It's hard to do

It's hard to do your homework
when you do not understand
and your brother's on the PS4
and will not give a hand
your Dad says it's beyond him
cos he wasnt good at school
to say the dog has eaten it
well that would not be cool
It's hard to do your homework
when your pencil lead just broke
and no-one takes you seriously
they treat you like a joke
I want to do my homework
be the best that I can be
but its hard to do your homework
when you've only just turned three.  

Dec 25th Merry Christmas

Just to say thank you to everyone who has joined me on the journey this Advent.  It is always a humbling thing to see that people are reading and sharing what I write - and it amazes me that every year there are new treasures to discover about what Jesus has done and is doing. 

 We havent managed to get to church on Christmas day for years but today we shall be going to celebrate with our church family and I have to confess its the bit I'm most looking forward to.   Yesterday at tea time Ben suddenly said ' Let's say grace!  ( we very rarely do that) and he prayed saying thank you to God for Christmas - a spontaneous outpouring of gratitude from a 12 year old for the excitement and joy which was creeping up on him by then .   This will be the first year ever that Keith will not have a parent with him to celebrate Christmas and Im sure he will feel the loss of his Mum at some point during the day and will be sad.   But regardless of circumstances, regardless of feelings, the truth is that God came.  He stayed.  He is with us and in us.  His name is powerful, His presence is mighty, His word is living and active and His spirit is gentle.  He is passionate about you and about me.  We are His.

I pray that you know and love Jesus more today than you have ever done and that in 2018 He reveals Himself to you in ways you could not imagine.
Lots of love and Merry Christmas

Caz xx

Dec 24th surprises

When was the last time you were surprised ( in a good way)?   I mean, really, truly, unexpectedly, mouth open, laugh-out-loud surprised?    It doesnt happen very often does it?  In fact I cant think of the last time I was surprised like I was yesterday.  Still reeling from the shock.

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine told me that God had told her that she was to ' give me Christmas'.   She said she wanted to give me food for Christmas lunch and buy a  couple of small gifts for the boys.   I was surprised and delighted and blessed.  So I deleted turkey from the shopping list and told her one item from each boys christmas list that I hadnt yet bought.

Yesterday she turned up with a car full of stuff for us.  Not only a whole Christmas dinner complete with veg, trifle, christmas pudding and chocolate but a massive pile of presents for all of us.  Everything beautifully wrapped.  And I have no idea what is in any of the parcels which are now under the tree.   To say I was surprised would be an understatement !

Im deeply grateful to my friend for her generosity and kindness and hard work.  Amazing that someone would do that for us.  But Im even more grateful to the God who put my name on her heart to bless me this Christmas.  I have learned something over the years - that sometimes receiving is a lot harder than giving.  You have to work quite hard at having an open hand which humbly says ' thank you' with no sense of either entitlement or wounded pride.  No looking for a hidden agenda or calculating payback.  Just acceptance.

Tomorrow we shall be opening presents.  Most of us adults will have a pretty good idea of what is coming our way.  We won't be too surprised at the toiletries and gloves and sweets and tickets to events or clothes and trinkets.  They are lovely and we will appreciate the thought which goes into each one and the love with which they are given.   But the children....... they will probably ( hopefully) receive in a slightly different way.  With squeals and shouts.  With grins and delight.  And genuine surprise.    I used to love it when the boys were smaller and they would shout things like '  Mummy! How did Santa KNOW I wanted..... ? '    I love those Youtube videos of kids receiving things they have longed for - puppies, tickets to concerts  etc.  Tears of joy and screams of unadulterated excitement.   Why do we lose that as we get older.   Why do we become so staid and polite ?  😊

God is full of surprises.   He is overflowing with gifts to give.  He knows the secret desires of our hearts and He loves us beyond measure.   If He gave us His only Son, do you really think He will hold back the job, the house, the healing, the relationship, the baby, the peace, the whatever-it-is that we need and long for??    Every good and perfect gift comes from Him.  Yes, even the box of Maltesers and the Christmas socks  🎅.  Everything under the tree, the roof over our heads and the bed in which we sleep tonight - it's all a gift.   How do you receive it all?   Thankfully with an open hand, or impatiently, critically, ungratefully, jealously ?   We all have alot to learn. 

One more blog post tomorrow as we finish for another year.  Happy Christmas Eve  xx

Dec 23rd - swaddling

I realise that these blogs haven't been terribly Christmassy this year.  Partly I think that's because Facebook is showing me all the previous years' blogs every day and I don't want to repeat myself.  partly it's because it is hard to find something new and inspirational to say about a story we all know so well.

Until......  😇

Don't you just love it when you think you have squeezed every last possible drop of Truth out of a scripture and that there is no alternative interpretation to be had and then God blows you away with yet another layer??   Well that's what happened yesterday when I read something a friend had posted on Facebook .   It was about the shepherds.

Apparently the shepherds in the nativity story weren't just any ordinary shepherds.  The guys who raised sheep in the lands around Bethlehem were tasked with providing the sacrificial lambs for the
temple in Jerusalem.  So these guys would take particular care of their flocks and as soon as the ewes were ready to give birth would lead them to some caves where they would be sheltered and safe.  There the ewes would give birth and the shepherds would asses the male lambs, picking out those which were perfect and wrapping them up in swaddling cloths so that they would not get dirty or injured.  Because the lambs which were to be presented for sacrifice had to be utterly perfect without any blemish or fault.

So when the angels appeared in the sky and told the shepherds ' and this shall be a sign to you'   - well, it really was a sign specifically for them.  A hint that only they would fully appreciate.    They were told to go and look for a baby ' wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger' .........

Jesus came as the lamb of God.  Just like the lambs which, for generations. had been born in order to be offered as a sacrifice, Jesus was born in a cave and wrapped in sheets of cloth.  He was the one who was destined to be the last sacrifice.  Once and for all.

I've read and heard about the shepherds for fifty years and never heard that before.  Yet another layer of profound meaning.  Another fascinating detail.   Just LOVE it when God shows a deeper glimpse.
As we wait patiently ( or impatiently if you are my children) for tomorrow night  and the dawning of Christmas morning let us be full of wonder at the fact that however much we think we know there is always so so SO much more of God and His story to see and understand.   Spirit of Revelation open our eyes to see even more truth and Good News from Your word this coming year.

Dec 23rd -contactless

Im not quite sure what Im going to write about as I sit here at the keyboard , but today I got the distinct impression that I needed to start with that word  CONTACTLESS

There is something about this whole new thing of contactless payment which makes me inherently uneasy.  When it was first introduced ( and it really wasnt that long ago) I shied away from tapping my card on the screen of the machine and continued to punch in my four digit code.   I didn't trust the technology somehow.  Just a feeling.  It seemed all too convenient and I have somewhere in the back of my mind the verses in Revelation about the number of the beast.  There are already people experimenting with having a chip inserted under their skin so that they can dispense with the plastic card.    Eeeeeeek.  Slippery slope?  I've spent the afternoon wondering how long I'd survive if I couldn't buy or sell.  And whether I'd succumb to having a chip under my skin as quickly as I succumbed to tapping my card contactlessly.

Anyhow, that is a bit of a distraction really - because having started down that road I began to think of the word CONTACT-LESS and what it says about our world and the way it is going.   We seem to be on a downward spiral of speed and isolation.   We want things NOW  and we dont want to have to involve anyone else in getting them.  The world is making human interaction less and less necessary.  When my Grandmother was a girl she had to walk to school or cycle everywhere.  If she needed something she went to a shop where a shopkeeper would serve her.  Slowly and with conversation.  She wrote with pencil on paper ( although she did remember using chalk on slate when she was very small) had gas lighting in her home and never went further than the edge of her town.  She

remembered HER grandmother getting the very first vacuum cleaner  - which consisted of a pair of bellows with a hose attached.  Granny as a small child had to stamp up and down like mad on the bellows whilst her grandma wielded the nozzle to suck up the dust.  This was considered the height of newfangled technology!   A hundred years ago.   And now look at us!   It probably took my great grandmother several hours to hoover her house.  It takes me twenty minutes.  And if I had the right device I could sit in a chair and let the machine do it for me automatically!!

In many ways we are so blessed that much dangerous and difficult work which we used to have to do and which killed many so young is now done by machines.  It is wonderful that we can pick up a phone and speak to someone on the other side of the world.  It is a miracle that I can write this using photographs which someone took decades ago and that tomorrow it will be being read in America and Australia.  Astounding.   But....   but.....

There is a cost.  And the cost seems to be that with the mechanisation of just about everything we are losing contact with each other.   Our local bank is about to close because people are banking online nowadays.  Yes, more conveniently no doubt.  But that's one less person I shall see throughout the course of my day now.  I wont be popping in to the bank now and then to pay in or transfer or whatever.  I won't be having that brief chat with the person at the counter.  They won't be telling me that I could perhaps be getting a better rate on my account or asking when was the last time I spoke to an advisor about my mortgage.  I wont be bumping into the friend I haven't seen for ages and going for a coffee with them.  Because I shall be at home on the laptop doing my banking.   And I suspect my life with  be just fractionally poorer because of it.

I don't want a contactless life.

I think the world is going to increasingly push me into having one.  Which means that I am going to have to try doubly hard to keep the contacts I have and make new ones.   And make REAL ones, not virtual ones !   I think Im doing quite well in that all bar 4 of the 301 friends I have on facebook are people I really do actually know in my real life. 😊   Two of the four Ive never actually met are poetry people I've ' met'  through the Poetry Forum I write for,  the other two are friends of friends and are both church folks with whom I have made specific connections.  Internet conversations are no substitute for the real thing.  Emails can't give you a hug.  Tweets can't buy you a coffee.  It is probably no coincidence that in the most technological age ever people are the loneliest they have ever been.

And even when we are with real people in real time we are sometimes not with them at all

Jesus came to make contact with us.  he came to bring us into contact with God and with each other as a family.  Interconnected .  Relational.  Dependent.  We are made in the image of a triune God - if we become disconnected, isolated and screen-bound we will become like caged animals.  Shadows of who we were designed to be.   It is not good for man to be alone.
What happens in the world is more often than not a foreshadowing of what is happening in the spiritual realm.  Let us keep watch, be careful and wise and listen to the Father in coming days as this age draws to an end and we prepare for Jesus to come back.  It's probably not going to be an easy ride.

December 21st - Hope

Yesterday morning on the way to work I was listening to Radio 4.   The show was called Soul Music and it was all about the Christmas Carol ' O Holy Night'    I only caught half of it but it was really
beautiful.  Testimonies from lots of people for whom it has been a significant song - plus some history about the writing of it ( did you know it was written during the height of the abolition of slavery movement - which makes the verse about ' the slave is our brother' pretty poignant)  Towards the end of the piece someone was talking about hope.  And they said this.

Hope is believing in spite of the evidence and then watching the evidence change.*

Isn't that just fantastic??

We talk a lot about Hope at this time of year - but I'm not sure that many of us have really got a handle on what it means. Maybe it's not possible to fully understand it this side of heaven.  But I'd like to try.

Jesus came into a situation which was dire and impossible and dreadful and hopeless.  That was the evidence.  The religious leaders looked at what they saw before them - a carpenter, a rebel, a friend of tax collectors and prostitutes and in the face of the evidence they just could not believe that He was who he said He was.   But the disciples saw the very same things and decided to stick with Jesus, follow Him, watch Him,, learn from Him and as they did so they saw the evidence change in front of their eyes.   There was a dawning realisation that everything they knew from the scriptures was actually being fulfilled in this man.   Not in the way they had been taught to expect.   But undeniably so.

Jesus is into defying expectations.   If you are disappointed with God then I can guarantee that it is not because He is a God of disappointment, but because your expectations of Him were faulty from the start.   That can be tough to accept  ( trust me; been there, done that, got the t shirt)  But the good news is if we stick with Jesus, keep following Him, keep trusting Him, keep refusing to listen to the voice of despair He will change the evidence so that Truth is revealed. 

Because He is Truth.   Truth sets us free

This is Hope.


* attributed to Jim Wallis of Sojurners.  Google him  :)

Dec 20th - Just do it

This is very short and sweet.  Or bittersweet, depending on how you look at it 😊

The other evening I went round various bedrooms and gathered up the cups and plates etc which had mysteriously assembled there.  I wasn't planning on going back downstairs so I left them at the top of the staircase so that the next person who went down would take them to the kitchen.  The following morning the four wonderful men in my life all got up before I did.  They all went downstairs.  Then they all came upstairs again to brush their teeth, get their school bags, find their car keys etc.  Then they went downstairs again and got into the car.  Then someone forgot something and came in from the car, upstairs, downstairs and then they all left.  And yes, you've guessed it.  When I got up, there were the plates and cups still sitting at the top of the stairs.

And as I looked at them and said out loud '  How hard is it to see stuff which needs to go down and actually take it down??!!'  I felt God speak to me clear as day and say '  And how many things do you' not see' or choose to ignore or leave till later ?'.    He meant God things.  I got the point.

God sometimes -  often -  daily sets things out for us to trip over.  Blessings to enjoy, projects to undertake, people to talk to, words to impart, prayers to pray.  And so often we walk past, don't follow the nudge, take the hint, hear the prompting.  Or we think the next person will do it.  Or we think maybe it will wait for later. Or, or or......

So today, your challenge should you wish to accept it, is to actively look out for the thing God wants you to do or say.... and just do it.