Hope For Today

Dear Friends, This past week we have been on holiday with our friends, the Badawi family.  For a treat, Jason booked for Claudine and me to have cream tea at Aunt Martha's Victorian Tea Rooms.  

Dear Friends, "Treasures of Darkness" may seem like  a contradiction in itself, but this is actually what God promises us. God gave me some real encouragement one morning during my quiet time with him, just at the time I needed it most, and it's this that I want to share with you today. In Isaiah 45:3 we read " And I will give you treasures hidden in the darkness— secret riches.  I will do this so you may know that I am the Lord ,   the God of Israel, the one who calls you by name." (NLT) Many of us will, at one time or another, go through an experience of "darkness"; an intense time both in the length and depth of the suffering or trial.  It may be a time of chronic illness, financial difficulty, unemployment, a relationship breakdown, depression etc.  Whatever it is, it's a time when you feel you are very much on your own, no-one is able to fully understand and all around is that heavy darkness where you can't see any way out or any

Dear Friends, Have you ever read a passage from the bible, when a verse jumps out at you, God grabs your attention and speaks to you through it?   You’ve read the passage before but had never noticed that verse there, perhaps because on previous readings it wasn’t what you needed that particular day, or perhaps you hadn’t tuned yourself to hear God’s voice, but this time it’s different because today it ’s what you really need to hear from God. I experienced this as I was reading Hosea Chapter 2.   God is speaking about his people, the Israelites, who have been unfaithful to him.   Despite their unfaithfulness, God is faithful in his love for them.   He says to his prophet, Hosea: “Therefore, behold, I will allure her, will bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfort to her.   I will give her her vineyards from there, and the Valley of Achor as a door of hope; she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, as in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt.”  

Dear Friends, The theme for our Sunday morning services at church this month is “Peace” and I’ve been thinking a lot about it this week.   Jesus said in John 14:27 “I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don’t be troubled or afraid.”   (NLT) The problem is we do worry, become anxious and concerned and this can rob us of our peace.   I think I was born a worrier, as a child I worried about all manner of things, small and big, I even worried about worrying so much!   Worrying is not productive and it’s not helpful, it can make us physically ill.   I’ve suffered with digestive problems and headaches as a result of worrying.   We can worry about the future and what might happen, but often what we worried would happen does not occur or is nowhere near as bad as we had imagined.   These are all reasons why Jesus commanded us not to worry.   “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life...”   Matthe

Dear Friends, We are in the middle of having a new conservatory built.   The builders took down our old one which was small and not fit for purpose in order to build a bigger one, to give us extra living space and which can be enjoyed all year round due to a particular type of glass they are using which stops the room from being too hot in the summer and keeps it warm in the winter.   I’m looking forward to seeing the finished product, but it is taking so much longer than I’d expected.   A lot of time was spent on preparing for it, digging the foundations and other work to make it stable, so to begin with there wasn’t much to show for the hours that had gone into it.   The noise, the mess, the inconvenience will all, I’m sure, be worth it in the end. There’s not much I can do about it as I know nothing about building and so I have to leave it up to the experts and trust they know exactly what they are doing. This work reminds me of the work that Jesus is doing in my life.