Are you a good grudge keeper? About a week ago I started thinking about a common thing that people seem to do – and two possible alternatives.
Continue reading “Record of Rights”Record of Rights
Of Wardrobes and Gratitude
I hid in the wardrobe and listened to their worried voices calling my name.
“Heather? Heather! Where are you?! Where IS she?”
I’d never climbed in there before. This was a one-off. I remember drawing my knees up under my chin, feeling the clothes against my face and drawing the solid sliding door closed to within an inch or so – the most shut I could make it while curling my 10 year old fingers around the edge from the inside.
Continue reading “Of Wardrobes and Gratitude”Sometimes the forgiv-EN
Have you ever noticed that all the internet quotes on forgiveness only ever seem to focus on one side of the coin? They say things like “unless you can forgive you won’t move on” and how forgiveness frees the one who forgives from bitterness etc etc etc. I do agree with them but they only present one side of a coin – it’s almost as though we are all the forgivers and no-one causes the pains/offenses.
Continue reading “Sometimes the forgiv-EN”Forgiveness on my mind
When it’s not asked for and not given.
When it is asked for and not given.
When it’s not asked for and IS given.
When it’s asked for and given.
All are possible, some more likely, the asking and the giving can be longed for by the other, though none willing to take the first step.
Bridges
What Jesus effectively did was build a bridge, cross it, and stand close enough to enable us to respond. He did whatever was in His power to do that.
Continue reading “Bridges”To judge or not to judge?
It’s not such a simple question!
A number of years ago I did a book display at a super ‘conservative’ Christian rally. I’d recently spent a number of years prior to that in a Pentecostal church but I’d attended the same rallies by the same conservative group as a small child with my parents. I stood there awash in The Fathers love and a sense of His presence and joy with the memory of being a toddler in that very auditorium and I knew the same joy I felt in the Pentecostal style worship was because it was the same Holy Spirit who was in each place. Neither set of beliefs governing style had everything right, but the Holy Spirit, by God’s grace, was present in both. He was there when I was a toddler in that auditorium, He was there in the Pentecostal church and He was there again that night.
Continue reading “To judge or not to judge?”