An Adventure in Ministry

  There is a topic that I have been thinking on for some time. Every so often God would remind me or prompt me on this but it isn’t an easy subject so I would often brush it off…until the next time! However, it is something that I began to see so often that I began to think on it, ponder on it and wonder why there seems to be so much of it around…the thing I have been seeing in so many places, both in the church and the world is bitterness. Hebrews 12:15 in the passion translation says; What I sense in the spirit I have been seeing is roots of bitterness taking hold in the lives of Christians and non-Christians alike. I have seen people bitter towards ·        People who have hurt them ·        People who have been hurt ·        People who try to love them ·        People with differing opinions to them. It has broken my heart to see people using p...

  Re cently I was watching my beautiful daughter playing and reflecting on our journey to becoming a family. At age three my beautiful little girl is still not quite walking yet and has few words beyond Mumma, Dadda, Good girl, the wiggles and cake – obviously the most important words! You see our perfect daughter has Down Syndrome, which means that she takes a little longer to do the things that come so easy to others. I smiled as she managed pulled a photo of her nana out of her photo bag, signed her name and clapped herself in congratulations and pondered on the truth that although this wasn’t what I had planned when I began my journey to become a mum, it was full of the golden threads of his grace.   As many of you know my journey to motherhood wasn’t an easy one, in fact I became the step-mother to teenagers before we even tried to extend our own family! We journeyed through years of trying to extend our family but never getting anywhere. Eventually in 2018 we decided t...

     I have written before about the Sabbath (you can find it here:  Click here to view  ) and I find that God often convicts me of the need to rest as I am someone who can so easily miss out on rest in order to work myself to the point of burnout! I have studied the Sabbath and preached on the Sabbath, but just over a year ago my relationship with the Sabbath changed completely. I had been pondering on what it means to rest for a while and my favourite podcast – A cup full of hope was also doing a series on the same thing and when I heard the episode on Sabbath, I couldn’t get it off my mind (you can find it here: Click here to view )Caroline Harries talked about how she had journeyed to practice the Sabbath and I knew I needed to do the same.       Pri nciples of the Sabbath      Before I share a little of my journey, let me just explain a little about the Sabbath to you. At the beginning of creation, God created the earth an...

The past couple of months for us has been a little but hectic. In February Paul and I received our farewell orders (Salvation Army language for we were informed that we would be moving to a new church) to take up appointment of A Salvation Army in Scotland. Through lockdown there were many will we, wont we moments, but in July we moved up to temporary accommodation in Scotland and two weeks ago we moved into our new house.  It has been a very surreal time to move and it has been filled with its fair share of challenges, however we have been making the most of some nice weather and exploring the countryside around us.  Yesterday we took a short drive to explore a new place with our daughter and dogs in tow. The past week had been tough and seemed to be filled with many voices and not all positive. I also had people and things on my heart and I was trying to carry them and pray into it. When we got to the place there was a huge queue of cars waiting to enter the carpark and foll...

The other week I received the letter that I had been dreading would come. The letter that said ‘Your daughter needs to be shielded from Covid-19 for a minimum of 12 weeks’ and with that everything changed. Well to be honest it wasn’t as dramatic as that. We had already been isolating for five weeks already and in many ways life would continue much the same as in previous weeks, but as is often the case, along with the letter, the enemy seemed to enter my mind with words of fear, anxiety and worry. Looking to the news for guidance and reassurance did very little to help so I looked to the place that overflows with reassurance and words of comfort, I looked to scripture and I wasn’t disappointed. Psalm 28:7 says: ‘The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with songs I praise him!’ What a promise! The scripture makes it clear that God will shield us, in every situation and even as we shield those...

Every year I like to decorate our house ready for Easter and in pride of place I always have an Easter tree. It is made from the branches of trees from our back garden and I decorate it with different hanging eggs I have collected through the years. This year I put the tree up not long after going into our 12 week isolation as I thought it might cheer the house up a bit. Over the last couple of weeks as our family had been forced into a season of stop – it was amazing to watch how  buds on my Easter tree has grown and leaves have started to unfold bringing bursts of bright green into the room. I have also enjoyed watching as our garden has been filled with returning birds, and I have seen flowers and plants come to life once again . I even saw a story in the news this week about mountain goats coming down from the great Orme and taking over the town of Llandudno! Often in times of busyness I’m known to utter the phrase ‘Stop the world, I want to ge...