blog ~ faith ~ family ~ heartlife
Miss 6 came into the room a little while ago and got my instant attention when she said “Mum, I got some of the warning signs today”.
Having been at a party with play equipment and tunnels and hidden spaces and older unknown children – I had a couple of warning signs myself.
Continue reading “Never touch a walrus”
After I went to bed last night I had one of those “ah-ha!” penny-dropping kind of moments as I saw that across the span of my day, God had done another one of those full circle things.
In the morning, Miss 6 had chosen “The Good Samaritan” story book off the Pre Prim shelf for me to read to her. Its about the third time this year even though there are always fresh books, so I think she must like it. As I read, I wondered if the story version had been embellished a bit so when we finished, I opened the trusty Bible app on my phone and read it to her from there.
As I read, I was struck with the geography of the story. Now I’m not strong in the area of mapping but some time ago I did get very interested in where the towns of the Bible actually are in relation to each other, so going on memory I thought, Jerusalem and Jericho are across from each other, but Samaria is way to the north! So this chappy, TGS, was well out of his home region. Which explains why he took the injured dude to an inn but what struck me is that TGS was on a journey and a mission of his own. He was in a region not his home and helping someone was even more inconvenient than normal.
But he did it.
So not only did Jesus use someone of a nation the Jews typically hated (and were hated in return) to illustrate His point, but He added dimension to the story by setting it at a distance from the Samaritans home. The Jewish law expert got doubly stung. Particularly as the question that he asked of Jesus directly before He tells the story is this: “And who is my neighbour?”
Then a few hours later in Koorong, the ONLY book I pick up to glance through, on the very first page I see, is a map showing Jerusalem and Jericho across from each other and Samaria to the north. Yes! Love it when I get geography right!! Jerusalem to Jericho perhaps a days walk, and depending on where in Samaria… about double that distance. Jesus COULD have set the story IN Samaria but have only made HALF the point. But without knowing the lay of the land, we miss the other half. Yes I’ve known the Samaritan was on a journey, but it seems God wanted to make a point to ME yesterday in understanding more completely this fact.
And then the third part of the circle was my trip into the city… my discomfort and reactions to the people on the street… some wounded in their lives and minds and choices, others not-so, but all very impacting and thought provoking.
And then the complete full circle moment in bed, as I saw the beginning of the day, reading the Good Samaritan to Tarri – and the way He stepped me through a complete experience in Him.
Today was such a conglomeration of sights and thoughts… one tangent I found myself on took place after I dropped my Dad and Mum at the hospital (Dad is having surgery) was on healing.
I went off thinking how awful it would be if our bodies NEVER healed. If we got sick and stayed sick and if we got cut or bruised and never repaired. We’d all truly look like zombies. A speckled zombie in my case since I had measles AND chicken pox as a kid.
Not in fact a morbid line of thought as I was thinking on the Psalm 103 where it is talking about the Lord “who heals all your diseases”. While it’s not quite the intent of the verse, it led me to be thoughtful and grateful for the fact that in so many cases our bodies are made to heal.
We recover from wounds, both cuts and bones knit back together and headaches go away. NO not in every case, and yes we age and the healing gets slower till we all don’t heal of SOMEthing… but at every moment of every day, every one of us are healing and repairing from a variety of things, all without our own effort or decision.
Amazing. Multiple miracles happening inside every person.
When I was a teenager working in my main place of employment there was a dude who worked in a different department who utterly scared the whoops out of me within my first week or two. I saw him frequently around the place and others in my department always walked with me through a certain section where he was known to often be. And if I was alone I always walked the loooong way round.
Continue reading “Long range fright”
*Every Friday afternoon I dash about madly trying to get ready for the weekend and trying to get the weeks washing hung before dinner time. On Friday afternoons I find myself thinking on the Jewish women of old, and the Jewish women of today who still live this way – all busily preparing for the Sabbath, getting all the work done by sundown the end of the 6th day, bringing in the 7th, the day of rest till sundown 24 hours later.
Continue reading “Prophetic spotlight”
Been thinking on the term “best friend”.
Why do we accept this idea…
Why do we feel the need to grade each other…
Who introduced the notion…
Why do we give it validity…
Who says there is only one that should be the closEST.
Where does it begin… childhood yes I know really… but where does it end…
Does it ever?
Grown women still dividing the playground.
What’s wrong with just being friends?
Good friends, great friends, friends who love, friends who have more and some who have less time to grow together – but friends.
Why isn’t that beautiful word enough on its own?
Someone once said to me that hope can be very dangerous, and Proverbs says “Hope deferred makes the heart sick” but today I am grateful that hope can spring up like magically appearing stepping stones that show you the way to go within a sea of “agggggghhhhh!”…
“Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from Him.”
The first time I paid any attention to the following proverb was in the context of parenting… “The first to state his case seems right, until his opponent begins to cross-examine him”.
You know the drill, you question your child about something that’s just happened and you go marching off to nab the other child – the guilty one. But then the one deemed guilty objects to their impending fate and you start to doubt that you’d heard all the facts previously.
Continue reading “All the facts. Maybe.”
1. Leave everything possible to the last minute.
2. Make sure that several deadlines collide at once for that extra pressured feeling of urgency.
3. Lose all sense of special awareness so that you will bash into things, drop heavy items on your toes and smash at least one lampshade. This will aid your goals tenfold.
Continue reading “How to run late and cheese people off”
Reading the story of Gideon this morning…
If I said something to a person and their reply was a contradiction beginning with the words “pardon me but” – I think I would take that as sarcasm. Or cheekiness.
Continue reading “Gideon the cheeky”