Seize the moment!

My mother, who lives with us, suffers from dementia. The main problem is that her memory is shot, unable to remember what she did just a couple of hours ago. Life gets very confusing when that happens.

She copes well, keeps quite positive, but you can sense inner frustration.

One thing she can appreciate is the world around her. She loves trips out, and the beauty of flowers and the countryside. Each trip, even if to familiar places is a new adventure!

She has to live moment by moment because that is all she has. And she gets all that she can out of that moment, even if the memory fades so quickly.

In our Christian lives we too often dwell on the past and forget to make the most of 'the moment'

Seize each moment as precious, and use it wisely. Enjoy it for what it is, a gift from God!

Adoration and thanksiving

I've been writing prayers for some time now, and as a worship leader and user of prayers have sometimes struggled with the difference between a prayer of adoration and one of thanksgiving - particularly as I like the ACTS acronym for prayers in worship (adoration, confession, thanksgiving and supplication.)

Now I find myself writing an ebook which covers the ACT prayers, and have had to think harder about the difference, if one exists.

I have come to conclusion that there is a difference, but also crossover. Adoration focuses on who God is, thanksgiving on what he has done. But of course the crossover is that God couldn't do what he does unless he is what he is!

So there's an element of thanksgiving in both prayers, and one of acknowledging His majesty and greatness in both!

There you go....clear as mud!

Technology

I fell out with technology today. My Epson printer informed me that in its humble opinion, a part had reached the end of its useful life, and therefore it would not work until I had taken it for a service.

In the good old days printers would keep going until they died - mine seems to want early retirement!

The cost of a new printer makes servicing uneconomic, so I will buy a new one. This seems such a waste of resources.

But isn't this just symptomatic of the world we live in? We live in a disposable world and therefore must expect things like this to happen.

And across the world are millions struggling to fetch water, wondering where their neext meal is coming from.

Others have no roof over their head, or are raiding rubbish dumps to find anything they can recycle to earn pennies.

It saddens me to dump a printer because it refuses to work, rather than simply breaking down. It saddens me more that

I am part of a throwaway society within a work of want and need.

*sigh*

One God?

Interesting article by Steve Chalke in this month's Christianity mag, answering the question 'Is Allah, the Muslim god just another name for yahweh, the God of the Bible?'

I'm not going to go through his arguement, which centres on Abraham, but he makes the following points:

1) Islam honours the first five books of the Bible among its sacred texts, including the Shema, and draws heavily on them. 

2) Muslims consider them to be the word of God given to Moses.

3) Allah is the term used for God in Arabic. hundreds of years before being used by Muslims it was used by Arabic speaking Christians as they worshipped Yahweh.

Chalke concludes by suggesting that Allah is not so much a false god so much as a partially known God, as Yahweh is fully and finally revealed through Jesus alone. He points to Paul who built from, rather than ignored the worship of the 'unknown God' when he dealt with the people in Athens in Acts 17, and suggests that this should be our approach.

Food for thought, anyway!

The Wild Geese

We live a couple of miles from the sea, in fact near an estuary which is designated a site of special scientific interest. It is a breeding ground and feeding place for a wide range of wildfowl, some resident and others just passing through. But it is the geese that are so noticeable, as they take to the air in their distinctive ‘V’ formation. Awkward on the ground, in flight they are transformed to a thing of beauty, if a little noisy!

For the Celtic folk of Ireland and Scotland the wild goose is also a spiritual symbol of the Holy Spirit. Doves are docile but a goose is unpredictable, noisy, free and seemingly always on the move. What a lovely image of God’s Spirit; unconstrained, not always predictable and free to move where he wills.

I find it a great comfort to look at the world in which I live and see images that remind me of the divine. They keep me connected, because in a busy world it is easy to forget about God and become totally self-centred. As someone who can be prone to bouts of introspection and self-doubt I need to keep the God connection open and running.

I look at a small mountain stream and consider that by the time its water has emptied into the sea it has carried much debris away with it, just as God’s cleansing Spirit works in our own spiritual lives. I can stand at the ocean’s edge and see within the crashing waves echoes of God wearing away my own rough edges and moulding me into something new!

If your life is full to capacity with activities and demands on your time; if you feel that life is just so full of noise and distraction that you are losing the plot then take time, find space, stand still and open your eyes and your heart to allow God to reveal himself.

As the poem by William Henry Davies says
“What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare…”