blog ~ faith ~ family ~ heartlife
The old version of the film “Yours Mine and Ours” with Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball is about a couple who marry after both are widowed… one with 8 children and the other with 10… It’s a story of rivalry, acceptance and eventual love between the siblings as much as it is a story of the couple.
Continue reading “Yours, mine and ours”
You know those problems in kids tests where they have to draw a line between column A and column B to match things that go together?
If one of those existed at the beginning of the year, showing me A) Stuff I’ve prayed about and B) How God would answer/fulfil/progress them, I could NEVER have matched up those pairs.
He is stunning.
He is amazing.
He pulls rabbits out of hats and carnations out of sleeves.
He is behind and before.
He’s in the heights and the depths.
He totally knocks my socks off.
PsedoPsalm 1:1
Saturday’s hair fail was by no means in the same league as The Great Orange Fringe Disaster of ’87, but it wasn’t one of my finest pieces of handiwork either. I bought what I assumed would be a light brown to just colour over the greys and faded foils in my already dark brown hair – happily and hurriedly applied it, wrapped my head in glad wrap (as you do) and went about my merry way for the next half hour.
Continue reading “Disasters of differing proportions”
A verse I’ve been thinking on a bit this holidays is Malachi 3:16
Years ago I made a new friend when she shifted to the hills, came to our church and asked our then minister for someone to meet and pray with… he put her in touch with me and we became deep, instant and now longtime friends as we met together to pray every fortnight or so for several years. Our third was a baby when we met, and she came and prayed and chatted and folded washing with me through the births of the next 3 kids.
Continue reading “A different kind of prayer”
Have you ever known a person engaged in the heat of verbal battle to flip sides?
Me either.
I had a conversation a few years ago about how ‘small talk’ drove me bananas… one of the things said by the other person was that ‘small talk’ was actually incredibly important.
Imagine a world without “Hi” and “how are you”? Without chatting over the weather or other safe topics? While its true that I love deeeeeeep deeeeeeeeeeep chats, I’m so glad we had that one as it has given me food for thought and reasons to notice more detail.
Continue reading “Shallow to deep”
Did anyone celebrate Christmas today?
Until about two minutes ago – I had never ever wondered about the word ‘nativity’. I was looking at the Calendar of Days below and saw that today is “Epiphany” or “Twelfth Night” – and since I didn’t really know what they were, looked them up and found myself wondering about “nativity’ as well. It’s a word that’s become such a part of Christmas I’d never thought about it having a meaning separate to that.
Continue reading “Nativity means…?”
This is my wedding ring. It has lived on my hand for nearly 29 years.
I don’t know if you can see how bent out of shape it is – this happened on a day a little over 20 years ago when I did a heap of gardening… leaning heavily on a shovel, edging the lawn borders.
Continue reading “Two stage memorial”
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.