I’ve always found myself rather bad at putting my desire to journal regularly into practice. Prayer pages are something I feel more confident with. Boxes of prayer, lists and notes, words and images that remind me to lift specific circumstances throughout the...
The delights of holding the ‘Missionary’ title
And the real shortcomings of that word too.
Learning to walk a line true to my faith and how it can be expressed in the culture around me as a living every day and ordinary mission overseas.
Family Prayer Journal
When you can’t Acclimatise : beyond Sacrifice or Solidarity
I was still green, the early days of marriage and the struggle of the unfamiliar dynamics of life as a foreigner shadowed my movements. I was meeting a foreign friend and another foreign lady for tea in a city where coffee was the beverage of choice. I remember it was...
Choosing Mateo
I have many memories of shuffling up to the raised platform at the front of church alongside the other children. Every now and then it was to be given something, a flower to take back to mum, something to distribute, hopefully edible, and once a year a book. So when I...
Seasons : an update
The long hot days of summer are dimming, the evening light lost now before bedtime curfew, the heat of the sun not nearly so bold. Seasons are very much part of how I’ve seen my life. Seasons named by locations where I’ve claimed a room, a bed, seats or...
Is the laborer worthy of his wages?
Every few years I get into one of those conversations about the scriptural phrase ‘a labourer is worthy of his wages‘. Why do I give everything I make away? People ask. Why don’t I sell more, put in a paywall, market myself, que said phrase!...
Raising a Foreigner
I sat in the maternity ward watching the other mothers fuss over their new charges. Some were questioning everything, so unsure of themselves. They fretted, all of them. Fretted about feeding, burping, the rest of the family, the visits, the suddenly unfamiliar body...
Let us pray
I love prayer, I love to dive into prayer, immerse myself under the water and allow my body to sink just a little before resurfacing. But deep prayer needs time to develop, to root and to grow, even neglected it pulls on that deep history of relationship and tension...
The Call
I lay aside my years word of ‘invest’ with a heavy heart. I’ve not done with it yet, I’m not ready to move on, I’ve not mined it’s depth enough. Yet the year keeps moving and the date changes yet again and somehow I find looking...
Foundations
‘Go’ said God, or did I just imagine it, did all the coincidences and happen-chances not add up to a shout. And so I went, with a little trepidation, with a spirit and determination to meet adventure. ‘Go’ I’d whisper as troubles rose,...
Building Easter brick by brick
Every Easter, bar one, for the last 17 years of my life I’ve been able to walk into Sunnyside church and proclaim Christs resurrection surrounded by faces who have journeyed alongside me. It changed this year. It was the first Easter we didn’t travel and...