Lynda's Blog

  I am an introvert; I am extremely organised; I have a gift of administration; I am excellent at facilitating meetings—we start when the meeting is due to start, we finish when the meeting is supposed to finish and I hold people on track. This being the case, I find it rather frustrating to attend an evening meeting where we started twenty minutes late because we waited for late-comers. Then everyone got off track and talked about issues that had nothing to do with the agenda or the outcomes we needed to achieve. It degenerated into complaints about procedures that we could do nothing about anyway. Finally, after about an hour or so, we got to the point of our meeting and even then many people did not address the issue we were supposed to address. At three and a half hours from the meeting start, I said quietly to the facilitator who was sitting beside me, I’m ready to go home. He quickly moved on to the last piece of business and finally we wrapped it up nearly four hours after t...

  I am the Sunday School teacher in our church. I have one helper who lacks the knowledge or confidence to teach, assist with crafts, or run games. He is, however, very willing and will follow clear instructions. I have been teaching in our children’s ministry for thirty-plus years, twenty of those employed (with many voluntary hours), the rest as a voluntary leader and helper. We had a vibrant and large Sunday School, as well as a successful after-school programme that attracted mainly non-Christians and children living in vulnerable circumstances, alongside other children’s programmes. I don’t say this with pride in myself! We had a committed and passionate team of volunteers who led and helped in these programmes. I believe they made a difference in these children’s lives. However, eventually these volunteers moved on. Some to university, some to work in other cities, some to train as pastors, and some were just getting older and tired.   Since I ‘retired’ from ministry, we...

  Terrible flooding in Texas and my home country of New Zealand; fires all across Europe; war continues in the Ukraine and Middle East and other countries; devastating earthquakes; COVID and other infectious viruses; sickness, depravity and evil; world financial instability. You may be forgiven if you feel depressed with all that our world offers. Yet history shows us that we have had war since the beginning, when sin entered the wonderful paradise God gave us—war between our spiritual and natural selves as well as brother against brother and nation against nation. My cold lingers on, and I’m tired. It's easy to become discouraged. I watched a Podcast called Outside of Sunday yesterday and felt embarrassed at how blessed I’ve been considering what the person being interviewed had been through. Indeed, there is always someone worse off than yourself. It’s the ‘self’ bit that continues to plague us all. As I was reading in the Old Testament about the punishment God sent upon his pe...

  During the time I was sick, I felt a bit ‘down’. I was worrying about several issues in my adult children’s lives, our finances, and an upcoming event later in the year. I notice that when I am unwell, I tend to focus on the negative, almost as if I don’t have the energy to do anything else. How silly I am! At the very time I need to trust God the most, I take things upon myself. Fortunately, I remembered Philippians 4:6 and 7, one of my favourite scriptures. I’m glad I have memorised it as it came to me one afternoon as I was lying on the couch and worrying. Immediately, I gave all my worries to God and spent some time in worship and thanksgiving. It was such a weight off my mind. God is sovereign, and He is good. He loves his children, and He is faithful and trustworthy. There is nothing I could do about my worries; worrying was not going to change any outcomes. That was God’s work. Do I trust Him with all these issues? Yes, I do. It was such a relief to give them to Him, the o...

  You may not have noticed that I did not post a blog last week. I was sick. My husband and I contracted colds. Not just a bit of a runny nose and some sneezes, but a rather nasty cold virus that several friends and church members had. We tested for COVID but it was negative. It wasn’t influenza as there was no high temperature, muscle aches, nausea or vomiting. We had the stuffed up nose, headaches, sneezes, and coughs and generally felt pretty horrible. The worst was having no energy. I would get up for an hour, then feel so limp I would have to go back to bed for another three or four. We slept a lot and had no energy to eat much—which was just as well as the cupboards and freezer soon became bare. We were on the last of the tissues and toilet paper before we had enough energy to shop at the supermarket, before coming home and having to rest again. We were both sick about a week and a half although it took over two weeks to have any energy to live our normal daily lives. Nee...