Delighting in the Divine
Yes to freedom, yes to play and yes to celebrating the moment!
All tagged thanksgiving
Yuck, I hate that sauce!
Why have you cooked pasta again?!
I don't want to go out to the shops!
I'm not doing that! No way!
Why doesn't he have to wash up too?
It's not fair!
Our lives were becoming flooded with complaints, groaning, moans and dissatisfaction from the boys (8, 6 and 4). What I hated most was that I felt powerless. I would start calmly trying to give them logical reasons why they needed to do what I had requested of them, but eventually we would end up raising out voices:
How is your new year going? Does it feel like a new season? It is Summer right now in Peru and we are abiding as a community - spending lots of time resting, spending time together socially, sorting through things and preparing for the new school year which starts in March here. Having spent time resting over Christmas I feel excited and expectant about what God is going to do this year. Right now I am in a season of preparation and deepening roots...
Last week I talked about developing faithfulness in others but did you know that celebrating Thanksgiving can be a way to encourage ourselves to be faithful in our relationship with God?
Thanksgiving, when engaging with actual thanksgiving, is an act of remembering and God had a lot to say to the Israelites about remembering and forgetting: ...
We desire to do great things for God and we crave a community to do it with. Unfortunately, when we work alongside others we soon discover that there are people who have mixed agendas, others who are unkind, others who are passive, others who got out the wrong side of the bed this morning. And those people are us!
The final unveiling of the kitchen that took us 9 months to have finished!
It is 5pm and the last bowl has been washed up, the house looks vaguely in order and everybody has left. Today we had a lovely Thanksgiving meal together as a community.
There were over 30 adults present from different nations. Some old friends returning for another Thanksgiving, some new friends from this year, new babies, new people, faithful friends who have been on the journey together for years...
Recognise!
Call to mind!
Meditate on!
Mull over!
Remember!
Do not forget the goodness that God has done for you! ...
I am sitting here pondering on what to write about how encouragement brings joy and there are so many different ways that God has used others to encourage me in the past few months and I want to feast on them for a moment…
One fact about me: I hate surprises.
More than hating surprises, I hate surprise announcements in group settings! I feel so awkward and never know how to react. Honestly, my first reaction to any announcement is never overwhelming joy and excitement. I never feel like jumping up and down. Generally I feel like I have just been hit by a truck and my face probably looks a mixture of sea-sickness and a bunny in headlights. Living in a Facebook-email culture, being British and culturally emotionally reserved, I feel like I am not trained in face-to-face group announcements with people close to me, where everyone is looking at everyone else to see how they are reacting. They make me want to run far, far, far, far, away, not jump up and hug the person who has just made the announcement...
One of the things I am realizing by studying joy is that perhaps the practical ways of putting on joy are ‘obvious’ but how much I fail to actually do them! These studies are not so much about trying to reveal to myself ways to be joyful, but rather opportunities to practice what I should already know!
I have to say, however, that I was very surprised at the number of different things the Bible says that bring us joy and how much I take them for granted and refuse to recognise and embrace and intentionally place these things in my life!
Joy is, in many circumstances, a choice...
This morning as I got out of bed, the balcony door had been left open and in slid a crisp, inviting, fresh morning air. I took it to be an invitation from the Lord to go outside for my quiet time and meet Him in Creation.
Daniel and Kaleb were already up so I asked them if they wanted to come with me and together we walked the four blocks down to the sea front. I know it sounds idyllic, but it really is not...
Have you ever seen a canal lock being opened? In order for the water levels on the canal river to align, a large metal key is wound into the lock gate which slowly opens sections of the lock gate to allow water to flow through. The more the key is turned, the more water is allowed through until finally the water is at such a level that the gates of the lock can be opened and the flow of water is aligned...
