Category Archives: Living the Life

Living the Life

Blessings and Butterflies

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I read a post once about a friend who had found a butterfly while clearing out books in his attic.  He assumed it was dead, and picked it up gently to have closer look.  As the hibernating butterfly absorbed the warmth of his hand it woke up, ‘came to life’ and then fluttered away.

For some reason I’ve been thinking about that butterfly this week, so I’ve painted one, and here it is, resting on one of my favourite pages of the Bible, ready to flutter into life at any moment.

I’ve always loved the list of spiritual blessings in Ephesians: holiness, blamelessness, love, destiny, adoption, grace, forgiveness, revelation, reconciliation, redemption, hope, and a guaranteed inheritance.  Unshakeable, irrevokable blessings that every single one of us who trusts in Christ can call our own.  Each blessing like an individual butterfly, beautiful alone, but even more wonderful dancing together in a glorious symphony of colour.

A friend once said to me that if only she could get her head around these blessings, if only she could really understand them and appreciate them, she was sure it would change her life forever.  I think she’s right.  Catching a hold of the reality of these truths, having revelation of the impact of these spiritual blessings really would change everything.

It occurs to me that we all have times and seasons when we lose touch with one or more of these ‘butterflies’.  We turn around and our sense of being loved, or having a future, or cleanness, or belonging, or closeness to the Father has disappeared, slipping away quietly in the night. It might even be a while before we notice that it’s gone.

The truth is that these blessings cannot be lost, but our awareness of them, and of their importance, can hibernate for a season and be temporarily ‘lost-to-us’.

Are any of these butterflies sleeping out a winter for you just now?  Have you been distracted, as I so often am, by the smaller, beautiful, but much less important blessings of ministry or gifting? Or has something come in to rob you of one of these truths, chipped away your faith in it until it no longer flies for you?

I believe that today is a great day to go hunting in the attic for butterflies.

A day to remind ourselves of the extraordinary, amazing, unearned and priceless blessings that are ours in Jesus.

And perhaps even the day to pick up those that look like they have died, to hold them in your hand and to ask the Holy Spirit to breathe.

butterfly

May you be blessed with the waking up of butterflies in your heart today.

For your Journal.

Read through that list (in Ephesians 1), and ask God to highlight to you, in whatever way he can, which of these blessings he would like to bring back to life for you today.  Then think, pray and journal about that blessing: draw pictures, write words, listen to music, sing… do whatever it takes to bring that butterfly back to life.

Identity, Living the Life

Guitar Strings

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I played the guitar and sang for 40 adoring fans this morning. I hope you’re impressed.  It’s a regular gig, and the crowd all think I’m brilliant (they’re also all under six).

I’d just got going when I realised that the guitar I’d grabbed out of my son’s room at the last minute was slightly out of tune. *wince*

Fortunately preschoolers are not usually very musically discerning and this bunch were quite happy to sing ‘wheels on the bus’ even with my somewhat discordant accompaniment, but it was a pretty painful experience!

It may be that the lesson I need to learn from this is to be more prepared (or not to say yes in the first place), but as I did my best to fix the problem, God reminded me of something a friend said to me just yesterday about guitar strings:

Only one string has to be out- either a bit sharp or a bit flat, for the whole instrument to sound wrong.

The quickest solution to an out-of-tune guitar is to tune it ‘to itself’.  You pick a string you think is about right and then adjust all the others to be in harmony with it.. It works really well if the first string you pick is actually in tune, but even if it isn’t the guitar is playable and probably won’t make you wince when you strum it!

My conscience works a bit like this… If one part of my life is out of line with the others, there is a discord, a lack of comfortable harmony, and my conscience nags at me to pull that part back in line, in tune with all the others.

Perhaps this is what people mean when they talk about ‘being true to myself’. It’s about having the way you think and behave lined up and in harmony with the things you believe and value.  Like me trying to line up my urge to yell at the kids’ drama teacher with my belief that all people are valuable and deserve kindness; or making my desire to get myself out of trouble by telling a lie subject to my value of honesty and integrity. It’s good to be in tune.

A guitar that is in tune with itself usually sounds pretty good – unless you try to play with someone else.

Which is why groups of musicians working together tune to ‘concert pitch’, so that each instrument is not only in tune with itself, but also with something outside of themselves like a tuning fork or electronic tuner. This makes it possible for them to work together in unity and in harmony.

The process of discipleship seems to me to be a lot like tuning a guitar.  One day God might be drawing your attention to one ‘string’ and sometimes to another, sometimes to beliefs and sometimes to behaviours, but always with the aim of making changes that help you to become everything that you were designed to be.

Today’s postcard is a challenge to surrender to God and ask him what needs tuning in your life.

Because although it’s good to be in tune with yourself, it’s good to have the way you think and behave ‘tuned to’ the things you value and believe,  sometimes it’s those things need adjusting so that your whole life can be tuned to something better.

Take some time to stop and listen and see what he has to say to you today…

‘be transformed by the renewing of your mind’

because the music is going to be beautiful.

Identity, Living the Life

Empty Hands

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There are days when you feel like you have nothing left to give. There are days when you notice that your energy for ministry has somehow evaporated. There are days when you kneel before God with nothing but empty hands.

Those are the best days.

Because those are the days when you remember again that true friendship is not based on how much I can do for you or you for me. Love isn’t measured in gifting, or energy, or effort, or results. Love just is.

God loves you.

And on the days that you recognise the truth – that before him your hands are empty –  he smiles.

Because on those days he knows

that when your heart is hit by the force of his unchanging love for you,

when it is drawn by the irresistible pull of his open arms,

on those days you will understand the miracle of grace.

‘We have this treasure in (otherwise empty) jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us’

2 Cor 4:7 NIV

emptyhands

Living the Life

There’s more than one way to Manchester Airport

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When I was a child, if we were driving somewhere and Dad said, “I think we’ll take a scenic route” it was never good news. Usually it meant that we were lost…

Maybe because of that, or perhaps just because I’m generally impatient to get to where I’m going, the concept of the scenic route has never appealed to me.  I’ve always thought that journeys are something you want to get over with quickly – life happens at destinations.

I’m pretty much the same when it comes to living.  When I hear a whisper from God about where he might want to take me, I become anxious to get there as soon as possible.  I would pick the direct, fast, straight-line, know-exactly-where-you’re-going motorway route every time.

However…

In my experience, life with Jesus is much more like taking the A-roads (and often some ‘B’ ones).  There are destinations, sure, but he is in charge of the route to get to them, and he may well want me to take in some beautiful views and visit a few other interesting places on the way.

I learned something about this last year when some friends kindly offered to drive me from Derby to Manchester Airport.  “We’ll come early” they said, “and drive across country – that way you’ll enjoy the journey”. I didn’t tell them that it had never even occured to me that there was more than one way to Manchester Airport, or that it was possible to do anything other than endure a journey!

Our not-motorway route took us around the edges of the Peak District and past breathtaking scenery, through industrial towns and forgotten villages, up hills and down, through places where people live and nature grows.  It was anything but a straight line and took us much longer to get to the airport, but for once, I actually enjoyed it.

The A-road life can feel hugely frustrating.  Especially if, like me, you are wired a bit impatiently.  Where are the big blue signs that I’m heading towards my ‘destination’?  Where are the numbers that tell me how far I have left to go and how much longer I have to wait? Can I even be sure I’m heading the right way?

Even if I’m carrying in the back of my mind the feeling that the airport is somewhere up ahead in my future, I have no idea how long it will take to get there, or how near or far away I am.

On the B-road route, there are no signs pointing the way to the airport until you are almost there.

You could be five miles away and still not know.

You just have to trust the driver.

manchester airport

That’s it, that’s what I’m trying to get my head around:

I don’t even need to have a look at the map.  Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.  He is the map

I just have to trust the driver, lean back, and see what I can learn along the way.

And if we take the scenic route, so be it, I’m going to enjoy the ride.

…because we definitely won’t be lost.

Living the Life

On building a swing

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Building a swing is the easy part, the trick is in knowing where to build it:

1. Strength.  Find a tree with a branch that is strong.  You want to be able trust this swing, to completely relax in it, and that means it needs to be well able to bear your weight.

2. Space.  Make sure there is room to move.  There needs to be space to swing out ahead and space to swing back behind you while all the while you actually stay anchored in the present.

3. Perspective. Tie your swing somewhere very high up. The higher the branch and  the longer the ropes, the higher you can swing. And every time you do you’ll be able to see the landscape around you from an entirely different perspective. Truth revealed.

4. Shelter. Choose a tree that will give you shelter from the sun, there will be days when you need it.

5. Joy. As well as building your swing, make sure you take time to enjoy it. Give yourself permission to play – have fun.

Strength, space, perspective, shelter, joy.  All things to look for in a swing, and in a friendship.

For me this is a picture of what friendship with God could be like.  It isn’t always, but it could be, if that’s how I choose to build it.

I don’t know which thing you need more of in your life today: Strength to carry you, space to breathe and move, a new perspective on your circumstances, shelter from the heat or the storm or just the exhilarating joy of freedom to play.

Whichever it is, it is in God’s hand, and he would love to share it with you.

You only need to ask.

Let’s build a swing.

tree with swing

P. S. I love this comment from my friend David (incidentally, the first person to tell me I should write, many years before I was ready to hear it):

“I would add – a friend to push you, to get the swing going and to keep on encouraging you to go higher”

If you find one of those friends, you have a treasure. Choose to be around them!

Living the Life, Surviving Tough Times

a moment’s peace

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I wonder how many times a day I wish I could have a moment’s peace and quiet?  Not just from the actual noise of my family, but from the things-to-do, worries, good-ideas and other thoughts that constantly spin around inside my head.

My life is inside-and-out noisy.  Good noise mostly just now, but I know from the past that grief, pain, anxiety, disappointment and not being very good at saying no to things can also cause different kinds of overpowering ‘noise’ that I eventually become desperate to escape from and utterly exhausted by.

I said I would write for the next few weeks on some of the ways that having a relationship with Jesus makes a difference to my life.  If I had to answer the question ‘What difference does it make having Jesus in your noisy, cluttered, slightly out of control life?’ – this is the picture that comes into my head:

My life is like an LP being played at full volume on the record player my dad gave me when I was 9 years old.  It’s loud with no pause button and I mostly love it, but every now and then, I come to God desperate for some respite, and for a moment he carefully lifts the needle from the record and holds me there, out of the noise.

recordplayer2

And those moments- of peace, of restoration, of rest – I could no longer live without.

The peace of being lifted out of the noise is not just silence… it’s a stillness, a quietness of heart that somehow enables me to hear the pure, clear song of heavenly places. The voice of God that can so easily be drowned out by the clamour of our everday lives, has the power to lift and restore us, to reset our perspective and slow down our anxious hearts.  Hearing it, allowing it to wash over you, leaning back for a moment into God’s arms and listening to the song he sings over you, is inexpressibly beautiful.

And after a little while, sometimes just five minutes, sometimes a bit longer, he gently lowers the needle again and the music begins to play in more or less the place it was in before. The noise resumes, but now my heart is better able to deal with it.

I know that each of you who reads this are living different, complicated, unique lives.  The noise you might need to be lifted out of might be very different to mine.  Loneliness or boredom can be just as deafening as busyness is.   However, I’m equally sure that there is noise that you need to be lifted out of and away from once in a while.

This picture is a promise to each of you.  Although the record will probably not stop turning, and your own noise may well still continue for a while; at any time you can call out to him,  and God will lift you out into this place of peace.  He will hold you so that you can lean into him, he will whisper to you in the stillness,  he will sing his song of love over you and he will restore your soul.  And then… he will put you back into your noisy world, but with the stillness of heaven in the centre of your heart.

Living the Life

“What difference does it make… right here, right now?”

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The leader of the missions team I went on as a teenager loved to shove a microphone into our hands and say, “Ellie, tell us what difference it makes to you to know Jesus, right here… right now.”

It’s a great question, if a little difficult to answer as a snappy soundbite in front of a crowd of young people!

What difference does Jesus make?

The next few postcards are going to be trying to answer that question, there are going to be many answers, but the first is that, for me, Jesus is like a cup of really great Latte.

One of the things I love about living in Cyprus is the café culture, especially the part where I get to meet up with good friends and drink (skinny decaff caramel) latte on a big sofa while we talk about all the things that are going on in our lives.

For me, this postcard -a massive cup of latte- represents three things about Jesus that I now know I couldn’t do without:

The first is friendship.  The kind where you can pour out your heart without fear of being judged or rejected.  The kind that doesn’t mind if you’re twenty minutes late and that you’ve got wet hair, or a bit of the kids’ breakfast has welded itself to your jeans.  And the kind that has time to listen to all the tiny things that matter to you without yawning or checking its watch.

Jesus weeps with me when I cry, he laughs with me over the crazy things that happen in my life, he shows me things I would never have noticed, speaks perfect wisdom and pours it all out with unending, grace filled love.  Best of all, he invites me into deeper and deeper friendship with him.  He asks me to join him for coffee.

The second thing is comfort.  This warm, sweet, milky drink is very like the ‘mellow birds’ my Mum used to make for me when I was a little girl.  It fills me up, the warmth seeping into my bones, helping me to relax down into the comfy armchairs.

Jesus’ love for me feels just like that.  It’s like being filled up with something warm and nourishing on a cold day.  Sweet, comforting, and I’m sure much more nutritious than a caffe latte, his presence warms and transforms me from the inside out.

Thirdly, Jesus’ love for me (and you) is vast.  Until last week I’d never seen a cup of coffee so huge it needed two handles to help you lift it but my lovely friend Jo ordered a grandissimo and this is what she got.  We both laughed at how enormous it was and wondered if she’d be able to lift it –  a massive, comedy-scale, giant’s kitchen of a mug containing a pint and a half of cappucino.  More coffee, as it turns out, than she was able to drink.

And I drew that particular mug (but filled it with latte, because that’s my favourite) because I am absolutely confident that I will never get to the bottom of the cup that is Jesus’ love for me.  It is bigger than I can imagine.  And, not because of who I am, but entirely because of who he is,  his cup contains much, much more than I can drink.

massimolatte

Living the Life

Meandering

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There are times when life feels like floating along a great big meandering river: it takes an enormous amount of time to negotiate a long curve and then, after what seems like an age, you find yourself back in almost exactly the same place that you were before.

Arriving back in a place that you thought you’d left far behind you can be deeply disappointing and frustrating.  Becoming ill again after a time of feeling better, revisiting a family or relationship issue, facing the same old temptation or just realising that once again you can hear God saying the same thing to you that he’s  said over and over again in the past; all these can leave you ready to give up or to yell at the Lord “but we’ve been here before!”

“All that effort and I’ve travelled no distance at all”.

It amused me this morning to read that in rivers, meanders are a feature of maturity.  Young rivers cut in a straight line to begin with,  and only as they get more mature (and more powerful) do they start to wander about revisiting old ground and seem to make only very slow progress forwards.

I wonder if life-meanders are more likely to be a feature for us too as we become more mature in faith? When I first became a Christian, so much seemed to be easy and obvious,  life and discipleship was much more of a straight line.  It felt as though I was quick to learn things and deal with things. As time as gone on I’ve realised that there are deeper things, ground-in patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving that seem to need a different treatment.  Revisiting the same issues and challenges, each time armed with a little more experience and grace seems to be a part of that process.

If you understand this experience of having travelled the long bend of the river and found yourself, unexpectedly, back where you started, this is God’s word for you today:

It’s not about the distance travelled, it’s about who you’ve become while we travelled it together.

Because even if today you’re arriving back in the same old place, you are not the same old you.

On the journey to get here you will have changed, grown and learned. You don’t actually have to respond in the same way you did before.  You probably won’t.

And while you are back in almost the same place, this time you’re approaching it from a different direction and with grace and experience in your backpack.

So don’t get frustrated and lose heart my friends, when you find yourself back in old places, don’t believe the lie that you’ve travelled nowhere. Instead, remember that journey, and all the things that God taught you while you were travelling and then look down at the new you that Jesus has helped you to become on the way.

meandersreflect greens

Living the Life

a burst of yellow flowers

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It’s as if a painter has accidentally knocked over a huge tin of bright yellow paint, and puddles and splashes of it have ended up over the whole city…

Lizzie, Katie and I went for a walk along the trail beside our ‘river’ on Sunday afternoon.  For most of the year there is no water at all visible in the little creek that runs through the middle of the city.  The river bed, and the fields around it are dry and bare with only the dull green of eucalyptus and occasional olive trees to break up the grey of rocks and dust.

But this winter, rain has fallen. Days and days of it.  And melting snow from the mountains has swelled the dried-up river from a tiny trickle to a babbling brook.

The biggest change though, happens just as the rain has slowed and the sun has reappeared –  a burst of yellow wildflowers.

If you look closely it seems there is more than one kind of flower in the sea of yellow that has flooded the river banks and fields all over the city, but there they are, all gathered together, dancing in the spring breeze and refusing to be ignored.

It reminds me very much of this from the Song of Solomon:

My beloved spoke and said to me,
    “Arise, my darling,
    my beautiful one, come with me

 See! The winter is past;
    the rains are over and gone.
 Flowers appear on the earth;
    the season of singing has come,
the cooing of doves
    is heard in our land.
 The fig tree forms its early fruit;
    the blossoming vines spread their fragrance.
Arise, come, my darling;
    my beautiful one, come with me.”  

Songs 2:11-13 NIV

Spring is coming, winter is past, but never forget that the flowers are there because of the rain.

I love the beauty of the yellow flowers at this time of year.  I love that they spring up in unexpected places, nodding gently in the gaps in the garage forecourt, partying wildly in newly-green fields,  rioting across patches of wasteland and defiantly leaning out from behind dustbins and lamp posts.

But those flowers that make my heart sing come as a direct result of something I don’t like nearly so much – the continuous rain and cloud of winter.

I’m fairly sure that I’m walking into a springtime kind of a season just now…

For those of you who don’t see the flowers yet, for those of you who are still living in a season of cloudy skies, rain or storms, hear this:

The flowers are coming.

The seeds are deep in the ground but soaking up the rain and the day is coming when the warmth of the presence of God will call them to burst out in your life.

My great friend Ute, is forever singing this line of a song at me… ‘what if your blessings come through raindrops?’

I don’t always have the courage to look at the raindrops in my life and hunt for the blessing,  I don’t always have the ability to see it coming…  But I do know that eventually the day comes when Jesus calls out to me and to you:

  “Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, come with me. See! The winter is past;  the rains are over and gone.… Flowers appear on the earth”

yellow flowers

Living the Life

On being open

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This picture takes me right back to the first year of high school, sitting at a long bench on the top floor of the science block in a lab coat and goggles and nervously lighting a bunsen burner for the first time.

In case you’ve never used one, a bunsen burner is a very simple and common piece of laboratory equipment used for heating or burning things. It runs on gas and has an open flame which can be controlled by moving a collar at the bottom so that a little hole opens and closes letting in more or less air.

We soon got over our ten-year old nervousness and used them to burn all sorts of things we shouldn’t have.. but that’s another story. That evening’s assignment (my first ever science homework) was to draw two pictures of a bunsen burner: one with the collar closed, preventing air from mixing with the gas and producing a yellow flame; the other like this one, with the hole completely open, letting in lots of air and turning the flame blue.

The science is along the lines of the flame needing oxygen to make it burn more efficiently.  The hole-fully-open blue flame is much much hotter. If the gas is mixed with pure oxygen as in an oxy-acetylene torch the blue flame it produces can cut through metal!

The bunsen burner in today’s picture is burning much hotter because it is open to the air.

It’s made me think about my openness to the Holy Spirit and the work he wants to do in me and through me. I so much want to be open so that God can breathe into me and my flame burn hotter!

What I notice is that it’s really easy to let that collar slip round and become slightly (or very) closed to the Holy Spirit’s breath on me.

For me the killer is busyness: not taking the time to turn my face towards God and let him breathe, not taking the time to sit in the sunshine of his presence and be warmed.  But there are other airhole-closers…

Sometimes fear, fear of being hurt, fear that God’s power might overwhelm you, fear that you might look silly, fear of what he might ask you to do, even fear that he might reject you if you are that vulnerable to him, will drive you to close your heart off a little… or a lot.

For some people anger over what has happened (or not happened) in the past will lead them to punish God by turning their faces away. Just as we can punish other people by not talking to them, or not being open to them, it’s easy to fall into doing the same to God when we feel like he has let us down.

And lastly of course sin, whatever shape or form it takes can cut us off from the oxygen of the breath of God until we repent of it and receive his forgiveness.

For me, this picture is a call to be open, to be vulnerable to, the Holy Spirit and his work, so that the flame of our passion and ministry can burn hotter.

Today I’m going to ask God to show me how open I am to him and the breath of his Spirit, to show me how far the collar is twisted around on the bunsen burner that is my life and to show me what I can do to be more open to him. This week why don’t you find some time, make some time to be open to God and ask him to breathe on you again? Bring him your fear, your forgiveness, your pain, your sin and your hope, and in return ask for his life-bringing oxygen-carrying Holy Spirit.  It sounds like a good swap to me.

Burn hotter my friends, and who knows what you will be able to cut through…