Advent and Christmas Journey
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.
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?
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.
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.
Words weighing nothing, as light as breath can drag a soul down, pinning the human spirit to the mat. We know this because we’ve lived the truth of it in our hearts. The truth that words are anything but weightless. They build. They tear. They lift. They crush. We know the feeling. The feeling of the weight of words on our shoulders. Pressing. Pushing. These welting words of others can become the caves we dwell in. Our broken hearts rebuilt. Into prisons. Into caves.
We live our questions, but God always answers with His... Where are you?
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 →
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.
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.
Sometimes the loneliness scrapes at your skin, the longing to belong, to be accepted. You watch the others laugh and smile and bask in the glow of community and you know, you are convinced, deep in the bruised, dark places of your heart that there must be something wrong with you.
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?
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.
We live in a natural world. But also a supernatural one. A world where wars rage in the material as well as the spiritual. We may think the weapons of Spiritual warfare are complex, exotic or strange. But actually nothing could be further from the truth.
Happy Sunday! You made it through another week. Well done. We have more adventures ahead of us this week...
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.
What if your calling put you at odds with your whole world? What if God's will for you seemed like a kick in the face of all you had been raised to believe? What 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?
We need not tell anyone to be strong, unless they’re feeling weak. We need not tell someone to be courageous unless they’re feeling scared.
I remember when both my babies drew their first breath, life sprawling out, all infant flailing limbs, tiny lungs burning with the filling, tiny arms reaching wildly to be held, to be connected, to be close. I remember it all through a tired haze of exhilaration and joy knit with labouring pain.
There is a story written into the core of us by the very hand of God.
‘How long o Lord’ the psalmist sings, and our human hearts echo his words. As years roll on with pain and disappointment and darkness. How long Lord? How long?
The psalmist, he knew this song because his people had lived it. Waiting on God. For, how long?
There are days when ‘how long’ feels like too long.
Hello. How are you? What a journey this last week has been! We’ve met some pretty courageous women of faith as they face down the despot of their time and we've begun to travel alongside Moses on his epic walk to Egypt. This week we’ll continue to walk alongside Moses as he does battle with... Continue Reading →
This broken world has a story for us to live in. Our scarred history has a story for us to live out. But there is a story written into the core of us that our mind takes time to awaken to…
Scars. We have them, and not just on the outside, numb lumps of tissued skin, but within us, numb lumps of scarring memory pushed into the recesses of our hearts, unseen, where we can pretend they don’t exist. And there they remain, silent, but still at work in every thought, word and action of our existence.
All real power belongs to God. And He chooses to use it in very different ways to human beings. Lasting change in this world is brought about not by might and strength. Lasting change comes by small people who’s hearts are beating in time with God’s, stepping out courageously with Him into the dark, armed only with the conviction that giants will fall before them, because God and them are strong.
I closed the well worn, well loved Bible picture book and put it on the bed. My four year old son beamed up at me, eyes bright and alive, “Mummy” he said importantly “I’m gonna fight Goliath! Because God and me are strong!”. You can guess at the story we’d just read and probably guess at my mothers-heart response. I smile still as I remember this moment. The moment this tiny little boy, barely up to my waste in hight, named a truth larger than any giant.
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.
Abram, his name meant ‘exalted father’.
But he wasn’t.
A father...
I am so thrilled to put into your hands a few more fun encouragements for your journey this week. I hope they bless you in any small way they can.
In the shadow of the serpent many things were lost and broken, precious things, beautiful things, things that God had woven deep within the sinews of our Imago Dei being and threaded into the rhythm of our beating human hearts. This image of God within human beings now wisps threadbare thin, torn threads pulling apart, fraying at the edges, floating on the breeze of history...
what if this measure we use to evaluate ourselves and each other by is all wrong? What if success were not measured by size, amount or status. What if it were measured by love?
There are stormy days when the sky weeps. And days when God is grieving with it. Days when the darkness in humankind overcomes the light that once was us...
There are stormy days when the sky weeps. And days when God is grieving with it. Days when the darkness in humankind overcomes the light that once was us. How does God's heart so full of love, so full of goodness, witness all this breaking sadness that has become His children’s reality, and not break also?
How do I look this child in the face and tell her everything is going to be okay, when the reality all around her says it's not? When her nine year old frame spins on a planet full of poverty and pain and she knows more than most what this means.
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”...
Hello friends and walking companions, Well done! You made it through the first week. And welcome everyone who joined us during the week, it’s lovely to have you along. In a few days our long walk will depart from the garden of Eden and start to pick up pace. It will go downhill at first,... Continue Reading →
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.
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...
The world has its ink and we are a page, and every stroke creates in us the script lines of our selves, a biography constructed by the words and actions of others: I am loved. I am unloved. I am capable. I’m a quitter. I am smart. I am dumb. I am beautiful. I am nothing… I am, I am, I am, I am. I am the result of a thousand words, ten thousand messages, twenty thousand looks, telling me who I am.
But who am I really?
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.
The pancakes pop and sizzle in the pan, round and golden. The smell of coffee wafts, inviting...
Are you soon ready for our journey together? Just a few days now and the story begins, our Long Walk through the long story of grace, our strolling, rambling adventure with God on the trails He’s beaten back in search of His wandering children.
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.
Hello my Friend, I can’t help but feel a little bit of joy creeping into my heart right now as winter is beginning to loose its icy grip on our days (here in the northern hemisphere) and golden sunshine is pushing its way in, coaxing the tiny snowdrop flowers out of the sodden soil. Light... Continue Reading →
Angels Singing Somewhere Christmas Day There were angels, but Mary didn’t see them. There was singing, but Joseph didn’t hear it. There was dazzling light, but neither felt its blaze. In Nazareth, they had seen the shaming sideways glances, heard the disapproving whispers, and felt the glaring judgment as Mary’s belly swelled. And when they... Continue Reading →
This song this teenage girl sings, this song inspired purely by seeing God’s heart and then seeing everything else through His eyes, this song Mary sings will so threaten the power structures of this world that throughout history it will be repeatedly banned from being sung in public.
Yes... What we say yes to forms us. One way or the other. Mary. She said yes. To God. She gave Him all she had. “I am the Lord’s servant,’ Mary answered. ‘May your word to me be fulfilled.’ Then the angel left her.” Luke 1:38 She held nothing back. And it would cost... Continue Reading →
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. Our world has learned the hard way that the truest measure of any human ruler, is not in their oratory... Continue Reading →
He didn’t just come to give us a lovely sentimental feeling and warming family holiday season each December...
Because the story we live in decides how we live...
Belief matters. Because our beliefs create the world we live in. And unbelief creates a world without God. A world of loneliness and despair. A world of hustling to survive. A world of anxiety and fear...
Silence can feel like an absence of God. But the truth is God is always present and wants us to see clearly that it is not circumstance or our own striving that gives us good gifts, but His hand alone. And His gifts are often seen most clearly after an absence, like a light lit on a dark night, like a long cool drink after a dehydrating wait, like a child finally born from an ageing barren womb...
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...
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...
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?
This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah Like many great figures of the Bible, Jesus' story begins with a genealogy. A genealogy was a family tree that acted as a way of introducing a significant life. A way of saying, “take note- this is someone!”. “This is the genealogy of Jesus... Continue Reading →
This is not fairytale story. He didn't come into a perfect world. He came into ours.
In the dark.
To be the light.
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...
She twists the wire around the green, around and around and around until all the unruly Christmas greenery finally yields and hangs submissive on the circular frame. There's an intensity to how she does it that most ten year olds don’t have. A determination.
God Is With Us 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 over seas is most costly, not in money but in feeling, the feeling that comes when you are surrounded by those... Continue Reading →
The Living Branch The days were coming… but they were not there yet. And the aching pain of invasion and exile hung around Israel like the chains they lived, as they strained their eyes into the distance hoping for the promise of hope. Wondering if it was really possible. really true. And we... Continue Reading →
As we begin this season of Advent, let’s be clear on Who we’re waiting for...
So, what if this Christmas we were to slow the story down, and live in it. And let it live in us? What if in all the Christmas rush we forge an island of quiet and sit in God’s long story of grace and let it become the story that breathes us back to life, lighting the dark, warming the cold? What if this Advent season could be a time we turn our hearts back to the heart of the real Christmas story and let it reshape us from the inside out, and in so doing become more real ourselves.
Dear Friend, It’s been quite some time since I wrote to you as we journeyed together through the Easter season and I am delighted to be back in contact with you as Christmas and the season of Advent approaches. Since I last wrote my family and I have moved countries so it has been a... Continue Reading →
Walk On… So my son, these years ago, we gave him this Bible, an 'Action' Bible. And then throughout that Lent, as we read our Bible stories and hung our decorations daily on our Easter story tree, we all soaked together in the long story of grace, the story of God walking with His people.... Continue Reading →
Epilogue The Road Home... “In the Christian life, God’s love takes all his children on journeys they do not wish to go. He makes them travel by roads they do not wish to use. All so he can bring them to places they never wish to leave. With Jesus, pain, no matter how great, never has... Continue Reading →
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....
Happy Happy Happy Easter! He is Risen! Time to celebrate! Well you have made it all the way to Easter Sunday! But this long story of grace isn't over yet! In many ways it's just getting started! But today is the day we've been anticipating all along. So take a moment to celebrate. To sit... Continue Reading →
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....
Sometimes the only way to discover who God really is, is a long dark fall to a forest floor. The aching thud of assumptions shattering, of a life in pieces, of hopes dashed. Hopes woven around even an idea of Christ must break in the face of who Christ really is. He is not who we have thought He was, we have not known Him. He is always more. Less of our illusions, and more than we ever dreamed possible.
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... Continue Reading →
Who is the true King of this world? Who is it you want? As King?
Day 38 Night “In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped... Continue Reading →
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.
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.
Hello Walking Companions, Palm Sunday and Holy Week blessings! Can you believe we are here already? We are on the homeward stretch now, with just over a week left in our journey. Every day this week brings us closer to the cross and deeper into this Easter story, this long story of grace. I hope this... Continue Reading →
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.
Breath. How do you restore it when it's been strangled out of a soul? How do you help a breathless world catch its breath in wonder?
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.
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...
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.
We learn fear.
I have learned fear...
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.
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?
You'll love this one... it's our favourite part of Easter!
Hello Walking Companions, 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. Most of this next week we’ll be spending our time in and around the Sea of Galilee (so make sure you’ve got your... Continue Reading →
'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.
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 →
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.
And here, echoing down through time is one of the greatest stumbling blocks humankind has when it gazes into the possibility of the existence of God. How can a good God allow human suffering? How can struggle and pain and suffering be God's will?
The greatest weapon used against us is ourselves, and the greatest weapon we have in our defence is...
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.
So... I have a surprise...
But the opposite of fear isn’t courage. Neither is it fearlessness. The opposite of fear is seeing. God with you...
There is never really an argument between the light and the dark. Only a defeat. The dark may be tangible, but the light is unquenchable.
God sees us. He sees who we truly are long before we do. He sees the authentic shape of our beating heart and strengthens us to be… ourselves.
All real power belongs to God. And He chooses to use it in very different ways to human beings. Real change in this world is brought about not by might and strength. Real change comes by small people who’s hearts are beating in time with God’s, stepping out courageously with Him into the dark, armed only with the conviction that giants will fall before them because God and them are strong.
Forgiveness is a battle cry into the expansive whirling universe soundlessly shouting, ‘there is a bigger story, a bigger reality than all my aching anguish, a larger will at work than the perpetrators of all my pain, a stronger heartbeat than my beaten human heart. There is a God of love. With me. So, even in the dark, tomorrow is always new and I am always free!’
In this world there will be trouble, and pain and dark threads knotting and tearing. But there will also always be God; God with us, re-weaving and redeeming.
Hello Long Walkers! How are you? Well it's about time to put your feet up and take a break, because you've earned it! Three weeks of walking. Wow! And what an eventful journey this last week has been! We’ve left poor Joseph hanging, so we’ll get back to where he’s at early next week. After... Continue Reading →
This may just become one of your favourite new family Easter traditions.
Hate may look strong and successful in the short term. But it never wins in the long run of things. Malice may win some battles, but it’s love who wins the war. Eventually. Always. Because God is on His throne, even when all we can see is the dark.
