My God is a good God!

Alternatively titled: God’s wonderful world – that we live in and that we love to learn about! So what is your favourite view on the whole earth? Where is your favourite place to be? God made that place, and all the places in fact. What have you learned about this week/month/year that surprised you? Here’s just a few facts for you and you can probably give me hundreds more!

·         On average 100 lightning strikes occur worldwide every second.

·         The oceans contain 99 percent of the living space on the planet.

·         The Nile River in Africa is the longest river (6,825 kilometers) on the earth.

·         The human eye detects 10 million colours

·         Your thumb is the same length as your nose

If our world is so amazing now, what might it have been like without the stuff that goes wrong?

God’s plan for his wonderful world is something debated by people all over the world from all nationalities, backgrounds, faiths and theological views! I’m not going to pretend I know better than any of them. However I think we can probably agree that God wants us (all of humanity) to live lives that are God-centred, that love Him wholeheartedly and that glorify Him in ALL circumstances.

Jesus is the key to this plan. Many of you reading this will know of Jesus but do you really know Jesus for yourself? Have you looked for Him? Have you stepped out in faith?

Who introduced you to Jesus? Maybe it was your parents, maybe your grandparents, your best friend, your spouse or partner, your kids, your teacher. Those of us who know Jesus, who walk the walk of faith, were introduced by someone. So the fact of the matter is that each of us who know Him have the responsibility to pass that on to someone else. How will people meet Jesus unless we tell them about him? After all “Faith without works is dead”. If we say we believe but do nothing we are just a shell of a person, just a clanging bell or crashing cymbal on its own.

Christians in schools, whether they are pupils, teachers, head teachers, governors,  readers, cleaners, dinner servers, playground supervisors or visitors, have a role to play in helping their friends, charges and co-workers find out about Jesus. And there are lots of ways we can do this! Talking to our friends about Church, about the things we believe in, about the things that Jesus has done for us; offering to pray for people when it’s appropriate; being a good friend to others, even those we find difficult; being a responsible colleague or worker, going the extra mile in our work.

Finally if you are a youthworker and not involved in your local school can I urge you to find out about how you can get involved? Maybe you have a schools work organisation in your town you could turn to. Maybe you have contacts within your church who are teachers or other school people you could ask how you might best serve your local school. Ask God to direct you and start by making enquiries.

And may God bless you as you work out your own role in telling people about Jesus!

We love our Youth Worker!

I am, at heart, a youthworker. I have been one all of my adult working life. Even through 5 years as a teacher I was still a youthworker. Even though now my average contact hours on a weekly basis with those over the age of 10 is in single digits, I am a youthworker. I believe passionately in young people: their outlook on life; their energy; their honesty. I have been in the privileged position to stand alongside a whole bunch of teens who are now in their twenties through some hard situations.

So youthworkers don’t do politics right? Especially Church Politics… Except that if we have our eye on the long game, if we want what we do to last, to be sustainable, Church Politics aka Working With Others, should be the first thing on our list. I have been reading ‘Sustainable Youth Ministry’ by Mark Devries and honestly if you are in youthwork, especially (though not exclusively) if you’re in Church based youth ministry, this is a book to be read. With a notebook and pen next to you, one chapter at a time while you pause in between to decide how the bit you’ve just read relates to your own group. It is fantastic and one of the things that the book recommends is learning to play ‘Church Politics’.

So much of what we think do and say is about or affected by expectations. Whether we wear them on our sleeves or hid them under layers of politeness and/or insecurity, what we expect of other people in our lives makes a massive difference to our overall outlook and attitude to life. Learning to live without expectations of others can mean success instead of failure, across the whole spectrum of life.

Knowing the people you work with enough to be able to get alongside them and encourage them in what they do is a sure way to make life much happier! Understanding what makes people tick and how to work with them instead of having to fight a battle to get your opinions heard has got to be the best plan for working relationships. Now don’t read me wrong, I’m not talking about manipulating people, I’m not suggesting we simply get to know someone so that we can get the best out of them in a selfish way. I am saying that we ought to get to know those we work with and for in order that those relationships can work for the best for all concerned.

I am a youthworker and I will play the ‘politics’ game, but call it Working With Others and do it in love and out of respect for those I work with and for.

Here comes the sun...

Today has been tiring after an early (and therefore grumpy!) morning with a not-quite-2-yr-old, but it’s April and birthday month so can’t stay grumpy or tired for too long!! I love this month, not only for all the birthdays that come at the end (not only my own but so many good friends and lovely family members too!) but for all the signs of summer: the wearing of summer skirts without tights; the flip-flops/sandals and painted toe nails; the ability to leave the house without my scarf; the green trees and LOADs of other stuff that just reminds us that summer is coming… 

If you’ve been watching my FB statuses or spent time with me recently you’ll know that I’ve really got into baking in the past month. It’s not something I’ve been particularly partial to previously so it’s rather exciting. Jon says I’m finally becoming the perfect housewife!! Cupcakes are good… Red Velvet ones even better!! I have been trying to work out how I can send cake in the post as most of the friends and family with birthdays do not live in deliverable distance… Maybe I should order some from the Hummingbird Bakery to find out how they do it?! I have really found baking addictive, very therapeutic and satisfying. And in following the right recipe, I’m quite good at it! I’m sure there’s a lesson in there somewhere…

Another thing that’s taken my attention this last month is the garden.  Although we don’t have much ‘garden’ at home what we have got needs tending, unlike the grass we had at the old place which largely you can just cut and leave! I’ve planted potatoes, onions, garlic, spinach and mint in our front veg patches and then loads of flowers in the other beds and pots round the other sides. I’m rather impatient with it mind and want the flowers to appear SOON! But hoping the wait will be worth it. I suspect there’s a lesson in there too…

So (to borrow a phrase from a friend!), lessons from the domesticity of life: when we’re new to baking staying close to the recipe results in success. It’s only when we learn the real basics of how to bake that we can go off-the-page! True too in faith, sticking close to the Bible’s words will give us success. As our relationship with God grows so our understanding of His word deepens and it can appear that we’re going off-the-page (like all analogies it's a little tenuous when stretched!)! And when tending to our gardens we learn about the promise of good things being something we need to wait for without expecting instant results. And that just about transfers directly methinks!

One Year On

A year ago this week I was in hospital. A year ago this week the doctor told me I had bowel cancer. And a year ago this week life was turned completely upside down, not only for me but for my whole family, both blood and faith!

I am truly amazed and indebited to our national health service and the surgeon, his team and so many nurses who looked after me, stood with me and cleaned up after me during both hospital stays last year. I am also indebted to so many of you (and many more who will probably never get to read this) who prayed for me and my family. Quite simply: there are no words to properly describe how I feel about you guys! I genuinely believe that without the prayers of friends and family; without my fellow Christians who stood in the gap for me and held up my hands to God when I did not have the energy to; without your faith, however small, I would not be where I am today: healthy and living a 'normal' sort of life.

The helping hands of both my own church family and that of others meant that when I came out of hospital after the operation in April it was 4 weeks before anyone in our house had to do any cooking. And the fabulous organiser of this from my own church was 8 months pregnant at the time! I also had friends who regularly took the boys off my hands for an afternoon or so well into the summer months.This, to me, is truly the body of Christ at work today.

So thank you. And if ever you are in need of prayer or any practical help, just shout!

"I am hard pressed on every side

But I'm not crushed,

I feel pulled to pieces 

But inside, inside I know I'm not"

Hard Pressed: Lou Fellingham

2 Cor 4:8

All in a days work

So today I returned to teaching, in a completely different capacity! Still secondary, still teenagers but as a visitor: a Christian visitor, there to tell the class what Christians believe about God. And I quickly discovered that although there were times when I really enjoyed my job when I was teaching, I was always frustrated by the inability to talk about my faith with the kids I was teaching. Now I can teach RE and say ‘Because I am a Christian I believe this…’ and it is GOOD!

Today I started a 6 lesson block on The Christian Faith, based on a fantastic resource written by YFC. It’s a scheme of work based on the Alpha course material so is very accessible and YFC have done a great job in making it ‘school friendly’. I and my colleagues are teaching 11 classes of both yr 7 & yr 8 up until Easter.

 I love working with young people, they are amazing especially en masse and in school uniform! So be prepared for some anecdotes and random quotes from a bunch of yr 7 & 8’s in the next 6 weeks. And whilst enjoying the stories, pray for these kids and us!

Here’s a selection of today’s comments:

“I believe in God because I prayed for an Xbox 360 and got one!”

“Gravity is what holds us together”

Me [to a volunteer who had been blindfolded outside the classroom at approx. 9.10am]: All your classmates have gone home. They’ve all left every one of them. Do you believe me?

Volunteer: Yes [wrong answer!]

On a lighter note...

What a day! We’ve all had those random days when all sorts of things happen that have us veering from one emotion to another. Today was like that.

This morning I spent an hour in our prayer room and felt God speaking about a few different things. The unity of Christians for one thing; and our Community centre and its role for another. I was asked to do a talk at our youth club in their Ethics series and then went to work. Once I began lesson planning I realise something about God’s timing: it’s always significant! Now I think I knew this before but it has been re-enforced by the fact that this term I will be teaching about What Christians believe about Prayer in the week that marks a year since my cancer diagnosis. Man, what a week that’s going to be! The message to my husband revealing the enormity of this fact is greeted by a reply text message: ‘on a lighter note Grandma has just given us 3kg of liquorice wheels’!

I laughed out loud at the sheer peculiar-ness of this. On the one hand real deep feeling about the cancer and God’s amazing timing (on lots of levels); on the other hand the idea of 3kg of liquorice being handed over to my hubby by his tiny Grandma…

As I carry on at work I am drawn to contemplate on the issue of what happens when a prayer warrior goes to be with her maker; where does that leave those she was praying for? I don’t know and my reflections haven’t moved me further on (yet). I come home and whilst on the treadmill Jon arrives home with the boys. Freddie has been sick! So half an hour of dealing with the aftermath of sick and putting dinner on for us and a friend who is joining us is followed by relative calm over dinner. 

Having done all of that I then went out to gospel choir rehearsal and sang my heart out for a couple of hours. Love it. 

What a day! What a mish-mash of so much, from one end of the spectrum to the other. I love how God is involved in all that we do, from revealing some of his infinite wisdom to us to the fun of 3kg of liquorice.

Busy, busy, busy!

Man, have I been busy this week; in fact I think this is probably the busiest I’ve been since the cancer diagnosis stopped me in my tracks last year.  A lot of work, (not all of that good) a lot of family, (all of that good) and spending time with friends too; then there’s Gospel Choir, Mums and Toddlers, food shopping, washing clothes and feeding small people… Phew! It’s no wonder I feel rather like I’ve been through the mangle this week!

Events of this past 12 months have made me more aware of my limitations. After the operation in April I had a period of about 3 months in which I could do next to nothing whilst my body healed. Having been a busy person before I was anxious to get back into all the stuff I had been doing and did so, rather too quickly! By August I was suffering again: still anaemic and boy did I feel it. After being prayed for I decided to stop much of what I was trying to do, to give my body time to recover properly and to try and prevent myself from taking on too much in the long term too. I found it very difficult to cut back but very quickly started to feel much better. And this week has shown me just how busy life could get again and how unsustainable that would be!

I am itching to do something more; especially as most of what I gave up was Church related and I believe that church members should be contributing to the life of the church, unless unable to. But I need to really find the right thing to get back into and to do it in a way that will be sustainable.

Lord, I want to be useful! And for a long time, not just a flash… So here I am Lord, send me.