Don’t you love getting post? Not the kind that pings onto a screen, the real kind, that surprises you as it drops through the letterbox, the kind that you can hold in your hand. I recently had surgery, and suddenly was blessed with a flurry of post: cards, flowers, clothes, books and of course, plenty…
Category: Reflections
Praise for (Small Things)
Praise for the crescent moon that hung low in the blanket-dark sky. Praise for the first warmth of Spring and a chair on a beach, Praise for the families that clambered across sand and rocks, jumpers and blankets piled up, dogs and children never still, like the breeze. Praise for the abandoned sandcastle, shell on…
My Prayer for this Year
At the beginning of the year, I wrote about my hopes and prayers for it, about what I wanted to learn and how I wanted to live in 2016. You can read the full post here. I wrote: … I’ve been thinking about how there’s always something new going on, inside us and around us. I’ve…
Coffee
The other day I found a great blog on the website of Christian charity, Compassion UK. The blog shows people and communities in some of the countries they work in and some of the issues they face in a very positive, uplifting way. I loved the video (here) of the Ethiopian coffee ritual, and it…
The Grace
I’m working on a book at the moment about how the Bible is relevant and uplifting in my day-to-day modern life. It’s a bit like a journal showing how different Bible verses have impacted me. I shared an extract a while ago, here. Last week I was at home a lot and added several chapters…
All you need is Love…
Happy Valentine’s Day! I don’t hold much value in the consumerist version of Valentine’s Day, but I do love an opportunity to celebrate, whatever the reason. At its best, Valentine’s Day can be a time to celebrate love in all its guises, the gift of family and friends and the uniqueness of each person. At its worst,…
For the Love of Words
For me, there’s something about putting life into words. I love the process of translating the nuances of emotion and experience into language, allowing it all to cover a page or a screen. Writing helps me to live my life with a sense of engagement. We’re all finding ways to tell our stories and make sense of them,…
A Prayer for 2016
One of the things I love about the Psalms in the Bible is the way they help me find the words for my own prayers. The rest of the Bible does, too, but especially the Psalms. They are deep, very human expressions of all kinds of emotions, questions, desires, troubles and joys. In them, the…
2015: Best Posts
Happy New Year! I hope you are enjoying the last day of 2015 🙂 Looking back over the posts from the year is perhaps a little introspective, but it gives me a good insight into what’s been popular or has struck a chord with all you lovely readers. Here are ten of the most popular posts…
New Year: JOY
I feel increasingly that 2016 will be my year to focus on JOY. Joy? Joy? Really? Yep, joy. Where is the place for joy in today’s messed up world? As Ann Voskamp writes so eloquently (here), ‘how in the world does a weary world rejoice?’ How, indeed. You know, plenty of people are finding an answer…
2015: Hope
It doesn’t feel like a year ago that I was writing this post, summing up 2014, but here I am, at the close of another year. I started 2015 with a strong focus on hope, as I wrote here, and this very much stayed with me throughout the year. I have learnt that hope is…
Advent Peace
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about peace. These do not seem to be peaceful times. We have one of the biggest global refugee crises in history, and no one can agree on what to do about it. We have violent attacks being conducted on civilians, and it seems that one of the few solutions…
Life Lived 