Christmas can have dark shadows, but what if God came close? God can provide a comfort at Christmas. As I write this, I think of someone I know that has had a death in their family. It’s a loss, a grief, a tearing of relationship. Christmas. Will it be […]
Spiritual Formation
227 posts
The practices of your week and day may drain your life, but what practices restore your soul? ‘Oh, that’s so good for the soul’ Sometimes I hear people say that. Sometimes I say it myself. It’s that moment when you feel a restoring of something drained out of you. You […]
Life and activity can drain our mental health, but there are places to restore. Take notice and soak in them. There is a place I want to go to. The gardens are beautiful. Full of colour all year round. Fruit trees are full of ripe fruit ready to be eaten. […]
The soul can get completely drained, but what restores the soul? What can bring it back to life? People, places, and practices. Life can be draining. Too much going or too much has gone on. Now it feels like the energy tank is on ‘E’. Empty, Exhausted and not Enough. […]
I want lived truth. Truth that will help me in my everyday life, but so much of what I receive is unlived truth. Please stop trafficking unlived truth. I’m trying to limit my contact with a lot of unlived truth. Open up social media and most of its fluff and […]
We build walls; we build personas, but are we weak enough to receive truth into our innermost being? That is where strength comes out from weakness. I don’t want to be weak. I don’t to be known as someone who has nothing to give. I want to move into my […]
They were stuck. Stuck in a Stage of Faith, but with help and gentle curiosity, they were able to take that next step towards wholeness. It was like the someone had turned on the lights in their thinking. They looked at me in absolute shock while I was explaining some […]
Many things go into the shaping of one’s life. ‘I am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms’ says C.S. Lewis. What are you the product of? Mathematics wasn’t my strongest topic at school, but somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind I recall the term ‘product’. […]
When the receiving of love has strings attached, then is it really love? Love is a Gift With no Strings Attached. In many of the gardens i visit they have garden hoses and for the last few years many gardeners have been installing retractable hose reels. They are quite a […]
It’s a noisy world with lots of stressors wanting our attention, but there is a still small voice longing to be heard, so quiet yourself and listen. I have a pendulum clock on a bookshelf near me. Yesterday, I noticed the pendulum was swinging back and forth freely, but now […]
It’s a broken world where we desperately need hope, but God is compassion, and so we get to live again. The other day I found some mouse droppings in my kitchen. Concerned about the hygiene of the kitchen, I set a trap. Peanut butter would be the temptation that […]
We often think we can’t do much to change the situations we are in but by being faithful with the little we have we can move mountains. It’s the little things that give you away. It seemed such a small thing. I remember my parents’ daily little habit of reading […]
I haven’t lived a perfect life and I wonder if my problems are punishment from God, but maybe I don’t know the whole story and that God is overflowingly full of grace and mercy. They wanted retribution. Payback. A desire for revenge coursed through their veins for what had happened […]
Midst the struggle you wonder about the plans God has for you. I thought it was all about prosperity, but this is far from that. Some things don’t make sense. It wasn’t meant to be like this. I didn’t see this as my future. How did I get here? Questions […]
Trouble comes. It’s nothing new, but we have the assurance of others, so we hold on tight and ride our way through it. You can see it coming. You’re sailing along. Life seems to be going along ok, but out on the horizon, you can see a storm. You know […]
There are times when I have doubts. I question God, and I wonder. But over the years, I have built up a memorial of stones that reassure my soul. I have questions. I have doubts. Places in my thinking where I question what I have taken to be true. Evidence […]
Life can bring times when we feel completely abandoned, but we have a place of feathers that can hold us secure, so we enter that place of being loved, held, and known. I’m not sure why, but for many years the final words of my day as my head rests […]
Safe places and safe people ask good questions that may not feel safe at all, but they have goodness flowing through them. I need a place where I can go and feel safe. So many people have opinions and are quick to share them. Lightning fast to draw a conclusion […]
It’s a human experience to know the trauma of falling into the hands of robbers and thieves, but there is one who joins us in our ditch. I was robbed a few years ago. I had parked my truck in a parking lot and had gone into a shop to […]
One tough moment after another can bring you to the question, ‘Does God hate me’? But I want to know more, so I sit with those at the coal face and grow in my knowing. No one knows coal like a coal miner. I could go to a scientist and […]