Thoughts beside the seaside

By Carol Thompson

We are reaching the end of May and I just know summer is about to start!!!

Soon we will be complaining that its too hot and we could do with a shower of rain. Don't even joke I hear you say....

Oh ladies I just know you are like me and you are truly longing for a good summer. The sunshine puts everyone in a better mood and let's face it we are so overdue a bit of sunburn! So I am being totally optimistic that the lazy days of summer are at the end of the next week's forecast and soon we will have our buckets and spades on the beach.

'Oh I do love to be beside the seaside' (yes, sing along... It's hard to resist)

You may or may not know that I am not from the North Coast and known as one of those 'blow ins'!! I am from good old Tyrone but for as far back as I can remember to my earliest childhood, my happiest days were spent on Castlerock beach. I have so many cute photos of my sister and me in pretty 'teeny weeny poker dot bikinis'.. But those days for me are so over!!  I now shop in the aisle that says 'control swimwear'... Are you with me sisters????

But when I think of how God in all His goodness mapped out my life by providing me with my own home, job, church, amazing friends in the place that always put a smile on my face, it just blows me away.

' For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future'.  Jeremiah 29 v 11.

My city girlfriends are so green that I live a mile from the beach and have the luxury to go when I want to walk the beach and feel the wind in my hair, (even though my hair is short!!) and maybe because I didn't grow up here and it was always a luxury to get to the beach, I do feel totally blessed to live here.

My home is full of the many treasures that I have found on the beach, as I have a weakness for shells and pebbles. The last day I walked the beach with my sister she had great entertainment watching me pick up pretty shells and smooth pebbles. She was going to buy me a bucket as I had not changed from my childhood days (little does she know I have one!!).

But the greatest treasure I find on the beach that draws me back time and time again, is being in God's presence. I feel so close to the Creator and find pleasure in the wonders of His handy work.

'Honor and enjoy your Creator while you're still young'.      Ecclesiastes 12 v 1 (MSG)

The sea looks different each time I visit, with its different moods and colours. As I breath in that salty air, I feel the stress of the day lift off my shoulders.

If I go down to the beach for a walk on my own, I will have my iPod in my ears playing worship songs, singing along and yes lifting my hands to Him. (I generally make sure no one is behind me, but if you have heard me squawking, I do apologise!!)

I never get tired with watching or listening to the sea and love nothing more than watching the waves crashing against the rocks.

Thoughts beside the Seaside

The waves pounding on the beach sounds like the voice of God saying over and over again, 'I love you, I love you', reminding you how precious you are to Him.

The tides which wash the beach clean, reassures you that all sins can be washed away and buried in the depths of the ocean.

The crashing waves demonstrate God's mighty power, how He created all things and is in complete control.

When the waves lap gently on to a sun- warmed beach it is as if He were caressing you and warming you with His love.

                                                                                                                                      

Words by Maud Steele.

When the sun shines on the sea it looks so beautiful by making it sparkle and shine, it looks so inviting. It is truly looking its best.

When Jesus, God's Son shines through and on us, we too look beautiful. We can sparkle and shine for Him showing others His love.

So ladies, I lovingly wish you a summer of warm lazy days with the smell of a sausage cooking on the BBQ. Happy memories of making sand castles with your buckets full of pebbles and shells and plenty of lovely walks with special friends.

But more so my prayer for you would be, that when you are on the beach feeling the sand between your toes and breathing in that salty air, you will experience amazing God moments.

Moments that you can capture from the waves, His never ending love for you,

Moments that you can allow Him to wash away your pain and hurt with the tide,

Moments that you will know His strength and power for the courage you need,

Moments that you can leave the beach glistening and sparkling for Him.

Hope to see you there!!

A Surprising Turn In The Road!

By Hilary Wood

So... the scene begins a little over a year ago, full steam ahead to Redding, California to attend the School of Supernatural Ministry, or so I thought!  I was so desperate to go and after two previous attempts to get a visa I thought that this was my time! But, it wasn’t meant to be and I got rejected again.

I journeyed deeply into sadness and doubt of whether I had actually heard God clearly before as I so thought He had told me to go. I was baffled as to what was next as I had given up my job to attend the school. I knew that I was being led to a ministry type school somewhere but I had no clue where...

Then, in May, God unleashed the crazy, beautiful creativity that only He could think of via Songs of Praise!!!

My friend’s Dad (who never usually watches it) was watching the program one Sunday evening and it happened to be the same evening that Kathryn Scott was on, walking around Hope and Gloria! From that moment on I was captivated! 

I immediately contacted Causeway Coast Vineyard to see if there was a course that I could attend and to enquire as to what the shop was all about!

So I went through an interview and got a place on the Encounter School of Mission and was to be the first Women’s Ministry intern!! Even now it blows my mind looking back to where God has led me and I often can’t believe I am in Northern Ireland!

By the middle of August I was driving up to Liverpool from Cornwall to get the boat across to Northern Ireland, feeling as though I was in a whirlwind and not wholly sure as to what the year was going to look like!

As I approach the end of my year here, wondering what the future holds, I have been reflecting a lot on what it has all meant to me and all the ways I have been transformed both through my internship and Encounter!

It has definitely been an amazing, life changing year where I have been stretched beyond what I thought possible or comfortable with. But in hindsight it has been the most amazing, beautiful healing time with a safe place to learn and develop. With giants of the faith surrounding me and cheering me on helping me to walk into who He created me to be.

Both CCV and Hope and Gloria are definitely incubators of life and dreams, a safe place which have allowed and encouraged me to be the colourful person He created me to be. Realising that I have so much to give and bring to those around me! Then being able to enable others to also walk into their unique calling and identity, helping them to realise they are allowed to be them!

 

I have really learnt that God loves to work within the unexpected. When things were not going the way I had hoped and dreamed for, His plan all along was to bring me to a place where he has wiped away my tears and healed up my hurts from the past. But more importantly I had to choose to not live in sadness and disappointment anymore. I have learnt that it is so important to trust Him in all things, give Him space to move and work through the often uncomfortable hurt parts of your life and He will do beautiful things out of it. 

It has taken me 33 years to come to a place where it’s sinking in that God likes how He created me to be and created me for a unique purpose... I am royalty, I bring hope and I’d better start living like it!!

It’s been a crazy ride, but an awesome life giving place to be!

Simplicity

By Lee Millen

I’ve always been attracted to simplicity.  There’s something about it that is so….. simple!  

In fact, I am so attracted to simplicity that I married my husband on the basis of his simple-ness!  Don’t get me wrong, he is extremely clever and never ceases to amaze me with his ability to understand anything and remember everything (which can also be highly annoying at times!) but it is because he is refreshingly easy to work out.  I appreciate this about him, like I appreciate the simplicity of turning a TV on with the push of 1 button.  There have been times when I have had to phone my husband to ask him how to turn our TV on (a task that requires 3 remote controls and the pushing of 4 buttons).  

I struggle with overcomplicated instructions, with too many details, with unnecessary stuff, with excess.   My home is ordered to the point that every item has its place (including my husband and children sometimes!!) and I get satisfaction from that.  I’m not a minimalist, but I enjoy being uncluttered –it brings my head calmness and peace that an otherwise busy working day erodes away.

 

My pursuit of simplicity follows me to the realm of social media and networking (this and the fact that I am a ‘slight’ technophobe).  I don’t twitter or tweet.  I have no idea what MySpace is other than in the context of ‘uh-humm, darling that is my space for my perfume, please leave your aftershave in its allocated space’.  I am not fussed with Facebook and I definitely don’t blog! 

I like the basics.  I don’t hoard.  I love up-cycling, recycling, re-using, re-purposing.  I’m a homemade kind of girl.  I don’t over-consume.  Or at least I thought I didn’t until a friend gave me a book.  Now I can’t think straight and straight has always been my friend – I like straight and now I can’t find it.  The book is based on an experimental mutiny against excess and its observations are cluttering my head and I can’t handle it.  I DON’T DO CLUTTER!! 

  

The reality is I have SO much.  I am a consumer through and through.  I have far more than I ever need.  In fact, I rarely need.  I mostly want.  

My basic needs are always met on a daily basis.  My kitchen cupboards are stocked and my wardrobe is full (even when ‘I have nothing to wear’).  Before I got married I could fit my worldly possessions into the back of a car.  Now, my possessions fill a 2-storey house, 2 sheds and a playhouse, all of which I also own.  

Really, compared to my contemporaries, this is very normal. In fact when I compare myself to my contemporaries I believe I don’t have enough.  But what if I compared myself to the 80% of the world’s population who live on 20% of the world’s resources (I currently reside with the 20% of the world’s population who consume 80% of the world’s resources).  I am well within the top 10% of the worlds wealthiest.  Can’t be true, but when you consider that half the global population lives on less than £1.29 a day, I really am rich.

Now there’s this growing tension within that won’t go away.  I look at Jesus and see a man who portrayed a simple life which was marked by under-consumption.  Yet, when I look at the same Jesus, I see a man that was also marked by extreme generosity.  Can radical simplicity live in harmony with radical generosity?  The simple (and we all know I love simple) answer is yes, it can.  Jesus did it, lived it, and modelled it.  We have our perfect example to follow.  

He even states it clearly for us:

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  (Matthew 6:19-21)

What is my treasure?  Is it my possessions, my clothes, my wealth, my time, my family, my God?  If so, then that’s where my heart is.   I heard this not so long ago: ‘If you want to know the condition of your heart before God, then simply look at where your money is going.’  Fortunately, I grew up with a very generous earthly father and I have a ridiculously generous husband, both of whom I have learnt so much about being generous.   I trust my heavenly Father implicitly, so there’s no need to strive for the accumulation of belongings.  He provides.  Always.  When you trust God, He takes you on the most incredible adventure.  It is true when Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 9:11 ‘You will be made rich in every way SO that you can be generous on every occasion’ (emphasis mine!)

Don’t get me wrong, I am not encouraging a spirit of poverty (although sometimes there’s a lesson in the less).  We belong to the most generous, abundant Father who delights in lavishing us with good gifts.  Sometimes we struggle with this more, feeling that we are not worthy of such attention from the King of Kings.  It can be so mind-blowingly hard to get my head around the truth that the God of the Universe wants to shower me with so many good things, that I find it easier to just obtain them for myself!

 So, here’s my challenge…I want to make room in my life (in my time, in my family, in my home, in the work of my hands, in my spending) to allow God the opportunity to lavish me with His goodness and generosity.   I want to simplify areas in my life so that I can know His greatness more.  Then, I simply want to share it!  As He enriches me in every way, I want to grow in being generous in every way.  After all, we are blessed to be a blessing (Genesis 12:2-3).

It’s easy to quote Bible verses and carry on unchanged.  Not this time.  This time the penny has dropped……out of my hand and into another’s.  Let’s face it, when considering a breath-taking life of generosity, our finances must feature.  Simple. 

So to finish, here is an extract from the book that shook my mind, heart and purse.  The book is called 7 by Jen Hatmaker.  I dare you to read it and not be messed up.

“While it is easy to become paralysed by the world’s suffering and the inequalities created by corruption and greed, we actually hold immense power for change, simply by virtue of our wealth and economic independence.  Because we decide where our money goes.  Never has so much wealth been so concentrated; our prosperity is unprecedented.  If enough of us decided to share, we would unleash a torrent of justice to sweep away disparity, extreme poverty, and hopelessness.

The world is waiting.  Our kids are watching.  Time is wasting.

Are we willing?”

I am.  Are you?

Treasure

By Heidi Scrimgeour

From her blog 30 April 2013

http://onefeistymama.wordpress.com/

It’s been a while since I’ve written like this, and it feels as though I’ve forgotten how.

I’ll spare you the self-absorbed monologue about how writing about private stuff in the public domain makes me squirm, though, and just say this.

My kid had an operation today. Nothing major, and so ‘routine’ that it barely warrants mentioning – not least when there are kids the world over waking up tomorrow with life-limiting conditions.

But it’s moments like today that draw you up short and make you remember that you’re alive – actually actively engaged in the precarious business of living, with all the risk and hope that hangs in that balance.

I didn’t cry today, even though I felt like it. I dug deep and found a reserve of strength for my boy’s sake.

“Stay strong and plaster that smile on for the patient,” wrote a new-found / long-lost friend in the last email I read before we left for the great hospital adventure this morning, and it anchored something in me and reminded me that I can ‘do’ strong when it’s required of me. When it matters.

But afterwards when it was all over and I was satiating my tired soul by surfing my favourite blogs I suddenly found myself caught off-guard by someone else’s words, and a small, startled sob escaped without my permission. But in that moment of unanticipated emotion all the day’s worries slipped their moorings and finally sailed out to sea.

This is what I read:

I spent the evening last night in Brett’s hospital room.  We sat side by side, watched T.V., passed the baby back and forth and didn’t say a whole lot to each other, but the anxiety for today’s events was palpable.  Before I left, I felt the need to say something important, so I asked him if he wanted me to pray.  
“I will,” he answered. 
We don’t really “pray” out loud a lot together other than our holiday meal grace, the first mile safety prayer of our summer road trips and the “thank you” prayer that’s whispered on the evening of our babies’ births.
But last night’s prayer is one I will never forget. We huddled together while Brett whispered some simple and honest words that spelled out a love letter for our family. 
I know there will be hardships in life.  Sometimes I think I prepare for them almost too much–like I’m silly and naive if I enjoy the comforts of life without making mental notes about how it could be different.  That’s not the definition of gratitude though.  The best way to prepare for those moments when they come–and they will–is to focus on the present.  To love everyone around us as best as we know how.  

Yes, this. Exactly. Tonight’s gratitude for an op gone well could so easily have been something much more somber. But in the joy that comes with a happy ending let me not lose the awareness that not every day will end like this one. Harder times will come; loss of all sorts is written into the source code of all life. But it’s in the moments when hardship feels so palpably close – within touching distance – that I am most viscerally reminded that all of life is a ‘gift’. Sometimes you can’t see treasure until you get a glimpse of what it would feel like to have it stolen.

And I will remember this: Our boys at the dinner table last night clinging worldlessly to one another with an iron grip. They call each other names and sometimes treat each other with contempt, but a heartfelt man-hug between two brothers sincerely sorry to be spending the day separated by surgery is a picture that paints a thousand, million words.

I’m glad I got to see it. But gladder still that they’ll be back to kicking each other underneath the table by breakfast time tomorrow.