God is good, all the time...

Gratitude... that's the word I want to live by today (the picture is the crystal that forms when you speak the word love and gratitude into water, for more on that click here). woke up this morning and just realised that God is a very very good God! i looked at the sunshine morning, the beautiful mountains, lying in my very comfortable bed, getting up to have the breakfast that's always there.... and realised, we are so quick to complain, so fast to look at all the tough stuff in our lives, and not quick enough to recognise the amazing blessings we have.

If you are lucky enough to have an education, be thankful, because 70% of the world's population does not. If you are blessed enough to be fed, go on your knees and thank God, because 50% of the world's population will go hungry today. If you are reading this on your own PC, say thanks, because you are one of the lucky 1% in the world.... If you have shoes and clothes, a roof over your head and food on your table, you are richer than 75% of the earth's population.

If you can enter a church or place of worship without fearing for your life, you are more blessed than about 3 million other people. and if you survive this week, you are luckier than 1 million people who will not make it.

so my word for today is gratitude... gratitude, because God has blessed me with a family that loves me, with incredible friends that would go to the ends of the earth for me, with food and clothes and technology and books and beautiful things that I am surrounded with. And for one of the most beautiful places in the world that I can call home.

Jesus - the Prince of Change?

The only constant in life is change. It’s easy enough to say that that is just the way life goes, but when it touches your life intimately, the black on white statement is not that easy to swallow.

If I look at my own life, I sold everything I had a while back and became a glorified maid on a sail yacht. Everyone thought that I was being very brave, but I knew that God had led me to it, which would have left me with a “what if” for the rest of my life if I hadn't followed.

But things didnt quite work out the way I had planned it and instead of travelling for a year or two, I was back in the country within seven months. With no plans or understand of “what’s next”.

About two years ago, we had to watch how my sister’s husband lost his senior post at a large firm, and with that their stability. It was a long road to changing their thinking, and nights spent in tears and learning child-like trust, but they got through it growing much closer to God.

And now my sister’s daughter is faced with making a career choice and the difficulty of saying goodbye to friends that she’s spent her past 5 years with.... it is a moment of naked truth. There are decisions to be made, that will touch every part of her life. There is a young love that will ultimately suffer from whatever decision is made. And I watch how the weight of these decisions pressed down on her. It hurts, but is part of the reality of this world.

Fifty years ago life just seemed to revolve around constants. For most, children grew up in the same town, the same school and went to study at the same tertiary education facility. You got a good job and at the end of your loyal service, you got a golden watch. People entered marriage and in spite of everything, stayed together... Things weren’t necessarily easier, but from where we stand, it appears less complicated.

And then I wonder, where is God in the midst of all this change? Does He know how tired our spirits become, when our only fellow passengers are new things? Does He see when all we feel like doing is to close our bedroom doors behind us and just hide away from making any decisions in that world outside the door?

And then, without hesitation I think about Jesus. How difficult it should have been for him to literally pak His Spirit in a suitcase one day, leave His Father’s side, pass through the halls and set off on the road to earth. He knew that change was the only way. Instead of being seen as the Son of the Creator of All, He became the son of a carpenter. Instead of being worshipped by angels, He had to help carry the water and sand down the wood and listen the neighbourhood children making fun of his mother. Instead of being surrounded by the goodness and grace of God, He had to face the probing, judging looks of the leaders of the community at the tender age of twelve. How hard must these changes have been for Him.

He didnt have a house to go to, or a bedroom door to draw shut behind him. Entering into His Father’s presence had to happen somewhere on a mountain or on the sea, amidst the voices of the fishermen and the lost. Where He was surrounded by love in his Father’s house, the love was often drowned out by hatred, jealousy and those seeking their own agendas. In His Father’s home, He was the guest of honor, on this earth He was the Rejected one, the Loner.

And then I stop and realise: Jesus knows. He was here. He knows what it feels like not to know where your next meal is coming from, or where you will be sleeping. He knows what it feels like to greet your friends and not have any idea of when, if ever you’ll see them again. He knows what it feels like when you can barely breath and the world just closes in on you. He knows what it feels like that there are no escape from this darkness which seems to drive out all light. He knows, because He’s been there.

But even more so, He understands. And He wants to hold you tight, reassuring you of God’s love for you. Because He has experienced all of the above, we can also call Him the Prince of Change, although He is also the Constant One. In a way, He has experienced more change than we can ever comprehend. And therefor we can know, that no power or angels or things above heaven or below the earth or any change, no matter how radical or challenging, can separate us from the Love of God. The price He paid for us, was just too dear...

about broken dreams and broken hearts...

as i watch people around me go about their daily lives, i become aware that amongst the joy of a new baby or an election that's been won or a new boyfriend and a new house, some broken hearts on the mend, there are so many walking wounded.

there's a marriage that falls apart after 17 years of togetherness - she's 20 and she fulfills me(?), a friendship that breaks under all the daily pressures and different viewpoints, a friend who has to watch on as her x-husband marries (the woman he left her for and her children meeting the new family). there's a friend who looks so lost not even she is aware of it (and feels judged for it and keeps on running), there's someone who can not find a job and don't know where the next pay-check's going to come from, engulfed by the nagging manic-depression that has become part of her life.

and i recognise in all of them a tiredness, a loneliness, a search for a wholeness, a cry that at least someone would notice and say, "it's all gonna be alright". and as i recognise it, i so often also recognise a piece of me.

and i wonder, where are you Jesus, the Healer, the Binder up of Wounds... do you see the broken dreams and broken hearts and hear the cry of those who have lost the way... do you recall, what it was like, when all deserted, you knew that all that was left to do was to die.

and as i see the brokenness around me, i wonder how much of it is our own doing, our own stubborness, selfishness, sinfullness.

but yet, inspite of it all, i pray. i pray for those who are lonely, those who are weary, those who just can not see the next day. i pray for compassion, for grace, for love that binds up all that is broken. i pray for cottonwool around their hearts and their broken lives. i pray for strength and for wisdom and for courage.

i try to keep on praying for them and know somehow, even when the words stop, You still hear the cries of my heart. i pray for them, for their dreams and hopes and aspirations. and when i pray for them, i also pray for me.