Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Today...

Today I dislike my job - I don't often dislike my job, usually I love it, but today I'm don't like it very much. Maybe thats a bit strong - today I dislike several aspects of my job. Today I wished I was doing a normal 9-5 job that you forget about at the end of the day. Today I wished I did a job where a 'day off ' meant exactly what it says on the tin. Today I wished I did a job where I don't work from home - where you can't just be rung up when your not working and stressed out by a problem that affects your mood for the rest of the day. Today I wished I worked for an organisation that owned its own building, so that I didn't have to deal with people who are incompetant of booking out their buildings. Its days like today when I have to remind myself why I do my job. But when I do that I realise actually how lucky I am. Lucky that, although my job can be stessful, time consuming and difficult to switch off from at least what I'm doing has eternal significance - what a privilege. And I know that ultimately God is in control of the whole thing anyway, so really, however irritating things are, I needn't get stressed out about stuff (easier said than done!)

Friday, April 14, 2006

GOOD Friday

I've had a hectic day - I'm tired but I'm joyful - God's grace is amazing! I've spent most of the day hearing and talking about both the horrendousness of the cross - what Jesus endured for us, and the amazingness of it - what Jesus acheived for us. It is finished. God's grace is amazing and it is all we need. I've had a pretty tough week and I've had to organise two services in old peoples homes - and speak at one. Due to some unexpected things my preparation time for these services was really quite limited. I hate going into a service feeling underprepared, and thats what I did this afternoon. And what made it worse (although also great) was when I walked into the room at Hinton Grange expecting to see the usual gaggle of 4-5 elderly folk - the room was packed - you could hardly get in the door! (in fact I'm sure it was a fire hazard - if there was a fire it would've taken aaaaages to wheel all those old dears out!) however, God is nice and the service seemed to go well (one of my fav old ladies told me afterwards 'You did a lot better than I was expecting you to, dear' I'm not sure whether or not to take that as a compliment!! But that service shows the grace of God - 'Nothing in my hands I bring, onlyto your cross I cling' - I only had the cross to cling to this afternoon, I was physically and emotionally drained, I had nothing to offer but I did have the Creator of the Universe on my side, who likes to work through weakness - and I think he did! Hurrah for Jesus!

Monday, April 10, 2006

wasting 9 years to your life?

We found out at church last night that the average Briton spends 9 years of their life watching TV - 9 YEARS!! thats a lot of time hmmm ...
However, to make those 9 years worhtwhile I'd recommend signing this:
http://www.petitiononline.com/nbours01/petition.html
coz years watching Neighbours cannot be counted as wasted years!

Saturday, April 08, 2006

Middle of No-where Land

I spent the week before last in the Dordoigne (spelling?) region of France, literally the middle of nowhere, where this is one of the most frequest road signs:
Beware those cows - you just don't know what they're thinking!!
I went to visit my horse, Music (ok ok so she's not acutally mine, but I looked after her for 8 years so she feels like mine) and her owners of course. It was fab to be out riding Music again, just me, a horse and the Creator of the Universe admiring his creation (and sometimes being soaked by the rainclouds he also created!!) It was great to escape work, to realise again that God loves me as much when I'm sitting on a horse in the middle of nowhere as he does when I'm organising outreach to old people or telling Latvian students about Jesus. I don't need to be doing things to be loved by my Heavenly Daddy, I can just be and he still loves me.
And - I managed to avoid any ditches when I took Mu out in the trap - always a bonus!