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The best gift ever

  Each year in December we give the Sunday School children a small gift as an acknowledgement of our love for them as a church family. This year, we have only had around four to six children attending Sunday School as we currently have very few families participating in our morning church services. Today, I met with our Corps Officers (the Salvation Army name for ministers or pastors), to discuss what the children’s slot in the church service might look like. Each child will be invited up for their gift, plus I have a special extra gift which is a name plaque with the spiritual meaning of their names. I will give a brief talk on the importance of names, present the plaques then pray for the children. We will also recognize a group of neurodiverse children who are brought to church with the couple who care for them. They do not attend Sunday School but are an important part of our church family. Then the Corps Officers mentioned they would be inviting families from Recovery Ch...
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Questioning God

  Have you ever questioned God? I had many questions for him over this last fortnight. I was looking forward to attending my nephew’s wedding, although I was a little nervous too. I was flying down to his hometown, and I haven’t flown for around fifteen years. It was, comparatively speaking, not a long trip at all—around one hour forty. Not a biggie! But for someone who is older, hasn’t flown in a long time and tends toward being anxious, I was nervous about the flight. However, I was also extremely excited. I was travelling with my brother, sister, and daughter and because of the cost we were only going for two nights. On the day we arrived we were visiting my niece and great-niece who is only four years old. I haven’t seen her for a couple of years. Following that there was a family dinner out with my nephew. The following morning was an early breakfast with my nephew, then in the afternoon, the wedding. I was so looking forward to that. The last day would be a leisurely morning,...

Having joy

  My devotions this morning were based on the joy of the Holy Spirit. It talked about having joy throughout our day, every day. I sat and reflected on this and realized that it is not true of me. There are days I let worry take control of my mind. There are days I am tired and just want to get through my day. There are days I am so busy and rush from one thing to another, feeling pressured and stressed. How do I have joy in these situations? It is of course, a work of the Holy Spirit and one of the fruits of the Spirit. I need to connect with the Holy Spirit more and be more in tune with him. I need to consciously search for joy. It is a bit like ‘practicing the presence’ of God. After reading Brother Laurence’s book ‘The Practice of the Presence of God’ I found my self pursuing God’s presence in the same simple but effective way. That is, I started intentionally thinking of Him throughout the day. I admit that there are times I don’t do this, yet increasingly I am thinking of Go...

Searching the heart

  Today in our women’s Bible study group, we were discussing Mark 10:17-27, the Rich Young Ruler, and Luke 12:13-21 The Rich Fool. We talked about generosity and how open we are to doing that. We went on to talk about God’s provision, and some admitted they had a little trouble in trusting God to provide what they needed if they had no money or no access to their money. This lead on to the condition of our hearts – what was the most important thing in our lives, why do we find it difficult to make God first and to trust God to provide all we need? Were our motives right when we did give, or when we did serve? I realised that God had taught me a lesson about having the right heart in my service to Him. I used to have a nice singing voice and an ear for harmonising. I led a little singing group that performed items during some church services and at church social events, I was on a roster to lead the music team in worship, and I had some lovely compliments about my voice. During th...

Keeping the diary

  You may or may not have noticed that there was no blog posted last week. I had one of those weeks where everything crowded in and I simply ran out of time. I am an organized person, a ‘details’ person and a list maker! My friends tease me about it – ‘is there room in your diary for a coffee tomorrow?’ I am flexible if necessary, but like my days planned. After all, this is the personality God gave me. I like knowing what is happening each day even though I can also deal with surprises. I do find that because I have a diary, I tend to fit much more into my day than most of my friends. We are all fine with how our days go; I am simply different than most of my other friends. My daughter is just like me, a great details person and a list maker. This is why she is so successful with her job because that is what her work requires. My son is not a planner at all. He tends to go with the flow. This also fits with his job, but I have noticed he tends to get a little stressed on the...

How's your Health?

  This afternoon my husband and I had our annual COVID vaccination. When I mentioned to a friend that we were having one, she asked, ‘why bother?’ That surprised me because she was very pro-vaccine at the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic. I reminded her that COVID was still very present in our country, and as I am going to a large wedding in November I wanted protection. Now, everyone has their own opinion on whether people should have COVID vaccines, and I absolutely respect that. I just happen to think they are a useful tool in our toolkit to protect our health. I was reflecting on that thought today as I thought of the various vaccinations we might have in our lifetime; measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, whooping cough, flu, and COVID to name a few. We have those to protect our physical bodies from the various infections that can cause devastating illness and side-effects, even death. Some are one off; some require ongoing boosters. What do we do to protect ourselves from...

Reflections - nature, creation, life

  I went for my usual walk this morning and was overwhelmed by God’s love. I walked through our local park and gazed upon beautiful trees, wide stretches of grass, gardens, blue sky, and fluffy clouds. The mountains were in the distance with a slight cover of snow higher up. It had been a frosty morning but now the sun was shining. How could anyone look upon this magnificent creation and say that it all happened with a big bang! That is still science’s explanation—until something different comes along. The fact is that science is not absolute. There is always another theory to replace the current theory. Scientists who subscribe to the big bang, say there was dust and debris floating around in the universe (but they can’t explain how the universe came into being or where the dust and debris came from), then it all kind of mixed together and there was a big bang (but they don’t know what caused the big bang). This big bang then caused this beautiful, amazing, intricate world? Sorry,...