Heart 2 Heart

  As we prepare for Christmas, I wonder what you’re having to make room for.  Are you having to make space in a bedroom for extra guests or an extra chair or several at your table?  Are you rearranging your furniture to make room for a Christmas tree or even rearranging your outdoor planters to make room for a blow up snowman or Santa?  I wonder if you have time, or consciously make room, for pondering what Christmas is about? This year, somewhere between the tinsel and the turkey, or maybe in the days between year end and year beginning, I invite you to make room for pondering Christ Jesus.  This is after all what many Christians around the world do during Advent.  They intentionally stop and take a pause to remember that first Christmas, which reminds them that Jesus is the Christ child that gave us Christmas.  But why does it matter today, 2,000 plus years later?  I’m looking forward to Christmas 2022.  It seems so much more hopeful than r...

God forms the seen from the unseen by his creative word . Hebrews 11:3 (NIV)   3  By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.   Hebrews 11:3 (NLT) 3  By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen.     ·        As we start a new meteorological season and month, what are you hoping for, or do you need faith for, this season?  It can be personal or for someone, somewhere, something.   ·        What are the signs around you that might encourage you of potential growth or fruit in this area?  Are your senses being tingled by a fresh autumn wind, a new smell in the air, the sight of ripening autumn fruit?   ·        What is your current faith level, is it the siz...

  You ask me God, what do I see? When I look around I see a world full of chaos, confusion, and need. Look down and I see my own doubt and self pity, weighing down every bit of me. Yet when I look up I see, landscapes of beauty and grace. With my gaze I can trace, a glimpse of your glory as it melds with my story. Look higher still, I sense more of your will. The grace in your face frowns with care and compassion, your heart stirred to action, as you reach out your hand to touch people and land. A touch that brings promise, and hope, and revival. If we lift up our gaze  and prepare to receive all that we need  for survival and thriving.

You do not have to earn love. Often though, our experience of love is that it is not given in the way we would wish, want or need.  There is a gap,...a hole,... a place that feels empty.  Something is missing as if you have a gnawing hunger that will not go away. Perhaps you've attempted to fill that gap with a great many things to satisfy that hunger and fill that emptiness but nothing seems to fill you up or satisfy completely. The love we all desire is beyond body and soul, emotions and physicality.  The emptiness in your core goes deeper than that, to the depths of your spirit, that rules over your soul and body.   This spirit within you was created by the One who created you and who saw you as you were formed in the womb.  This eternal, everlasting love is the love of your Heavenly Father who created you as body, soul and spirit.  He's the One whose Spirit you were made to connect with, the One who your spirit yearns for.  His is the love tha...

  H olding the hand of the O ne who saves, ... whose P ower defeated sin and grave, ... his E ternity breaks into our today, ... this HOPE does not disappoint.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been watching Downton Abbey.  I’d never seen it before and I’m thoroughly enjoying getting to know the characters and their comings and goings. This week the often acidic Dowager Countess showed one of her softer moments as she comforted her granddaughter, Edith.  Edith was lamenting that it was beginning to feel as if God didn’t want her to ever be happy.  The Countess responds with her age acquired wisdom that life is just a series of problems needing solutions.  Once a problem is solved, she says, very often another presents itself requiring a fresh solution and so on until you die.   Certainly if you’re a fan of Downton, you’ll be aware that there is no shortage of the need to creatively solve a variety of problems that both the family and their staff experience.  Accident of birth whether high, middle, or low ranking, is no protection from life’s problems. The Countess’s view may be one we identify with, whereby we use our ...

Water is such a vital and essential element of all life.   If we look at earth from space, we see that over 70% of our planet is made up of water.   Our own bodies, too are made up of over 60% water. The greater part of our world is made up of water. Raging seas, flowing rivers and gentle pools.  Which do you associate with in this present moment?  Are you a raging sea, a fast flowing, babbling brook, a slow, wide meandering river, or a gentle, peaceful pool of still water?  Or maybe your stuck at the edge of the river?  Caught up in some foreign bit of discarded waste or are you wedged amongst the weeds and reeds growing at the shallower edges of the water? Maybe you’re none of these?  Maybe you’re feeling dehydrated, parched and dry like a desert that has waited long for the rainy season?  Maybe you’re in need of living water within you to refresh and re-hydrate you? The source of the Creator's water of life is the purest wate...