Even you need to be part of the rebuild. There are some people who really get me fired up. They are the ones who in essence say ‘I don’t want to get my hands dirty’. They essentially don’t want to be part of what you are doing. As a child […]
spiritual formation
114 posts
I want to do it my way. I don’t need others help. I can rebuild my life and recover in my own strength. To admit that I need help is a sign of weakness. That I am just like them. No, I am better than that. I will continue to […]
The old saying is true. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. It’s also true that you can take the water to the horse, put the water in a china cup and sprinkle rose petals over and it still won’t drink. In my years as a […]
I love watching those ‘Mission Impossible’ shows. The script takes you to places where you wonder how this ‘Mission Impossible’ will be resolved because if it isn’t, then the whole city is going to be destroyed in a nuclear explosion. I have met people who live in the shadow of […]
Every Tuesday night in our church service John would stand up and like a little mouse he would come to the front and ask permission to share a passage he had memorised. The Living Room church service was set up to be an alternative to the mainstream services held on […]
He could have said it was their problem to solve. He could have told them what they should do. He could have sat back and given out ‘good’ advice. He could have done nothing and gone home. Instead he owned the problem as if it was his own, because it […]
On first appearances everything looked great until you went underneath. The old house had that lovely country cottage feel about it but as time went on discoveries were made of rotting walls, leaking pipes and drains not working properly. There was always going to more underneath than what was first […]
After years of teaching high school in downtown Los Angeles, my wife accepted a job four hours away. On top of my daily stressors of dealing with students and colleagues and deadlines at the school, I now moved to a tiny studio apartment, commuted to see my wife on weekends, and […]
I recently watched some guys putting down a concrete path. Just before they laid the concrete down, a mesh of steel reinforcing was placed into the trench. The concrete was then poured around this mesh until hidden away. Now I have seen concrete work done where there was no reinforcing […]
Rebuilding Walls have weakened, crumbling, sinking low to ground, sagged like our spirits as they view the sorry edifice before us
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.’ […]
Sometimes the knife of life drives right to the core of your being. It wrenches around till your bleeding in grief. Your speechless in shock, numb in movement and it feels like the very essence of life has been sucked out of you. You mourn because there is no other worthy […]
Do you like questions being asked of you? I don’t think any of us like that feeling of potential shame and exposure. Ever since Adam hid himself from the gentle questions of a loving God we have chosen to avoid, hide and lie to camouflage the obviousness of a problem. I […]
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 is […]
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 […]