Humility knows that all it knows is sometimes half the story, and all it sees is sometimes half the picture, and so is open to hearing more. Seeing more. Living more. With God.
Radical Humility
Fully Filled Brimming Over
This story, this moment, is the fulfilment of a promise. This is simultaneously the completion and the commencement of a plan. A moment foretold and foreshadowed as long as God's long story had been unfolding. A moment that is a line in the sand that will change every other moment from then on.
De-railed
When heaven seeps into our plans, sometimes our plans are derailed and sometimes our tracks are changed in surprising ways, but always our direction becomes more than anything we could have imagined.
Disruption
Sometimes saying yes to God is saying no to safety, security, and the future you'd always thought you would have.
Silence to Singing
December 17th Silence to Singing Listen to the reflection here... (also available on Spotify HERE ) The silence in Elizabeth and Zechariah’s house must have felt so loud. But perhaps not as loud as Zechariah’s own thoughts as he processed the Angel Gabriel’s words. Words that left him speechless. He hadn’t believed in... Continue Reading →
A Song to Light the Dark
When God is doing something new, the air is full of singing.
Magnify
What this world truly needs is this song once sung by this insignificant teenager from Nazareth.
Strengthening Strength
December 14th Strengthening Strength Listen to the reflection here... (also available on Spotify HERE ) In the beginning, in the first garden long ago, God drew close. As close as breath. And then with His breath He spoke truth into the hearts of the first human beings: Loving truth. Generous truth: ‘You are free to... Continue Reading →
Knowing and Being Known By God
In Jamaica, for many years (over a decade) we ran many programmes in inner city communities. Its a tough context and these programmes varied in effectiveness but we battled on, committed to being there and shining God’s love into these communities.
But then one day God stopped us in our tracks...
Ask, Seek, Knock
Our son Oliver doesn’t sleep well. He has a very creative imagination and a world full of ideas whirling in his mind. Between this and all the natural worries fuelled by moving countries and struggling to adjust, he’s very often up at night...
A Day of Rest and Reflection
I hope this little letter finds you resting in His presence and enjoying refreshing time with the community He has placed you in. Here is a little printable gift ... some of the most clarifying words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. See you on the mountainside tomorrow, Liz The printable PDF... Continue Reading →
Do Not Judge
One of the things that has struck me most in writing our way through the Sermon on the Mount is the generosity of God laced through it all… ‘Don’t see with stingy eyes, see with generous eyes’, ‘Love your enemy’ ‘Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.’ ‘When you give...’.
Do Not Worry About Tomorrow
This day a few years ago I was down. Way down. Weighed down by worries and stresses and cataloguing my anxieties in a litany of self pity.
I was making pizza, rolling dough, cutting toppings, listing all the reasons why life was just too hard...
Seek First His Kingdom
There are a lot of things in this world vying for the human heart, so many calls enticing our eyes, our time, our lives… so many convincing claims calling us to give our story over to their ‘sell’...
Flowers of the Field
Memory is an interesting thing.
Many years ago I had a time that was, at the time, the most challenging season I had been through. This was not long after I had moved to Jamaica to be fully dedicated to the ministry in the inner city. I can clearly remember many of the moments that were so challenging … but just yesterday I was looking through some old notes I made at that time, and was shocked by what I had not remembered. None of my memories were false … but every single one of the challenges had ended up turning out so much better than I remembered. Some of them miraculously so...
Do Not Worry
Jesus’ words on this mountainside, they sound like good advice, like a comforting mantra to live by, but Jesus isn’t giving us advice or a mantra to chant: He’s giving us eye surgery! Jesus is declaring… change the way you see! He is operating on the way we human beings view the world because we’ve been seeing it all wrong all along.
Treasure
I have to confess. I love charity shopping. The thrill of the hunt, the thrill of discovering buried treasure. I love searching through the eclectically laden shelves of charity shops looking for that one bargain, that one thing that is useful or pretty or special in some way.
Forgive
This whole set of teachings, the Sermon on the Mount, and this whole moment of God in human flesh walking into human history … they are the dawning of a new reality...
To Be Seen
Human souls have onion-layered depths that run so deep that sometimes we ourselves are not aware of what lies beneath...
Love Your Enemy
Sometimes this compass is so astonishingly upside down! How can it possibly point to true North? The directions we are accustomed to navigating life by dictate in our veins retaliation and revenge: From playgrounds to families to communities to government policy, when we take a hit we hit back. It’s a matter of pride, of reflex, of not looking weak, of saving face. This is simply (post the fall) how our world works. How we are programmed to think our world works...
Turn To Them The Other Cheek Also…
Today, as I write this, a young man I have known since he was in his early teens, Deron … a young man who has served as a team member in Fusion’s ministry in Trench Town … a young man with a young family … can not safely live in his own home...
Revolutionary Integrity
We were created for trusting authentic relationships connected with threads of truth, trust and intimacy with each other and with God. In the beginning we knew where we stood and who we were as children of our heavenly Father...
Faithfulness
God’s original plan for His creation was always faithfulness. His faithfulness mirrored by ours… like diamond-reflected-light splashing around everywhere.
But we, all of us on this earth right here and now, comprehend daily that this world is not the one He created for us. We are not the human beings He created us to be. Not fully. Not yet...
Fully Filling
It is not just what happens to us in life, but the story through which we interpret what happens to us that matters. The story we live (often subconsciously) manifests itself in our behaviour and choices...
Blessing
The message Jesus was communicating to His first hearers on that hillside under spreading skies that day (and to all of us here today, wherever we are in this world) is this: This world will have it’s challenges and we will have battles in it... but the Kingdom of God is here. Now.
Blessed are we when we navigate life with God's compass and live like we belong to a different Kingdom. Because we do...
Shrove Tuesday…
Did the grass crunch under His feet as He ascended the hillside that day? Did pebbles slide and roll between His dusty sandalled toes? Was the breeze warm against His cheek, or did it prick His skin with a chill?
Coming Alive
I have this garden book I picked up at a charity shop a while ago, and all through winter I've been thumbing through it looking for the names of plants in my garden and what to expect to see growing there. Having only recently moved to the UK the plants are still becoming familiar to me (the difference between a plant and a weed for example!). This garden book, like a guide book tells me each month what to look for and what to expect.
A few days ago I flipped open to the chapter on March and my eyes fell on the title "Coming Alive"...
Kingdom Revolution
King. It’s a word with baggage. We have other words with baggage, like politician, ruler, president. All these words carry stories. Stories of human failings and fallen-ness. Stories of political ambition and corruption.
The Whole Story
December 8th The Whole Story You can live in the world your eyes can see, but it will only ever be half the picture. Zechariah’s eyes were old. He and Elizabeth had seen an absence of things hoped for, empty arms cradling despair. And for Elizabeth, this childlessness meant shame (Luke 1:25). Their... Continue Reading →
Immanuel
December 3rd Immanuel I love Christmas. The carols, the wonder, the traditions, the too-much-food-only-eaten-once-a-year. It is the time of year I most miss being with my family, the time when living overseas is most costly, not in money but in feeling, the feeling that comes when you are surrounded by those who know... Continue Reading →
The Coming King
December 1st The Coming King He ‘shall come’ . That was the promise all along. He shall come. The One to stamp on the serpents head (Genesis 3:15), the one to whom the sceptre belongs (Genesis 49:10), the one who will establish His throne in love (Isaiah 16:5). He shall come! This King.... Continue Reading →
He Will Come
December 6th He Will Come We stumbled across this cafe down a side street, searching for somewhere to have a moment together out of the cold. The cheery cafe owner took our order and we sat and waited in the corner, looking around us at the tinselled walls and festive decorations. The cafe owner... Continue Reading →
Immanuel
December 3rd Immanuel I love Christmas. The carols, the wonder, the traditions, the too-much-food-only-eaten-once-a-year. It is the time of year I most miss being with my family, the time when living overseas is most costly, not in money but in feeling, the feeling that comes when you are surrounded by those who know... Continue Reading →
The Coming King
December 1st The Coming King He ‘shall come’ . That was the promise all along. He shall come. The One to stamp on the serpents head (Genesis 3:15), the one to whom the sceptre belongs (Genesis 49:10), the one who will establish His throne in love (Isaiah 16:5). He shall come! This... Continue Reading →
The Road Home
EPILOGUE The Road Home… There are roads sometimes that go nowhere, nowhere but away, nowhere but far from all we want to leave behind us, far from all we fear and cannot face. Wandering roads, retreating roads, roads that give the illusion of forward motion while all the while leading nowhere. Nowhere but away.... Continue Reading →
Flashback
The coals that night, they throbbed, glowing orange and red. Sparks danced splintering the dark. It drew him closer, coaxed by the warmth, pushed by the chilled night air and the rising dark.
Good Friday
Good Friday It wasn't supposed to be this way? “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.” “Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had... Continue Reading →
Empires, Kingdom and Truth on Trial
How could any of them understand this King? This Kingdom? They had bought the lie of empire. The lie that human beings are in control. Of anything.
Jesus didn’t come to build an empire. He came to establish His Kingdom. These trials, they are really about one thing: 'Who is truly King?’.
And the question His trial asks of every human heart today is: ’Who is it you want? As King?’
A Vision At Night
Underneath all the noise of human circumstance there has always existed this one storyline thread. A thread that began before human existence. A thread that ends long after this world's time is done. All the weavings of this world come and go, knotting, tearing, unravelling. But this thread remains: ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’14, ‘and in the end He shall stand upon the earth’15 as its redeemer. Having bought it back. From the dark.
Night
It was the cool of the day in that first Garden long ago, when God had come looking for the first Human Beings¹.
But now it is the chill of night, in this second garden. And Human Beings have come looking for God.
To Kill Him.
Gethsemane
There were two gardens. Two gardens in this long tread of time. And God walked in them both. So did frail humanity, humanity forged in the image of God forgetting themselves and forsaking God. This is the story of the first garden, but only part of the story of the second.
Misunderstood
Our lives are all part a story, folded into time, a longer story, a larger story. A story stretching from the beginning of time and reaching through to the end of it, the story of God’s long walk with human beings, the long story of His grace journeying to find us.
The story we human beings miss, miss-shape and misunderstand, most of the days of our lives.
Wholehearted
This flower this day, it stopped me in my tracks.
I hit the breaks in my car just to pull over and draw closer. This bright flower, it was growing right there in the hardened road, its roots tucked deep beneath the unforgiving pitch, its frail leaves stretching bravely above, its golden petals curling courageously, extravagantly, unabashed reaching toward the sun.
Short
When do we lose it? The childhood urge within to clamber up the nearest tree and drink in all that lovely life-breathing green, feeling the intoxicating exhilaration of being off the ground, alive in our senses and closer, higher, nearer to Heaven somehow. When do we lose this life-embracing child’s heart? The joyful, joy-filled, unselfconscious giggling glee of an all-in, wholehearted existence?
Questions, Answers and the Stories in Between
This man, this day, he thought he had the answers: easy. He was an expert in answers. But he was about to learn: God is in the questions.
Drawing in the Dust
When God formed the first human beings into humanity He knelt down into the grit of things and let the cool clay clump between his fingers and cake on His palms. When He created humankind, He got grit under His fingernails and dust around His wrists. His hands got dirty.
Seeds
We live our questions, but God always answers with His...
Where are you?
The Adventure Hots Up on the Homeward Stretch…
Hello Friends, How are you? I hope you’ve had a moment to trail along with us a little over the last week now that we’re walking with Jesus as our guide. This week we’ll start heading towards Jerusalem in time for the first Palm Sunday. And to be honest, our journey will not be without some conflict... Continue Reading →
How to Walk on Water in a Storm
We learn fear.
Life teaches it to us blow by blow.
Sometimes by a trauma, sometimes by the slow drip of disappointment corroding courage, usurping hope. We tried. And failed. We got bitten. And bled. We got knocked down. And lived there.
Calm
Sometimes life can feel like a storm. And sometimes like a drowning. Like a flailing about without much to hang onto. Like a slow death by silence, soundlessly sinking in the waves of life.
Calling
The thing is, underneath it all, so often we’re not sure. Not sure who we are, not sure that we’re valuable, not sure where to place our feet in all this whirling world. Who am I? What on earth and I here for? What does it all mean?
Triumph
Power. It undoes us. And like a drug, once hooked we crave for more.
Whether it is the power of knowledge, of social status, of influence or of wealth, once we have it, we feel naked without it. So our fist grips tighter around it, and our reach extends wider for more, more, more, more.
Temptation
Freedom. It’s always been complicated for the human race. Sometimes I wonder if we even know what it truly is. We make our choices freely and then our choices make us, building our existence around us. Choice by choice.
Friend
It's easy for a word to go unnoticed on a page, overlooked in a sentence or brushed by in a paragraph. But this word is one we cannot overlook. It’s startling. Striking. Like cold water splashed on a face. Not because the word itself is confronting, but because of He who says it.
True North
Being lied to cuts like glass, and we’ve all felt the gash. It comes with being human- losing faith in human words. Trustworthiness is now an earned attribute, not an assumed one. And even those who earn it often fail us, falling into the temptation to let words smooth over the rough edges of life: “I’m fine”, “You look great” “It’s going to be alright, I promise”...
Freedom and Choice
So we have eight year olds smashing the faces of twelve year olds here, girls no taller than my shoulder posturing gangster hostility, here on this earth where people formed from dust forget their breath and treat each other like dirt. And this one little girl who fires up like a Don, she cocks her hip and shakes her head and waves her finger and taunts the other children with violent glares and hostile words… and she is eight.
Loved.
There was a silence when we began.
The quiet rise and fall of lungs filling with air, the whispered hush of a breath drawn in and a breath exhaled.
But before this silence, there was something else...
For You…
Welcome Friend. Whether you just stumbled in here or were invited by a friend, you are most welcome. Kick your shoes off, make yourself a cup of tea, and make yourself at home.
Radical Humility
In taking Mary home as his wife, Joseph was effectively taking on responsibility for her pregnancy, appearing to have broken the laws of betrothal. In sheltering her and the child she carried, Joseph took on Mary’s shame, making it his own...
De-railed
What if God is outside of our field of vision? And what if He is calling us to join Him there? In a reality larger than our human plans laid down...
Disruption
What if your calling put you at odds with your whole world? What if God's will in you seemed like a kick in the face of all you had been told, raised in and led to believe? If you knew His call would leave you alienated and alone, estranged from your community, friends and even your family, would you still say yes? Yes to God?
Unfurling Hope
If you run your finger across the a sawn-off tree stump, tracing the circular path of its rings, it will tell you a story. Each line has a tale to tell, a story-line revealing years of droughts, the story of rains, the story of bushfires, the story of years of abundance and years of lack. It will tell you how old it is, how long it has stood in place, and what each year was like. A stump is old and full of years, full of story. A long old story traced in rings...
Breathe
From before all time began His grace was there waiting for us, because the cross was there waiting for Him. Waiting for the Creator of the Universe to die for the creatures He created....
Sunrise
It’s strange how loss can leave you so emptied out on the inside and so disconnected from the outside. The outside world right there, just above your skin. Like all that’s left is a brittle shell. Echoing. Distant.
The senses. They all collapse into this stormy sea of grief and the waves crash and roar and drown out all sound, drench out all touch, saturate all presence but the ever present dark. The presence of the hole. The gaping wound in reality where He once dwelt....
Empires, Kingdoms and Truth on Trial
Who is the true King of this world? Who is it you want? As King?
Gethsemane
There were two gardens. Two gardens in this long tread of time. And God walked in them both. So did frail humanity, humanity forged in the image of God forgetting themselves and forsaking God. This is the story of the first garden, but only part of the story of the second.
Wholehearted
This one brave heart. The one who wasn't wondering what others might think. She had thrown all caution (and all cultural propriety) to the wind and thrown herself at Jesus feet.
Misunderstood
Our lives are all part a story, folded into time, a longer story, a larger story. A story stretching from the beginning of time and reaching through to the end of it. The story of God’s long walk with human beings. The long story of His grace journeying to find us.
The story we human beings miss, miss-shape and misunderstand, most of the days of our lives.
Short
We say ‘sticks and stones may break your bones but names will never hurt you’, but nothing could be further from the truth. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but names will break our hearts. Slowly. Eroding our God-breathed-Imago Dei with the slow drip of rejection and the corrosive power of false narratives labelling us less; names short on grace, names short on hope, names that fall short of the name God breathed into us from the genesis of our existence.
Weightless
Sometimes our brokenness is easy to see, like a broken leg, or an open wound, but broken hearts are less visible to the eye, unless of course that eye is God’s...
Seeds
Jesus didn’t come to earth to entertain us with stories. He didn’t come to ensure that we had the theological story straight, He didn’t come to correct our doctrines. He didn’t come to answers all our questions.
He came to be the question, 'where are you?'
He came to be the Word, a seed planted deep into soil.
He came to be the seed, sewn into our lives and hearts producing new life.
He came to be our hope, restoring our breath when we have lost ourselves to the mud.
And He came to be the revolution, birthing a Kingdom come.
Calm.
Why was Jesus sleeping? Who can sleep in a thunderstorm? Who can be anything but thrown about by a raging of emotion? Who is this that just doesn’t seem to feel it when the world is falling apart? Who?
Thirst
'This well is deep', the one to quench the thirst of cells, but not deep enough though to quench the thirst of a soul. Thirst has no boundaries, social or cultural. We all thirst. Our cells thirst for the water that floods them, restores them, renews their life. And our souls thirst too for a deeper water, hydration in a deeper place, from a deeper source, a spring deeper than deep space, vaster than a universe of light.
Calling
Day 27 Calling 'So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.' Luke 5:11 Found in Luke 5:1-11 Matthew 4:18-22 and Matthew 9:9-13 The thing is, underneath it all, so often we’re not sure. Not sure who we are, not sure that we’re valuable, not sure where to place our feet... Continue Reading →
Triumph
God has all the power Satan tempted Jesus with and more. He could dominate, He could take the world by force as Satan offered it. But He doesn't. Instead of coming with an army to control us, He came as a vulnerable human being to woo us, to walk with us, to win us. With love.
Temptation
The greatest weapon used against us is ourselves, and the greatest weapon we have in our defence is...
Arrival
He didn’t come to be with us in our ducks-in-a-row existence. He didn't come to be with us in our comfortable and convenient answers. He didn't come to be with us in our neat and tidy church buildings. He didn't come to be with us in our lives on the 'right' side of town. He didn't come to be with us in our righteousness and wealth. He came into our poverty, our want, our pain, our fear, our brokenness. Our need.
