Interrupt

P 3144 James 1:3-4

/ DVH

I understand if you think of this blog as something that daily talks about the Word, however, today, I want to talk about finding fun in annoying things. I have mentioned before that hubby and I suddenly find ourselves in fits of laughter for good reasons – as well as totally inexplicable ones. Not just a smile, or a giggle, but-wiping-your-eyes-because-you-laughed-so-much-you-cried – laughter! In case you are thinking, ‘lucky you,’  I also want to reassure you that it doesn’t happen all the time… I wake up grumpy too! Should have let him sleep. That’s a joke, right?

Whatever! So I thought I would share a couple of the things that have happened to us recently that seem to have contributed to these laughing fits! I bought a gizmo – it needs batteries, gizmos always need batteries – it’s from Temu. Please, no letters explaining to me that I shouldn’t buy anything from overseas, I should buy from here. That thought is because of our economy … I get it. But it’s cheap, we can afford it, and most of the time, the stuff is great. 

Let’s just dispense with all that supposition and go back to…I bought this gadget. Our beloved dog loves to bark. She’s a sweetie, she wouldn’t hurt a fly, and is utterly cheerful about life. Even though she is over 13 years old. She still jumps around like a puppy. In the dictionary under enthusiasm, it shows her picture! But she loves to inform everyone within earshot, that this is her house, she lives here and you’d better stay out. Then the dopey dog wags her tail!

Back to the gizmo, which I like to call a ‘persuader’ … it emits a high pitched sound that supposedly dogs hate. I should only have to use it for a few seconds, because it is designed to interrupt the dog’s instant reaction. Her “see danger tell you about it”  instinct. Please note the words – supposedly and should! Hmmm. Maybe she’s deaf. She IS old! But currently she sleeps right through the you-beaut dog persuader. Whatever it is that dogs are meant to  hear, she doesn’t hear it.. Ho-hum! 

SO! I had another thought. My not-so-wunnerful-friend the mina bird is still bugging the daylights out of me whenever I sit down to write my blog. I’ve taken to singing “Sing a song of Sixpence, a pocket full of rye. Four and twenty black birds, baked in a pie!” whenever I am around these pesky birds. In the desperate hope that they might take the hint.

It is entirely possible that we have the wrong kind of birds in our garden – these birds obviously arrived on earth hint-free. My nursery rhyme attempt does not make an impression – it’s a bit like the dog really. Maybe the noisy minas think my singing doesn’t apply to them, because they know they are not blackbirds! Mo-v-ing on … Guess what! I had another brilliant idea! 

The U-beaut $14 gizmo does not work on my doggie, but perhaps it will work on those pesky birds! So today I sat and pressed the button a-n- d  … … they kept on squawking. I thought to myself, perhaps I should press it longer …I probably need to give it a good go …!  Nuthin’ happened here – except they got more vocal and louder. So I literally leant on it for a few minutes a time.

Maybe they thought I was some sort of musical accompaniment for all that  twerping and chirping?  It’s a thought, OK? Sadly the outcome was obvious from the beginning. I’m still writing this blog and I’ve just wasted 10 minutes trying to shut-up the noisy mina birds taunting and teasing me outside my front door. And don’t tell me it’s not personal because they fly away the minute I’ve finished the blog!

Sigh. When you open the door they also fly away … in an arc… only to come back again and land in the same place. It seems we have set up some sort of game!  It’s like an old black and white movie comedy scene – except I end up feeling murderous. I can’t pray, I can’t write, I’m firmly ensconced in bird-interrupting-your-thoughts land. So I told hubby about it. I thought: ‘Men like to solve things!’ Give them a problem and they are happy – meanwhile don’t BE the problem because then they are NOT happy… that’s another subject for another day.

Now my darling husband has taken to sneaking across the lounge floor, and remaining motionless beside the glass doors … waiting for his moment to persuade the birds to go elsewhere. Lucky me! Now I have RAMBO living at my house! Minus the torn bit of material tied around his head! Instead, hubby has a plastic super-soaker instead of a proper machine gun… more’s the pity! Day by day, there he is silently stalking his prey, waiting … waiting … suddenly he jumps up, flings open the door and aims his trusty.. … wait for it – water pistol …at the bird!

The bird is long gone by the time he arrives outside the door … but, he assures me, he has hit it with water twice. FYI, It didn’t hurt the bird, it couldn’t wait to begin again! The minute I stop writing my blog, or praying, the bird is gone. Yes, seriously!! It has taken me a while to realise that perhaps this is a demonically inspired bird. Sigh. I suspect that all that twerping and chirping for weeks, has muddled my brain. At least I practise what I say — I’ve been stuck on ‘help, help please Lord,’ for the past hour and a half! 😡 

BTW I found a verse … you knew I would! God bless James! 1:3-4. “…for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” There’s that ‘let’ word again! Bye.👋

P 3136 Let’s soar like eagles …

/ DVH

…not just waddle about like ducks. Yeah, I know! You are probably sleek and fit … but I am not!  Waddling, BTW, gets harder to eliminate as you slide into old age. However, this life is a gift, so let’s not waste a minute of it. Even our daily experiences count — good or bad – after all some people didn’t wake up this morning. Back to soaring with Jesus ….!!!

This translation of the Lord’s prayer was so beautiful I wanted to include it on today’s page. I often find a new translation is like discovering an old, much treasured friend, from an entirely new perspective. Please bless the people who take the time who give us those new perspectives, Lord! Amen.

“Pray like this: ‘Our Beloved Father, dwelling in the heavenly realms, may the glory of Your Name be the centre on which our lives turn. Manifest Your kingdom realm, and cause Your every purpose to be fulfilled on earth, just as it is in heaven. We acknowledge You as our Provider of all we need each day. Forgive us the wrongs we have done as we ourselves release forgiveness to those who have wronged us. Rescue us every time we face tribulation and set us free from evil. For You are the King who rules with power and glory forever. Amen.” Matthew 6:9-13 TPT.

I love the fact that the disciples owned up to not knowing how to pray, and so they asked Jesus to show them how to do it. His deep abiding love for our Heavenly Father comes through this prayer above all else. Please note – as we learn to live in His kingdom – He manifests it in us, and around us. We really do need to take the pressure off and enjoy what we’ve been given, because daily we want to see the Lord at work in our lives, just like the disciples did. The bible says: “We can do nothing without Him,” and why on earth would we want to try to do this stuff by ourselves? After all “His ways are perfect…” mine are often self-centred and based around comfort!

The Lord is meant to be the absolute centre of our lives. But the idea of giving my whole life to Jesus was so scary that I would not even entertain the thought. Actually I was kind of glad that this particular way of life seemed to belong to a few, far more important and gifted people than me. They all knew how to do this stuff wa-ay better than I did. And when I did reflect on it I thought, what would Jesus want me to do? What would He take away from me? What would I have to stop doing? Yeah! I had trusting God issues – big time! I suspect I may not be the only one to be like that either.

So, let’s look at this part of that prayer…’may the glory of Your name be the centre on which our lives turn.’ Amen. Otherwise this life shoves its way into our thinking processes very forcefully. This world insists, it demands, and elbows its way into our every thought – pushing aside our good intentions, our desires and even our voluntary participation in His way of living. Daily we face all kinds of interruptions and intrusions. When we go to an ordinary place like the supermarket, we are unpleasantly surprised and whacked in the hip-pocket with prices that are not constant. How do you glorify God in that? Repent a lot, without becoming obsessive about it.

Here’s my further insight into that particular issue …trust Him with everything, even the mundane things, like the shopping. Something that ordinary can be an opportunity to see the Lord work and build our faith. The very best thing we can do is to see our money as His money. Our view of our own daily life will change when He’s in charge. Seeing the Lord as‘our Provider’ is so appropriate, as one day rolls along and follows another. These seemingly little things are the moments we live for Him — by thanking Him, and prayerfully looking for His input everywhere in our lives.  

A sentence in this prayer, talks about releasing forgiveness. It is so easy say the words ‘I forgive you’ but do we complete those words by actually releasing forgiveness through us toward the other person? Forgiveness contains within it enough Grace for everyone to change! Saying it is one thing, releasing is entirely another. Doing that captures the spirit of what Jesus illustrated in front of us, in His book, day by day. It is like breathing in and out. That air we breathed IN is now gone, because we’ve let it go and moved on to the next breath. I think holding onto even the memories of injuries and sins against others is a little like holding our breath and hoping the other guy turns blue first!.  

I constantly need rescuing from what I’ve said or done, or even my reactions to unexpected things that interrupt my thinking. This week we have had an insistent mina bird sitting right outside the house, right where I am typing and editing the blog inside! A few feet away. I confess I have thought murderous thoughts toward that bird! What a racket it keeps making. The Lord’s help in such a tiny thing is essential. BTW, I don’t wait for an emergency or interruption – I’ve learnt to ask for His help, all the time.

We have this incredible access, this life-style of love, only because Jesus is our King, and God is our Heavenly Father. And we know that the Holy Spirit will guide us through everything. We want to transform the way we interact with difficulties and blessings, pleasure and pain. Hopefully that means we can all soar like an eagle, not waddle like a duck – or be at the mercy of an endlessly squawking mina bird! Bye. 👋

P 2832 Get ready to be stretched.

/ DVH

Years ago, a young fellow who had no family and would have been all alone for Christmas, joined us for Christmas lunch.  And when he started in on his third helping of a heaped plate, we started to suspect something was amiss. In those days we didn’t know a lot about the munchies, but the evidence spoke for itself, so we sort of kind of figured it out. The sad part was his everyday behaviour was often all over the place, even though he was part of the leadership team, yet nobody had ever noticed that this poor kid was hooked on Marijuana!

Did you know that in Proverbs 11:25, it says: “A generous person will prosper; Whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.” Today I want to present what I think could be an interesting idea. Ask someone who lives a lonely life, to Christmas lunch. Have you ever prayed: “Lord please show me something I can do for You?” Well, asking someone you don’t know very well to join you and your family for lunch at this time of the year could open a door to deeper relationships and possibilities, and it just might stretch you … all at the same time. Plus, bonus buy, everyone could make a new friend.

Over the years our family has learnt to have an elastic house. One year a young person slept on a fold-away-bed in our lounge, because his family had chucked him out. This dear young man could break things better than a compactor, but he was the most sweetly natured person. Eventually, after he left us, he matured, he married and now he is a plumber. Only heaven knows why his folks chucked him out – he was a great kid! Having him live with us was totally inconvenient, we lived in a tiny cottage, and we had to move his bed whenever we wanted to watch TV!  Plus at that time I was as sick as I could be. The immediate years post-liver transplant were not fun. But helping out people who were virtually homeless brightened up all our lives. Living an extra-ordinary life is challenging, but the rewards outweigh the negative bits. Especially retrospectively. 🤣

The thing we’ve noticed is that we can’t afford to let our own circumstances, govern our generosity. Back then, our lives were made so much richer by the people who came to live with us … even at the worst of physical and financial times – by God’s Grace we all managed. Father God is not trying to interrupt our carefully planned existence … He wants to enrich us. Other people and their unusual ways of thinking, being, and doing, will stretch us and bring us out into that bigger place mentioned in Isaiah 54:2.“Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes.”

We can pray that scripture for ourselves, and then wait for Him to do it for us until we are blue in the face, but the truth is, WE must learn to stretch our tents open and take risks… It is blatantly obvious that this kind of stuff is supernaturally natural, because Jesus Himself told us that when we do these things:“…for the least of these…”we are doing them for Him! Hands up anyone who wants to minister to the Lord? OK, you have your instructions. 

Just settle in your heart that it will be inconvenient, and put stuff away if you don’t want it broken! Actually, the surest way to discover the things that we are unreasonably attached to, is to have someone else break them! I learnt that the hard way!!  BUT … no matter what, we cannot lose, because of what we win… “Everything … everything … EVERYTHING … works together for our good, … for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose.”

His purpose is to find willing vessels to fill with the Holy Spirit’s love and power! He doesn’t need experts — Jesus Himself chose ordinary  fishermen, a taxman, a former prostitute to be His followers  I mean, did you ever ask yourself Who taught Peter to speak like he did  in the book of Acts? The Holy Spirit did! The Lord is not looking for perfection – He doesn’t have to, He already is!

Like I said before, we will have to stretch ourselves to find His purpose for our lives. Remember, Jesus was homeless,  because there was no room at the inn. To me that means that you will never know who you could be taking in! Maybe a homeless angel, or a lost kid whose life was so painful he had to smoke his way through it. 

I think the poor are so poor, they have no time or energy for pretending, they are simply trying to survive. From a distance, it is easy to be put off by how they look … but God sees people clearly, He knows exactly who they are. We’ve found that poor people don’t need to be convicted of sin, when they are confronted with His Loving holiness, they know. The poor are easier to save than middle class people who think they are mostly pretty OK. 

Christianity is neither a hobby or a part-time job … it’s a life well lived. It’s a life lived the way Jesus would live it. I exhort you to begin to stretch your home and take in someone who might have Christmas dinner alone – or maybe even a bed for somebody who needs a safe place to sleep. That’s the way to get elastic houses. Bye. 👋