Two poems for someone who may need them

These are two poems; one of which many of you will know almost off heart, the other I read for the first time today.

Footprints

One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord. Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky. In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand. Sometimes there were two sets of footprints, other times there was one only. This bothered me because I noticed that during the low periods of my life, when I was suffering from anguish, sorrow or defeat, I could see only one set of footprints.

So I said to the Lord, “You promised me Lord, that if I followed you, you would walk with me always. But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life there has only been one set of footprints in the sand. Why, when I needed you most, have you not been there for me?” The Lord replied, “The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, is when I carried you.”

Mary Stevenson, 1936

This too shall pass

If I can endure for this minute whatever is happening to me,
No matter how heavy my heart is or how dark the moment may be-

If I can remain calm and quiet with all the world crashing about me,
Secure in the knowledge God loves me wWhen everyone else seems to doubt me-

If I can but keep on believing what I know in my heart to be true,
That darkness will fade with the morning and that this will pass away, too-

Then nothing in life can defeat me for as long as this knowledge remains
I can suffer whatever is happening for I know God will break all of the chains

That are binding me tight in the darkness and trying to fill me with fear-
For there is no night without dawning and I know that my morning is near.

...Helen Steiner Rice

Have a great day

God bless

Chris

Nothing clever to say about these - just read, enjoy and relax

Do not worry! That's easy for you to say!

Matthew 6 tell us not to worry about anything in regard to our natural requirements and Philippians 4 instructs the reader not to be anxious about anything. You can read these two passages here and here.

If you are anything like me you may have read these passages many times in life and at that moment thought to your self "OK I am not going to worry and instead trust in God". And this works very well sometimes for up to several minutes until life next big problem swings into focus and quite naturally worry and anxiousness arrives with it. How can we then hope to live our lives obedient to God's teaching not to worry when life throws so much at us which knocks us off our feet time and time again?

There is very little that we can do to prevent anxiety from entering our minds, thing happen which are completely out of our control that have an effect on us and those close to our hearts. What we do have a choice over how much control of our lives we allow these worries to have. When we allow these problem to grow in our minds and take over our thoughts then we very soon begin to feel the repercussions. Sleepless nights, upset stomachs, headaches and many over stress related complaints can have serious effect on our health over long periods of time.

Psalms 55:22 does give us the solution when it says "cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you". Note that this verse does not say He will remove your cares or make them smaller, but that he will sustain you. When you ask God to help in your times of most worry, anxiousness or when the world seems to deal an unfair hand God will sustain you and give you the strength to walk through the troubled days.

That act of casting our cares on the Lord is really not a complicated process simply chatting to God is enough, just ask God to help you and He will. Someone very dear once said that we can talk to God like the Martini advert - anytime, anyplace, anywhere - and those words have never been trues.

If simply talking doesn't seem enough; why not write God a letter telling Him everything that is on your mind, put it in an envelope addressed and sealed for God's attention. Then burn it, rip it up, post it to your church or give it away to a friend you can trust - what ever you do get rid of that letter and don't re-open it yourself. There is no point to handing your worries over to God only to pick them back up again on the way out.

This is not my normal cheerful encouraging post and for that I am not sorry - I just really feel that sometimes people need to know that God is there when we're in the valley as well as on the mountain top.

God bless

Chris

What is my polariod or even my QR?

This week I have discovered the world of 'QR images' (as pictured to the right) - these are small black and white pictures around 2-3 inches square which resemble a cross between a chess board and a bar code. They can be placed on a website, a poster, business card or any other advertising location. Tonight I spotted one on the till of my local co-op!
If you 'read' one of these QR images (which stands for quick response) with the bar code scanner of your smart phone you are presented with a selection of the advertisers information. This could be a website, contact details, a video or song or in the case of this QR, a map showing the location of our church in Selston. They are kind of like taking a Polaroid picture showing in an instance a representation of that company or individual.

I understand that QR images as part of another phenomenon known as augmented reality are very much going to be the next if not already the, big thing! They have been around in Japan for several years and are slowly making an impact on the USA and London plus on many up and coming advertising bods.

This all got me thinking, as it does - As I understand it, if you place one of these images on your business card, website or poster someone with the correct bar code scanning app (think mobile phone gadget for the not so tech savvy of us) can get a snap shot in an instant of your business or organisation. I've dropped a couple into our church website - take a look http://www.selstonchurchofchrist.org.uk/ (shameless plug alert!). I was thinking - How would life be, therefore, if anyone could get a Polaroid snap shot of your or my life in an instant by giving us a quick scan?

I would like to think that I am a pretty rounded kind of guy who can get on with most people and that my Christian values, on the whole, live out pretty well in my day to day life. But in any instance, at any one moment of the day, if someone could get a completely honest snapshot (maybe when my guard was down and someone had cut me up at a set of traffic lights that then turned red before I had time to respond) I'm not so sure if it would be so perfect.

Of course God's grace is, as the old hymn says, "amazing!" And this amazing grace in sufficient to oversee all of my many imperfections when I come back to Him in repentance seeking forgiveness. That said this is not an excuse or a get out of jail free card.

If God, my neighbour, my wife, a church member, the chap at work or my friend down at the pub was to take an honest snapshot of my life today or tomorrow I would hope to, at the very least, be consistent in giving a decent representation of the kind of bloke that God would want me to be.

True - I definitely don't get it right every time, far from it! None of us do; but the important thing is that we attempt to live with a desire to be ready - to live every moment conscious that if that snapshot was taken right now or this time tomorrow or two weeks on Thursday, that we would be living as the person we would want to be represented as. And even more importantly we should never become too proud to admit that we so often get it wrong and return to our Father in Heaven in humble apology knowing that He is ready to not only forgive us but help us be better prepared for tomorrow.

Have a great day

God bless

Chris

Anticipation; anticlimax or opportunity?

Debbie and I went to the cinema this last weekend with some of our family to see the long awaited and much anticipated fourth installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean films. We knew that the cast had changed quite dramatically and that things would be different but the build up and hype suggested a film worthy of the wait.

We walked out of the cinema with mixed feelings; In my opinion Pirates 4 is a good film, it's better than OK but it isn't great! Johnny Depp is really good, the story works, the big screen magic stands up and overall it is a very decent film. But it missed the other characters like Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann. In our eyes the build up and anticipation ended in a bit of an anticlimax - Sorry Captain Jack!

Today marks Ascension Day in the church calender which many of us will mark this Sunday; remembering the day that Jesus returned to his Father in Heaven. This was an event that Jesus foretold several times and His Disciples would have known was coming up. As Jesus ascended to Heaven to be restored to glory I wonder if the Disciples may have felt a little empty, like Jesus had gone away and left them behind.

They always knew that Jesus was heading towards the cross and He told them that He would rise again, but I wonder if they thought this moment would be the time to look forward to as a triumphant moment of victory. Instead they simply watched as Jesus rose into the sky and then was hidden from their view then they had to somehow find a way of carrying on, seemingly in their own strength,

I believe that Jesus, although gone from their view, had left them with so much - conversations, parables, teachings and demonstrations of His love, peace and majesty. Lessons that I think would have lived with them for the rest of their lives.

There are so many things that can have an effect on our lives; the people around us, day to day experiences, the media, our friends and families. All of these things can have an impact on us as we anticipate what lies ahead in our lives. But we get to choose how we use these experiences and how we learn from them and use these lessons in our own futures.

I know this is going to sound really cliche but the truth is - We get to choose today how we use the lessons of yesterday; as an anticlimax of disappointment or an opportunity tomorrow to grow and build!

Have a great day, God bless you

Chris

What will be your legacy?

What about you?

If death is a certainty, sorry to start on a sober note but it is certain, then how will you be remembered when you're gone? People usually want to leave their mark on the world; many people have in the past. Elvis Presley is remembered as changing the world of music, Roger Bannister for changing the world of sport and Martin Luther King Jr for changing the world of politics forever. But what about you?

For some there are records to be re-written, for others business empires to be built, maybe fortunes to be made or awards to be won and new discoveries to be made. But again what about you?

Records will be broken, empires and wealth will fall, fortunes can be won or lost and newer and more exciting discoveries will be made - so what about you?

A legacy is purely something that is handed down, usually from generation to generation, so the question is what can we hand down? Or maybe put in a better phrase, "how can we be significant to another?"

Today's blog thought doesn't have a clever twist or message and isn't a short preach or bible study and I am not even going to try and answer my own question but to simply ask it one more time.

How will you be remembered? What will you pass on? How can you be significant to another?

What about you?

Unless you become like little children

Something very simple yet truly amazing happened at church a couple of weeks ago, its a very simple short story but one that I think holds a very clear message.

During our morning service message the kids are taken into the back room of the church for 'Junior church' where they learn the same lessons as the adults but in their own simpler ways.

Two Sunday's ago for the second week running one little boy, Jacob, tripped and cut his head on the corner of a book shelf.  This was a normal child's accident that happens around homes and schools every day of the week.  Whilst this kind of thing happens everyday with no damage at all on this occasion Jacob's head began to bleed. 

There where two adults teaching the kids that morning, firstly his mum who held Jacob close and wondered what to do first and also Sarah who is a nurse.  Sarah's training kicked in and she immediately ran to the first aid box whilst Jacob's mum started looking for some tissues.

Then the greatest, simplest, most natural thing in the world happened - both women turned back to Jacob, one clutching tissues and the other complaining that the first aid kit was out of date.  They where greeted with the perfect view of about ten children, all of infant or primary school age, standing around Jacob praying for Jesus to heal his head.  Wow!    They hadn't been prompted or needed leading in prayers, this simply came naturally to them.

When life throws us a curve ball every now and again what do we do naturally? Panic, look for the solution, worry, get angry or seek help?

When Jesus said that we must become like children in order to get to Heaven I believe part of what he was saying was that we should act as naturally and trust as naturally as these ten kids did. Their natural response was to pray to the Jesus that we had all told them can answer their prayers.

Maybe we should do less tell and teaching the kids and instead let them teach us.

Have a great day.

God Bless

Chris

Generation Y?

I meet up with two guys from church most Friday nights for a drink and a chat about the week, life and what God is doing around us and also to have a laugh.  The conversation usually meanders from anywhere between work, family issues, money and church life to the finer points of Nottingham Forest promotion chances. On our last meet up together we found ourselves talking about our children and their generation; what their lives would be like, what challenges they will face and the world they will grow up in.

Having been doing a little reading around this next generation, this was a really interesting and thought provoking conversation. Looking back over the last 60 years or so of history there have been several clearly marked generations - The first that springs to mind were the baby-boomer's who lived with a fresh hope after the end of the war and raised children born in the fifties and sixties with a sense of true optimism.  The baby-boomer's grew and had families of their own bearing a generation born around the seventies and early eighties known as Generation X. These GenX kids who are now in their mid to late thirties have seen the world change and move away from Christian morals and undeerstandings.

We are now seeing their children sometimes labeled as Generation Y starting to have an impact of their own on the world in which we live.  Children of the late nineties and 2000s are growing up as teenagers ready to step out into the world in many cases with no basic knowledge at all of Jesus, the Bible, the churches beliefs or any of the Gospel's truths.  

It would be so easy to simply write off this generation, as some people do, as a lost cause and a waste of energy. But I would urge you please to pray for these kids and young adults as they are not only our future but also God's.  Look at your children today, their friends and the kids you pass in the street - they are part of God's future. Who is going to lead our churches in ten, twenty or thirty years? Who is going to lead our Country, make our laws, lead companies and set policies in place?

Generation Y is going to need God in such a strong way; to stand strong against changing attitudes in a changing world. And they will only get to know God if we share His love with them now! Pray for God to make this generation into His Generation!!

Have a great day

God Bless

Chris