Category Archives: Living the Life

Living the Life

Harvest in Unexpected Places

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It’s that time of year again when the kids are rifling through my cupboards trying to find not-out-of-date tins to take in to school for Harvest.  It brings back sharp memories of carrying a shoebox full of rice pudding and tinned carrots and leaving it at the front of a chilly church  amongst piles of similar offerings and wondering which mother had time to make bread in the shape of a bushel of wheat.

Harvest Festival for me is a time not only of being thankful for all that we have, but also of anticipating future fruitfulness and harvest in my life.  It’s reminded me of this postcard from last year and I thought I’d share it again today – hopefully it will inspire you too to expect a harvest in unexpected places.

It was 1917 and as blockaded Britain was slowly running out of food, the government announced that everyone needed to start growing their own supplies using whatever land was available. Suddenly, in cities all over the country people began digging up lawns, roadside verges, parks and other bits of unused land and turning them into allotments.   What had been ornamental or neglected or not-thought-of became places of harvest that produced food for a hungry nation.

Perhaps most of us have areas of our lives where we might expect to be fruitful.  But there are times when God turns those expectations upside down.  Sometimes when we feel like we are all out of resources, God produces a harvest in unexpected places – places we wouldn’t even have considered looking for it.

The garden fork in this postcard is a tool for turning over the earth.   Transforming a neat tidy lawn into a vegetable patch is a job that requires a lot of digging; turning over; planting of seeds and patience.  It strikes me as quite a challenging process!

It’s not an easy statement to make: “yes Lord, come and dig me over”.  You can’t pray that quickly or without some thought.  It’s a deeply courageous prayer.    But I know that without a doubt that a moment of surrender is the beginning of the process of new fruitfulness.    A veg patch never looks ‘finished’, it doesn’t have neat edges, may not be approved of by the neighbours, but it does something wonderful – it provides food for the hungry.

Today might be a good time to ask God what part of your life he wants to use to grow a fresh harvest in (and what that harvest or provision might look like!).  It might be a talent, a gift, a place, a group of friends, an opportunity… or something else altogether.  It may surprise you what He says!

Perhaps you look at this picture and recognise that you are already ‘in the process’ – that earth is being exposed and turned over,  stones being sifted out.  Or perhaps you are aware  of your area of your life which have been dug over and planted with seeds, prepared for something – but you’re not sure yet what shape that harvest is going to take.  Ask God about it today, but rest in the truth that He is the Lord of the Harvest, and that if we surrender to the process, He will bring it about.

Jesus
Lord of the Harvest
Be with me today
as I offer you the land of my life
the fields, gardens, paths and verges
Show me
the places I overlook
break up old soil
and plant new seeds
so that I may see your harvest
in unexpected places.

A Harvest from Unexpected Places

reflect greens

Living the Life, Surviving Tough Times

Dust days

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I glanced out of the window at church on Sunday morning and realised we can see the mountains again.

The beautiful Kyrenia mountains are the permanent backdrop to life in this city.   If I get lost (which still happens even after four years here) I look for the mountains to get my bearings; when we’ve been away, the sight of them makes me feel I’m home.

The sky in Cyprus is nearly always blue, so we can usually see those mountains as clearly as can be.  Occasionally we have some haze or cloud so they are harder to make out, or even partly covered – but it’s always obvious where they are.

Last week though, an extraordinary cloud of dust descended on the city and we could barely see the buildings down the street let alone a range of mountains 11 miles away.  For almost a week, our mountains were completely hidden.

In life there are days when the sky is clear, when you can see God’s face as clearly as your own reflection in a mirror.  In my experience there are many more days where it’s cloudy or misty, and you struggle a bit to be aware of his presence or hear his voice.  And then, every once in a while there are thick dust days.

No-one has a relationship with God that is easy-breezy mountain-top-experience all the time.  Everyone has misty seasons and even thick, thick dust days where it’s hard to breathe and harder to see.

On Sunday morning, as I was struggling to worship after my stressy week of sick children, overdue speeding tickets, broken down cars and general tiredness; feeling guilty and confused because I just couldn’t feel God’s presence as clearly as usual (or as much as everyone else in the room seemed to) I looked up and realised I could see the mountains.

And I heard him whisper:

“Look at those mountains…

Was there one moment, in all of the week that you couldn’t see them, or in any of the times when they’ve been partly hidden from you, has there ever been a moment when you’ve doubted that they were there?”

(And of course, I never have. Mountains don’t just cease to exist because I can’t see them. I have faith in the existence of those mountains!)

“Well then,” he said, “trust me that I am here, whether you can see me or not – you just have to turn to where you know I am, keep walking towards me, and wait for it to rain”

So I’m doing that my friends.  I’m turning to where God is, because I know he’s there, even when the outline of his face is tricky to make out.  I’m declaring to my heart that he is where he has always been.  And it seems to me that this isn’t lack of faith – it’s faith made solid, faith you can walk on.

‘Faith is being sure of what you hope for, and certain of what you cannot see’

If you’re walking blindly towards where you know God is just now, my heart is with you.  Take courage. One day it will rain, the dust will be washed away and your view will be clear again. Until then – He is still with you.

Dealing with Change, Living the Life

All about change

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August seems like the perfect time to send a holiday postcard, so here’s one from the week my family and I spent traveling through Shropshire, Cheshire and the West Midlands on a canal boat.

Water doesn’t like to slope, so when the great engineers who built the canal systems encountered a landscape that needed to be climbed, they built amazing water-filled lifts called locks. Each lock is a chamber with heavy gates at each end which can be filled up or emptied of water so that the boat can rise up or lower down to the level of the next stretch of canal.

To fill the lock you use a turning handle to wind up heavy paddles in the gate which let water into (or out of) the chamber at a tremendous rate creating a huge amount of noise and splash. We quite enjoy working the locks but there’s no denying that it’s really hard going! Pushing the gates open against the weight of the water, closing them again, winding up the paddles, waiting for ages for the lock to fill then pushing the gates at the other end open is slow and heavy work, but it’s amazing to witness the extraordinary power of all that water moving from one place to another.

And it’s necessary: without these powerful level-changers it would be impossible to travel through the ups and downs of the British countryside.

I’ve written before about the seasons we go through in life, being a child, being a parent, being a parent of children who have grown up, living in one place or another, working, retirement…

Often it’s the shifts between seasons that are the hardest to deal with. The parts where you’ve said goodbye to what was, but haven’t really stepped into what is next. Those times, like the minutes that the boat is in the lock, can be turbulent, a bit scary and slow in passing.

The locks reminded me this week that change, even good change, like getting married, having a child or starting a new job, can be really hard work.
Like traveling through a lock, there is a cost to change which is measured in effort and in unsettling turbulence but there is also a sense something incredibly powerful is going on somewhere below the surface. The other hung it’s reminded me is that change is also really necessary if you want to continue on with your journey.

I often describe myself as being change-intolerant, a natural settler. But I also really want to keep pressing onwards towards what’s ahead and like water, life doesn’t slope, so there are bound to be locks ahead.

The challenge to me is to willingly step into times of change, to accept the turbulence and scariness with faith, because I’ve realized that even if the only way forward is through locks, that’s the way I want to go.

Remind me of that when I’m complaining about it 🙂

Living the Life

Lists, lists, lists

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It’s official – I am drowning in a sea of lists… In the past week I’ve flown to England (sorry there was no postcard last week!) and am now getting ready for camping with the family and preparing my son for a trip to Africa. Packing for a six week trip in a country which has unpredictable weather always stresses me out a bit, and I always get it wrong (too many pairs of shorts, not enough cardigans..) and the camping/vaccinations/visas are pushing me slightly over the edge 🙂
One way I try to keep that stress under control is to write lists.. Lots and lots and lots of lists.
I have lists of clothes, of medications, of jobs I have to do before I leave, of items that need a charger, things I need to tell my husband, emails I need to write and pictures I want to paint. All of them scribbled on the backs of till receipts and envelopes, mostly never to be read again. Lists are slightly taking over my life.

My husband, who has a much more orderly mind than mine, just can’t understand why I write so many lists (especially as I tend not to read them again). But I find the process of writing them really helpful for three reasons:

Firstly, it helps me to prioritise; to focus on those things that need doing.

Secondly, it changes my perspective, and changes my heart (so that I calm down and panic less!)

Thirdly, it actually helps me to remember, to bring to the front of my mind all the things I need to remember.

The lists which are collecting on the fridge and in the bottom of my handbag and back pages of my sketchbooks remind me of a list I’ve been writing recently, and which is important for all the reasons above: a thanks list.

A friend challenged me a while ago to write a list of everything I have to be thankful to God for. I’ve been working on it for a while and as you can imagine it’s turning into something of an epic.

Strangely, just like I don’t really realise how many jobs there are to do until I start writing the list, so I didn’t realise just how many reasons I have to be thankful to God until I started to write them down.

More importantly, I can feel it changing my heart. Writing the never-ending list is pushing me deeper and deeper into a sense of ‘I have’ instead of ‘I need’. And even though I’m really only at the beginning of this particular journey, I’m experiencing a wonderful unfolding revelation of what it means to say that God is my provider.

So this week’s postcard is simply an encouragement to write lists:
a list of prayers you’ve seen answered
a list of all the people you love
of all the good books you’ve read
all the ways God has provided for you financially
all the positive influences in your life
all the spiritual blessings that are yours in Christ
all the material things you take for granted
all the necessities and all the luxuries
all the songs you love
all the paintings that have lifted your heart
all the things that make you smile
and all the best moments in your life that you can remember…*

*if you have any more ideas for sub-lists of things to be thankful for, put them in the comments!

Living the Life

What does Freedom look like?

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I’ve been wondering this week what freedom looks like.  I’m painting a piece for a prayer room around the theme of finding freedom, so the question has been bubbling away all week!  One picture that comes to my mind is this hot air balloon, breaking free from the ropes that held it down and heading into a vast unexplored sky.

Freedom is finally becoming all that you were always meant to be.

The balloon is beautiful.  It is a joy to watch it become slowly inflated with warm air, to see it grow out into its shape, to watch it as it eventually strains against the ropes that tether it to the ground.

At each stage it is wonderful, holding all the potential to become truly itself, to fulfill its purpose, to be all it can be.

And yet, it is not until it is released from the ties that hold it down that it is able to be truly itself, to do what it was designed for.

I listened to a talk recently by one of my favourite authors and speakers, NT Wright.  In it he mentioned about how when people have been sick for a long time we sometimes say that they are ‘a shadow of their former self’.   But, he says, to a follower of Jesus you can say ‘you are only a shadow of your future self, because as you become more like Jesus in the way you think, feel and behave, the more free to be truly yourself you are.

I love that idea so much.  Just like this balloon, being slowly filled and then being released one rope at a time – through your choices you are transformed into his likeness, through his Spirit you are filled with power and as you are cut free from the things of the world that hinder you, you will change,  becoming more like yourself than you have ever been before.

So this postcard is an encouragement, firstly not to lose hope when the journey seems long, but secondly, not to become too accustomed to life on the ground.

Strain towards what is ahead.

Don’t fall for the lie that it’s better to stay safe and uninflated on the ground.  Don’t fall for the lie that you are all that you will ever be. And don’t fall for the lie that some chains just can’t be broken.

You are only a shadow of your future self.

You are designed to fly.

hotairballoonfeat

For Your Journal:

If you’re filled, but not yet flying, maybe you’re not quite free.  Even one rope can have the power to keep you close to the ground.  Take some time to ask God to show you if there are any ‘ropes’ in your life that he wants you to deal with..  Then ask him what it will take to deal with them.  If you need to, go and find someone you trust who can pray with you.

Living the Life

Umbrella.

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I seem to spend a lot of June and July under an umbrella.  Not because it’s raining, but because my fair, freckly, northern-European skin makes me fundamentally unsuited to the Mediterranean sun.  So,  a shade-junkie, I dart about between patches of coolness, clutching a bottle of water and wearing a big hat.

Because I appreciate the shade so much, I love these verses from Psalm 121:

The Lord watches over you—
    the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
 the sun will not harm you by day,
    nor the moon by night.

Sometimes, even a big hat isn’t quite enough.  The first time I saw someone carrying an umbrella like this in brilliant sunshine, however, I thought it looked very odd indeed.  Where I come from umbrellas are sold in the autumn when skies are ominously grey and then blow inside out on arctic railway station platforms.  In my mind, unless it’s enormous and anchored to a lump of concrete outside a cafe,  an umbrella is about keeping dry.

But in a Cyprus summer it’s not uncommon to see an umbrella on a blazing hot day, carried by someone who needs a portable pool of respite from the harsh sun.

God is speaking to me today about the shade he offers, about his promise to protect me day in and day out, about his constant presence over, around and next to me.

Firstly, like this umbrella, his shade is portable. I don’t have to dart from prayer meeting to church meeting, from quiet time to worship CD to experience his protection, his presence.  I can carry it with me all the time.  There is truth in the words that he is always with me, and his intention is that I should experience it.

Secondly, God’s protection is at work in season and out of season.  It may be that you are used to experiencing God’s help in one area of your life, but it has simply never occured to you to ask for it in another situation.  Perhaps you haven’t seen that an umbrella can be as helpful in sunshine as it is in rain.

Lastly, I also notice that there is room under this shelter for more than one person.  One of the great advantages of an umbrella is that it moves with you.  You can take it into places where it is needed and then invite others to walk alongside you for a while.  As they walk with you, they too can experience the shelter of God’s love, the nearness of his presence.  Today’s postcard is an encouragement to me to invite others to walk beside me, to learn to let other people step into the presence of God that I carry with me.  I’ll have to let you know how I get on with learning how to do that.

God is always with us. But it is possible to carry an umbrella in all kinds of weather, and yet never put it up, never stand underneath it and benefit from its shelter.  Perhaps today the Holy Spirit is calling you to step under his protection, to stop trying to brave it out by yourself and to ask for some help.

Whatever God is saying you today, I hope that you will enjoy the shade of his presence as you draw close to him.

Living the Life

Diving for Treasure

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“Just throw them in one more time Mummy, pleeeease!”

I’m on holiday, so I spent the morning throwing diving toys into the pool over and over again. ‘Treasure’ for my six year old mermaid to retrieve from the bottom of the deep.

After a while I observed a technique developing. I would throw all the toys in at once, and instead of diving in immediately, my sweet sun-bleached mermaid would stand on the edge of the pool and wait for a while, looking.

Of course I asked her what the pause was for,
“Mummy, you have to wait for water to stop being wiggly before you can see where the treasure is… then you can dive for it.”

The water of my soul has been a bit stirred up lately. A load of things have had my mind busy. not bad things on the whole, but there has been a lot of end-of-term activity, a lot of summer things that need planning and a few slightly stressful jobs lurking at the back of my in-tray, and the water has become churned up. The treasure that I’ve been looking for has been difficult to see, like colorful smudges on the bottom of the pool.
so I heard God speak to me today – you really need to let the water settle.
I went back to the pool later, when the mermaid had gone inside to eat watermelon and watch High School Musical for the hundredth time, and it was still. Every toy was as visible as if it were already in my hand.

Stillness matters.

But for me, it doesn’t seem to be enough to just say ‘be still, my soul’. I actually have to do something to pull all those stirrers-up out of the water or at least to stop them thrashing about so much… So I did what I know how to do, I sat down and wrote a list of the things that help me find stillness.

Going for a walk, or a long swim
Listening to certain kinds of music
Writing a list of all the things that are stressing me, and then praying about each one.
Reminding myself that stillness isn’t a reward for those who are super good, or super spiritual, and that it is not, therefore, out out of my reach.

Living the Life

Haybales and farewells

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It’s June, and around here that’s the season of rising temperatures, goodbye parties and little round haystacks.

The haystacks sit rolled up in fields inside and around the city, straw-yellow rolls on a landscape of parched stubble.  The swaying grass has been cut, rolled up and now waits patiently in the sun for the day when it will be piled up precariously on a back of a truck and taken away.

I’ve been thinking about these haystacks a lot as I’ve watched friends pack up their homes and say their goodbyes this week. They too are experiencing the end of a season and wondering what the next one will be like.  Their lives have been cut down and rolled up, and they sit now in this field, in the odd period of in-betweeness, waiting, and saying goodbye.

One day it will be my turn.  For now, my heart is aching for the friendships that will be missed – empty fields in the landscape of my life.

The haybales that I’m seeing everywhere mark the end of a season, it’s ok, right even, to be sad that the grass no longer ripples at the touch of the wind, green from the winter rains or white from the spring sunshine.  It’s ok to be sad, but it’s also a time of year to be hopeful.

Because God’s word for us at this time of year, for the leavers and the left-behinds, is this: the goodness is not lost.

The goodness is not lost.

The grass is cut and rolled up because it’s made it to the end of its season.  If it were to stay in the field it would dry out, and the goodness stored up in it during this season would be lost forever.  But the haybale keeps the grass inside it fresh.  The goodness and growth is locked in so that it can be of use in a new season.

All that you’ve learned, all that you’ve grown, all the love and grace and hope that you have received and then given out to others… all that is not lost.  Somehow it’s just rolled up and put away for another season.

I’m sure I don’t completely understand this picture. But even as the cumulative grief of friends leaving is catching at my heart, so I can feel the hope in these haybales.  God knows what he is doing – the goodness will not be lost.

FullSizeRender

Living the Life

Sailboats and Rowboats

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I’ll start with a confession…  I wasn’t going to post this week, I’m so tired that I was going to give myself some grace and not write anything, have a day off..

But then all day this thought that I read about in someone else’s blog* has been in my head, and it’s ministered to me so much and so deeply that I thought I’d share it with you, just in case you needed to hear it too…

“You are designed to be a sail boat, not a rowing boat”

I love this so much.  I love that all the power to do anything God asks me to do comes from him.  I love that I was never meant to serve him out of my own strength, out of my own effort.

My job is to put up the sail, his job is to provide the wind –  so simple, and so true.

No-one who has ever sailed a boat would want to row it across the lake instead.  No-one who has felt the exhilaration of catching the wind and feeling a boat suddenly accelerate across the water would prefer to slowly drag heavy oars.  It’s not that sailing is effortless, but it is less effort than rowing, and so much faster and so much more fun!

I know this.

And yet when I am tired, when life seems overwhelming, when everything is a bit too much – that’s when I start rowing.

True.

Honestly, how sad is it that I pronounce myself too tired to put up a sail and then pick up the oars?  That when I have no strength, that’s when I start trying to do things in my own strength? I’m smiling as I write this, partly because it is just that ridiculous and partly because I can hear the theme of what God has been saying to me for weeks echoing in the words.  I’m clearly a slow learner.

When you realise your hands are empty, when you come to the end of yourself – that’s a good place, that’s when he can begin.

So this is my new piece of advice to myself:

Whatever you do, don’t try to row.

Grab hold of whatever strength you have left, and use it – to walk into his presence and to put up your sail.

sailboat

And if you find there’s no wind today, no power to help you move forwards, don’t panic – it just means that today is a day to be still. To be still and know that you are you and God is God.

and that’s OK.

*This postcard was inspired by a great blog I follow written by theologian, teacher and asker-of-awkward-questions, Ian Paul… I painted the picture straight away and put it on the wall because I knew it was such an important bit of life to me –  you can read the original here.

Living the Life

I will pour out…

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Last Sunday the western church celebrated Pentecost, this weekend it’s our turn in Cyprus. So here I am, caught between two Pentecosts, and I have this picture in my head.

I’ve been thinking about the disciples in the upper room. Meeting together perhaps to celebrate Shavout – the festival of the first fruits, but certainly to pray, to stare at their empty hands, to hope. Waiting, but not sure about what they were waiting for. Hoping, but not sure what to hope.

And then suddenly…

The Holy Spirit showed up in the room.

And he sounded like a violent rushing wind and looked like flames of fire.

I suspect the Holy Spirit can choose to look and sound pretty much how he likes, but on this occasion he came to them in a way they could not mistake. The same fire that had burned with the presence of God in the bush where Moses heard God speak now came to rest on each of them. Wonderful but terrifying.

Almost every time I read a story in the Bible, something different about it grabs my attention. What stirs me most when I read this one today is the very first gift that the Holy Spirit chose to give to those trembling disciples. As the Spirit was poured out he gave them a gift of languages, the ability to make the good news available to everyone.  

I love that. The very first gift of the Spirit was one that shouted for all to hear that everyone could be included, that the presence of God was not just for the chosen few, but from now onwards it was for everyone who called on the name of the Lord regardless of where they came from.

Of course they were misunderstood. And some who didn’t quite understand what was happening yelled out their criticism (as occasionally happens today when the Holy Spirit shows up in a way that’s not quite what we expected!) so Peter stood up to explain what was happening, quoting this beautiful verse from Joel:

‘In the last days I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
and your sons and daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions
and your old men will dream dreams.’

Acts 2:17 NRSV

Sometimes we think about the presence of the Spirit or the gifts of the Spirit (or of some of them), as being just for ‘the special’, just for ‘the holy’ or just for ‘someone-else’.

But God is pretty clear about it here.  When he pours out his Spirit, it is on all flesh.  No-one who calls Jesus ‘Lord’ is excluded from that statement:  we can’t exclude others from it and we can’t exclude ourselves from it.

God didn’t say, “I will pour out my spirit on those who shout loud enough, or pray hard enough, sing sweet enough or close their eyes long enough”.

He said “all flesh”

even when you’re tired

even when you’re lonely

even when you’re grieving

even me

even you.

That’s the beauty of Pentecost – the good news in my language, the spirit poured out into my flesh. The precious, beautiful Holy Spirit, suddenly available and present to us all. Poured out not in a trickle or a dribble, but in abundance – a gush of the pure, sweet, inexhaustible presence of God poured out over anyone who wants to come and stand underneath it.

Any time you like.

poured out

For your journal

You might like to join me in praising God for the beauty of Pentecost, for his generosity in pouring out one Spirit on all of us that follow his son. You might like to think about what it might mean that this happened at the festival of the first fruits, of celebrating the beginning of a harvest. You might like to make a choice to stand underneath that waterfall of his presence again, or maybe even for the very first time.