Turning the Page

Opened Too Early

There is a time for everything, and some things get opened too early, but there is hope, and God can bring release and recovery.
 
They had been opened too soon. They weren’t ready yet.
Her deep beauty had not been allowed to fully mature, but now it had been opened.
They had told him that this was love. Told him lies that, maybe, they had heard themselves at the same tender age. From this interruption to normal, healthy development, he would never fully move into his world the way intended. Never with the confidence about who he was and what he was about.
They both now had a poison injected into their being. Their ‘human being’ and this affected all their doing.
Interrupted and injected.
Everyone of us has had times of an interruption. Something has cut across our path and caused normal health development to cease, to take a different route, to go off track.
A lie has been injected into our thinking. ‘There is no beauty to you’ ‘You have no purpose’
A rose
As I sit here writing, I look outside and see a rosebush. It’s springtime, and it is pushing out lush new growth from the hard pruning I gave it in the winter.
I can see the beginnings of a flower. It’s a small ball the size of a marble.
It’s coming. I know it is. That small ball will swell from the inside out. It will soon be the size of a golf ball.
There is a temptation to force it open. To peel back the green calyx surrounding and covering the beauty. ‘I want that beauty and I want it now.’
But no, I wait and let it come naturally. Let it emerge in its own way.
That rose bush has been through a lot of rough weather recently. A few days ago it was pelted with hail. Then wild winds thrashed at it.
The growth continued. It may have slowed, but it continued pushing with a cell multiplication that would astound us.
One day, very soon, the yellow colours will explode out into the world. Fragrance will fill the air.
It will shout ‘Look at me’ and I will come and soak in the scent of its glory. Bees will visit, wander around its stamens, collect some nectar, pollen and be on their way.
Angels will sing, parties will explode out of nothingness. God will say it is good.
I know people like this rose. They are at various stages of revelation.
Some hold the calyx around them tight. They have built walls high and strong. They don’t want anyone seeing in.
Maybe because someone has awakened them too early.
The words ‘damaged goods’ is heard so often that I consider opening a repair shop. Perhaps this website is a bit like that. A place of renovation from the inside out.
 
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Sitting with Shame

Sitting with shame can suffocate life, but sitting in solidarity with someone in soul talk can break its control.
 
It’s there if you want to hear it. A sneaky, whispery voice from the past.
You hear it in others. They may have said nothing directly to you, but it’s there. Shame is a shadowy character.
It hides in the corners, and under the floorboards. It creeps around trying to be unnoticed.
But you can always guarantee, if given a prod, it will come out and haunt you down.
Shame splices into your soul that you are flawed. Actually, worse than that, it’s more like ‘YOU ARE A FLAW, A MISTAKE, AN UGLY WASTE OF SPACE.’
Shame would never say, with objective honestly, that you have flaws. It always says You are a flaw.
So we sit on a park bench with shame. Like old man or woman, critical of everything you do, they sit next to you mutter reminders.
 
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God is Compassion

It’s a broken world where we desperately need hope, but God is compassion, and so we get to live again.
 
The other day I found some mouse droppings in my kitchen.
Concerned about the hygiene of the kitchen, I set a trap. Peanut butter would be the temptation that little mouse could not refuse.
Off to bed I went and in the middle of the night I heard the mouse trap go off. Snap!
Good, I thought, when I wake up in the morning, I will dispose of the little rodent.
I went back to sleep only to be woken a few hours later with a banging and clattering sound going on under my bed. Annoyed, I got up and looked under my bed and here was the trap and the little mouse with its foot caught in it.
Dilemna! 
What do I do? Do I kill the mouse and if so, how? Do I let it go it and let it live another day? Will it come back?
Then I realised it had actually dragged itself and the trap 12 metres from the kitchen to my bedroom. Amazing, and that it came to the only one that could help it. Another mammal like itself.
It needed help from someone bigger and chose me.
Compassion and pity prodded my heart.
 
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I am Waiting for the Shroud to be Lifted

Something was wrapped over them. A shroud. But there is a waiting to be found and a rich party to one day be found. 
 
There was something draped over them, or at least that was it felt like. A shroud.
What’s a shroud? It’s something that envelopes or obscures.
A shroud of mist can cover the landscape.
A shroud also refers to the burial cloth in which a dead person is wrapped for burial.
Sometimes, as I listen to people, it feels like there is something draped over them. That they have a shroud and my calling is to lift up the shroud, look under, and bring some Spirit resuscitation.
We could call that shroud depression, hopelessness, grief, loss, despair.
We could also call it a grounded awareness of the reality of living in a broken world. A world where broken world decisions keep being made by people like me and you. Decisions and choices that aren’t always inline with God’s kingdom come.
So I sit, listen, grieve and groan.
I pray for a presence of comfort to fill the weary soul. That the shroud wouldn’t suffocate.
I also point people to finding comfort in truth that they can easily digest.
Simple things like …
I am heldI am knownI am loved
Perhaps I could add a fourth
I am waiting
 
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Why Was I Created

It wasn’t random. It wasn’t chance. It wasn’t the roll of some celestial dice or the flip of a coin. Your creation was part of a work of art God has had in mind for all eternity.
I know that’s hard to believe. It seems so vast, immeasurable, and beyond understanding. Mysterious and complex beyond anyone’s ability to grasp into everyday sentences.
If that is true, which I truly believe it is, then why was I created?
I wonder, I pray, I scratch my head and hold the questions up to God.
People send me questions that I in myself don’t have neat, tidy answers. Well, maybe I do, but they probably won’t satisfy or salve a hurting soul.
The recurring answer goes something like this.
We are broken people living in a broken world where broken world decisions and choices are made, but God is in the business of making all things new, so we pray, trust, and hope.
Is that broad enough to envelop your situation?
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Being Faithful with the Little

We often think we can’t do much to change the situations we are in but by being faithful with the little we have we can move mountains. It’s the little things that give you away. 
It seemed such a small thing.
I remember my parents’ daily little habit of reading the Bible. I think they had a daily devotional sitting alongside as they read.
Why I remember this because as a young child I would cuddle in between them as my father would read holy words into the new day.
Little faithful habits build thinking structures that shape the world.
I have written about my mother’s bible faithfully read and little quotes added here and there.
I remember on Sundays going to our place of worship and seeing my father sit in the pew and quietly bow his head in prayer before the service. I’m not sure what he prayed, but maybe it was something like ‘God, I’m here, speak to me.’
My observation of them being faithful with the little taught me a great deal.
Your parents did too. Good and bad. They provided micro-influencers to shape how you see your world and how you understand God.
I believe that how you see God is how you see everything. Never despise the little.
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Can You Pray For Me?

Can you pray for me? How do you respond when someone asks you to pray?
I often get requests for me to pray, but I am often not sure what to pray for. Sometimes the need is very clear, but at other times it is vague.
They want me to pray, to intercede, to present their need, but do they truly know their deepest below the surface needs?
I also wonder if they are paying attention to notice how God might answer their needs? It may be yes and in exactly the way they would like it to happen or yes, but in a completely different way. Maybe the answer will ‘No’ or ‘not yet’?
Will they return and give thanks and worship to God? Or will be like nine out of ten that ignore the giver of good things? (Jesus Heals Ten Men With Leprosy)
As you can see, I ponder over many things when people ask me to pray.
 
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Is This Punishment from God

I haven’t lived a perfect life and I wonder if my problems are punishment from God, but maybe I don’t know the whole story and that God is overflowingly full of grace and mercy.
They wanted retribution. Payback.
A desire for revenge coursed through their veins for what had happened to them, but then, in a whisper of a moment, they thought of what they had done. Perhaps the other also wanted retribution, payback for what they had have done. Perhaps they were seeking revenge against them.
They had stolen from them and now they wanted it all back, plus interest.
If you do the crime then you recieve the punishment until the other is satisfied. But when will they be satisfied? What will truly restore the balance scales of justice to equilibrium?
And their pain seems like a bottomless hole that, try as you might and with all the resources you have, is impossible to fill. You realise that the hole, that dark hole of vacuumous space, has been growing from other intrusions on the soul.
Your crime is but one that has sculptured the walls of the heart.
They want you to pay, but you know nothing within your capability will even begin to calm their pain.
God, the judge, sits and weeps at the mess.
We may look at our suffering and consider that this must be payback from God for what we have done.
We see the suffering of others and make judgments that their suffering is retribution for what they have done. They’re getting what they deserve. Please don’t do this.
 
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You Can’t Make It On Your Own

We think we can do it all, manage life ourselves, but you simply can’t. You discover you can’t make it on your own.
They were told by their closest companion that they should not need others to affirm them. That they should be able to do it themselves. They should be totally self-reliant.
That was poor theology – the way we talk about God.
It drove them even further into dark loneliness.
There is a time and a place where all you truly want to have is the breath of an encouraging word flow over you and into you.
A friend who says, often without words, ‘I am with you, I am present, I know you, and I will not leave you.’
 
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The Power of Love

When you’re depressed or in a psychotic crisis, it’s normal to believe our negativity is everything there is, but the power of love and light is a constant we can tap into.
Guest post by Sónia Monteiro
Pop culture immortalized this sequence of words that gives title to at least two well-known songs, one by Celine Dion, another by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. 
Both poems sing that facet of love between lovers. 
But there is more to love than eros.
According to the great academic and writer C. S. Lewis in his book The Four Loves, there are at least four types of love: Affection, Friendship, Eros and Charity.
All four features provide forms of love transmuted into different aspects of reality that share a common ground, or should I say, a common God.
 
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