Well it has been a long time between posts and a lot of that has been taken up by the pandemic which ultimately redefined waiting in ways that we never knew were possible! Waiting to get out of lockdown, waiting on test results, waiting to travel, waiting to see family and friends, waiting to return… Continue reading Waiting in a season of waiting….
Christmas is not just for families…it is for everyone!
Too often the message we hear at church or in the media at this time of year is that Christmas is a time for families. For example this morning at church my pastor prayed a special prayer to bless families and those who came with their family, sadly no mention was made of those who came alone or with friends. This kind of treatment can make those of us who are single, divorced, widowed, without children or who are living far from family, that Christmas is not a time for us.
Your Resurrection is coming soon!
It turns out that the story of Lazarus is indeed a powerful story of Jesus deliberately making people wait, long past their comfort zone, so that God would be glorified in and through their lives. They were looking for a healing, but Jesus was planning a resurrection! In the same way those of us who have waited long can trust that the Lord is about to do something amazing in our lives too...a resurrection if you will!
The God who sees us!
I realized that at the heart of all of this longing is a desire that we all have inside us, the desire to be truly seen by another person. Not a casual glance, not a once over, but seen for who we truly are, and in that sight known and loved. It is not the being alone that hurts but it is the being unseen, unknown, feeling like your life is without meaning or worth.
Metaphors and Meanings: How the Words We Speak Shape our Lives
A wonderful book written in the 1990s called Metaphors We Live By speaks about how so much of how we understand the world is conveyed through the metaphors (or expressions) that we use to describe our lives. One common metaphor is talking about love as war, for example 'Love is a battlefield' or 'All's fair in love and war'. But further to just being descriptors of people or circumstances these very metaphors actually have the power to shape our lives, for better or for worse. What metaphors are you using today and how do they match up with the metaphors we find in the Bible?
Making Sense of Suffering
I have just returned from a trip to another country in the Middle East where a group of fellow believers and I had the privilege to meet with members of the persecuted church. Hearing their stories and their perspective on hardships and suffering made me think long and hard about my own theology of suffering and waiting and hoping. Some of the stories we heard were so encouraging and the believers we met were so faithful to the Lord, others however were stories of just surviving and of seeing no point to the many sufferings that they had endured at the hands of ISIS. It was clear though that everyone had suffered to one degree or another but it was also clear that the severity of their suffering was in no way linked to their current levels of faith and hope. If anything I would almost argue that those who had suffered the most had the most hope.
Suffering is not confined to persecuted Christians, around the world hundreds of millions of people live in unspeakable circumstances and suffer a lack of food, clean water, security, a place to sleep at night, a job to go to in the day or perhaps a person to love them. Suffering comes to most of us in one way or another. But it has become clearer to me that it is not suffering that is the problem, it is what we do with it. After all Jesus himself said, ‘in the world you will have trouble, but take heart for I have overcome the world’.
Work and the Single Life
Have you ever struggled with making sense of work and the single life? Are you putting your career on hold while you wait for Mr. Right or are you wholeheartedly pursuing your calling? This month's post looks at work and the single life.
How do we hold out for our hero aka the person God has for us?
For those of us who have been waiting any decent length of time for our spouse to enter stage left, we can have periods when we feel just so tired of waiting. Periods when we may start to doubt God’s good plans for us and when we start to look around to see is there anyone, anyone vaguely suitable on the near horizon. Sometimes a person appears in our lives who we know is pretty far from what a God-loving, dependable, kind, decent, Christian man looks like, but we start to entertain romantic thoughts about them regardless, particularly if they have shown some reciprocal interest in us.
Navigating Family Relationships as a Single Person
Last year I spent nearly 30 vacation days in my home country and at the end of the year I felt more tired and discouraged about family after than I did at the beginning. So I asked the Lord to help me think about how is the family portrayed in the Bible and what can I learn from this about my own family and my expectations of them. I also asked Him how can I stay in relationship with difficult family members but not continually get hurt? And finally, what does it mean to part of the family of God and how can this help me in making sense of my biological family?
Singleness and Fulfilling the Great Commission
Have you ever thought that it would be so much easier to reach the people around for Christ if you were married? Or has it not even crossed your mind? What role should singles play in fulfilling the great commission? Do we have a role at all? if you have ever thought or wondered about this...read on!
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