choose to kill their full term babies.  Hopefully it will be n...

This week Ive prayed for four people with sciatica or similar nerve pain in legs and lower back. Three of those were in church yesterday. Weird. It did look as though one of them might have been healed. She walked up the stairs after I prayed and she said she'd had to crawl up them on hands and knees the night before. But she was still in some pain ....so maybe the start of some healing?  Anyhow, thats not what I wanted to talk about today. Yesterday Jenny said the 'I love You more' post was a tough one. And I know what she meant. It is tough when you are standing on this side of the decision to love Jesus more. Or on this side of forgiveness. Or on this side of surrender or sacrificial giving.  On this side the view is of an insurmountable mountain. But from the other side, the side after the choice has been made , the mountain disappears and you look back in amazement to see it was really barely a molehill.  I wonder if this is what Isaiah meant when he said that every ...

 Yesterdays blog has obviously got a few of us thinking. This is never a bad thing 😁 It took me in my mind to a day a few years ago where I was at some sort of worship day conference.  At the time I was really struggling in my head to let go of something which I recognised was starting to consume me.  There was a friendship Id had with someone for years which had become very needy and a bit emotionally manipulative.  In my head I knew the best thing for me would be to disconnect.  But my heart was very much in the place that I didnt want to do that.  This person needed and depended on me - or at least they told me they did and that of course made me feel good.  I worried what would happen if I stepped back.  And then there was my own emotion tied up in it.  How do you 'drop' someone you have known for years and shared life with and loved?   I was tying myself up in knots about this because I could hear the Holy Spirit prompting me ...

 Someone I dont know posted on Facebook yesterday   ' Be honest, has prayer ever truly worked for you?' I took it to be a post from someone who was having a dig at people who pray.  But it made me think for a moment.  Because I had just come back from an afternoon with a friend who has been praying for three years about a health condition and seemingly not getting any answers.   I have prayed with her over these years, asking God for healing and for medical people to find answers. I prayed with her yesterday again. She is somewhat discouraged and finding it hard to trust that she is loved when she is in pain a lot of the time.  And I can totally understand that.  We all know the trite answers about prayers that arent answered - maybe God is saying not yet.  Maybe He is saying no.  God wants us to dig deep into Him.  We are in a battle.  We live in a fallen world.  We know all of that stuff, but it doesn't help much wh...

 A couple of days ago whilst thinking about the blog and what to write my wandering thoughts landed on the word APPROPRIATE.  I chewed over the word for a while and then did what I usually do which is go to the dictionary for a definition. 1)Adjective  -  fitting or compatible - eg he wore appropriate shoes for the terrain 2) Verb - to take or make us of without authority or right - eg the land has been appropriated for use by the organisation Isnt it funny how one word can mean two almost opposite things.  As an adjective it is something suitable, fitting, proper.  As a verb it is something taken, used, annexed,  even stolen.  How is it that our language develops in such ways?  Its fascinating to me. Anyhow, Im thinking about this word and wondering what it is God wants to say about it.   There is nuance in the concept of appropriateness.  Something that isn't appropriate isn't necessarily wrong in and of itself.  It is j...

 I've been thinking about Judas .  He plays such a central part in the whole story of .....everything. And I do wonder about him - what was he like and how did he feel. Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread drew near, which is called Passover.  2  And the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might kill Him, for they feared the people. 3  Then Satan entered Judas, surnamed Iscariot, who was numbered among the twelve.  4  So he went his way and conferred with the chief priests and captains, how he might betray Him to them.  5  And they were glad, and agreed to give him money.  6  So he promised and sought opportunity to betray Him to them in the absence of the multitude.  Luke 22   I have mixed feelings about Judas..... I suppose that's what he is there for in the story.  To provoke deep and searching questions. The passage above says that Satan entered Judas........  Im supposing that Judas had a choice in t...