If I had lived in Yugoslavia in the 90s, where my parents often took their foreign holidays in those days, then me and my son would have been shot by Ratko Mladic’s men as were all the men and boys in the town he massacred, and my wife and daughter would be alive today without us, as are all the women in that town from the 90s.
Who says the world doesn’t need to be FoundbyGod.
May 28th, 2011 | 1 Comment »
I noticed a shower of seedlings growing in my gravel path. Above them in the border was a foxglove plant. It seems that last year, showers of seeds must have been dropped onto the path unseen and unknown by me. They were now coming up as live plants, lots of them.
As I reflected I heard God say, your life is having an unseen and unknown effect on the world and the people around you. It takes a while before any effect is realised but in time and in this case a year, new life grows from your life.
I felt validated, authenticated. I heard God speak again saying, watch where you put your feet. Don’t go stamping around on the tiny plantlets or you will crush the new life. My sense was to be careful of what’s happening around my life, treading carefully looking for what God was doing rather than what I can do.
It takes yet another year before a foxglove seedling will flower. The best living takes time. Found byGod in the past, present and future.
May 26th, 2011 | No Comments »
There are some things in my life I would like to be changed, especially the way I think sometimes. My thoughts take me to places I don’t really want to be, saying things I didn’t want to say, doing things I didn’t want to do, and I wonder how I got there.
I have a plant on my desk and it’s growing leaning towards the window light. In order to straighten it up I’ve turned it around. I thought I saw it straighten a little but that was my imagination. But then a voice says ‘yeah it has already begun to straighten. As the light hit it so the plant responded by putting in the growth to straighten. Imperceptively small but come back tomorrow and then next week as you will see the change’.
I know that as I turn my life to face God (in whatever way works for me) imperceptible changes will take place and over time, if I continue and if I look, I will see that I am changing. Here I am in my infirmity FoundbyGod.
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May 11th, 2011 | No Comments »
Sometimes I think I’m drowning by consent. I entertain issues in my heart and mind that are not good for me. I know they are not good for me yet I’m drawn to them like a moth to light. I allow my mind to go on excursions of thought wasting time and energy unnecesarily. The result is impatience, intolerance, and weakness to do the right thing.
Then my daily routine clicks in. I have my reflective journalling time in the morning and God brings everything back into line, fishing me out the water again and into his life. And I am again FoundbyGod
April 29th, 2011 | No Comments »
I am provoked all the time by all sorts of things. Circumstances provoke me to react. People provoke me to react. My own tiredness or impatience provokes me to react.
All I know is that whenever I do react I always lose a measure of life. Some provocations are to pleasure, most are towards protection or defending myself.
Sometimes I resist reacting when provoked. I am able to stand and watch and wait. Everytime I do this I am FoundbyGod who comes in the space and provides a response that creates life out of death. Just like Easter where provocation was resisted and life came from death.
I don’t have to have my way and react to provocation I could wait and be foundbyGod and have his way. Which always creates life and restores.
April 22nd, 2011 | No Comments »
No rain for many weeks now and it’s April. Things are dying through lack of water. New things are not growing.
It seems that for nature to live and grow it needs a constancy of water and sunshine. In the same way I am seeing that constancy is important in relationship. I need to bring a constant supply of love into my relationships. A love that cares, remembers and serves. Out of this love, affection and intimacy grows. But I can only give out of what I have. Where can I get a constant supply of love.
God so loved the world that he gave his only son that who so ever allows himself to be loved constantly by God will have an endless and eternal love and a life to go with it. The reason we can’t give love is because we just don’t have it. Yeah it’s Easter. I must remember that I can live in God’s love every day and be FoundbyGod.
April 20th, 2011 | No Comments »
I am experiencing pleasure through things and people and circumstances. There are some wonderful things available today for me to enjoy and I’m blessed to have some great people in my life. My circumstances are very pleasurable in that I get to work at something I love.
And yet strangely the same things can run me down, steal life from me, entrap me, breakdown my life.
The difference between entrapment and pleasure is the way I experience the things and people and circumstances of my days. As I receive their pleasures as a gift given repeatedly to me, consumed by me, becoming part of my psychological and physical wellbeing so I am strengthened. As I seek to posess any of these, so they posess me. As I hold onto them and revere them to create future pleasures rather than receiving the daily pleasures created for me by God through them, so I am trapped in bondage by the same things.
Holding the things of this life intimately and lightly I am FoundbyGod.
April 16th, 2011 | No Comments »
Reading currently about illusions. Apparently we spend a lot of our time living in illusions that will never happen. We create ideas about the future, who I will become, who I will be with, what I will own next, where I will go. Our thoughts wander through these coridoors endlessly exploring the future and drawing some pleasure from the experience.
I’m not talking about having hopes and dreams, they are essential, I’m talking about hours and hours, days, weeks months and years, lived in an illusion world that will never happen. The things from our illusions that do happen are soon replaced by new illusions.
The big problem here is that the life immediatly in front of us is not seen for the beauty and pleasure that it is. We don’t see and value the people and place where we are. Illusional living eventually brings constant disillusionment. We are disilusioned and blind to the life, people and place so obviously in front of us. God finds us where we are, not in some other illusional place, and if we’re not in, how can we be FoundbyGod and live the life.
April 13th, 2011 | No Comments »
Heard a great talk on drift. When on holiday you go for a dip in the sea you mark in your mind where your group are on the beach and go in there. When you come out however they are not there, they are some distance down the beach. Sometimes so far you can’t see them.
I have certain things in my life that are important to me that I have to maintain. My physical and mental health, my faith in God. Unless I attend to these things every day, I drift. Some times I drift so far that my inattention to health precipitates back aches and ignoring mental health results in ongoing anxiety that leads to headcolds. Losing sight of God means life is down to what I can cobble together which is deathly depressive. It seems that when I don’t take responsibility for my body, mind and spirit I just naturally drift into dis-ease.
I know the way back to good living. Daily reflection on my faith, exercise for my body and relaxation routines for my psych. It’s harder to get back to good living than to stay there but at least I know the way back. The bible calls this repentance and in this I am FoundbyGod
April 7th, 2011 | No Comments »
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Heard a great talk on satiety called the satiety index. It seems that the things we engage in to satisfy or satiate ourselves become the things we want more of.
The problem is that anything that satiates will create a need for more of the same and the satisfying effect gets weaker so we need more. We become obsessive mushroom hunters looking for the the next thing to entertain us.
Strangely, and it only works if you try it, reading the bible actually satifies the soul, not through entertainment but through feeding the soul with life. You have to try it to see if it works, who knows we may be FoundbyGod here.
more can be found at
www.hopevineyard.co.uk go to teaching audio
March 31st, 2011 | No Comments »