Rebuilding Walls have weakened, crumbling, sinking low to ground, sagged like our spirits as they view the sorry edifice before us Bare bones of former beauty now stained with such decay And there is no Nehemiah, or any other builder to be found who can shore up this shell restore […]
spiritual formation
160 posts
I thought I could handle this one myself. That I didn’t need help from others. A ‘pioneering, do-it-yourself’ attitude had worked its way into the rebuilding of my life. I thought to myself ‘I don’t need others to know what is going on, I can handle it all, it will work out ok.’ […]
Quick answer: Real recovery rarely starts with a solution — it starts with someone being willing to ask a deep, honest question and stay present for the answer. The Biblical leader Nehemiah began the recovery of a devastated Jerusalem not with a plan, but by asking how the people and […]
Recently, I have been reading and practising mindfulness. I have found it very helpful, so I thought it would be good to get some advice and guidance around mindfulness. I tracked down Richard Johnston, who has a website dedicated to Christian Mindfulness. So I sent him some questions. 1. What […]
I was always on the lookout for black wool. I raised on a sheep farm here in New Zealand and whenever shearing time came around I was in the shearing shed working alongside those lean muscular men, shearing our sheep.
Something happened here but it didn’t happen overnight. As a gardener I have been working on an old homestead garden for two days every week for around two years. When I first started, the garden was in bad shape. Over grown with weeds, dead trees and sick looking plants it […]
It’s his favourite resting place. I have a large comfortable chair in my office. With solid armrests and comfortable cushions sometimes it’s a tussle between myself and our two dogs who gets to sit on it. Our nervous pound pooch Tyler particularly likes it. He climbs his large body into […]
I had never quite sensed that feeling of release before. It was time to have a rest. That feeling of letting it all go and handing it on to someone else. I had been in ministry for 13 years serving as a Pastor/ Chaplain to people who struggled with ‘Normal […]
When the demands of life seem to take over and drown out our creative pursuits, we need to return and find our Creative Rhythm Guest Post from Marc Shaw After several years as an English teacher at an inner city school, my creative life had become dry as dust. I […]
As I write this I have the sound of birds singing, a gentle water fall and a trickling stream. There is a rhythm to this. Every 15 seconds it stops and repeats, stops and repeats, stops and repeats. I am not sitting in the middle of some leafy grove, but […]