An Adventure in Ministry

At Christmas my beautiful friend sent me an amaryllis plant in the post. It arrived as a bulb with everything I needed to make it grow successfully. Along with the plant came a card declaring that this plant would be used by God to speak to me prophetically and oh how it did! My Beautiful plant While it grew and bloomed, God shared with me a number of things and I would love to share it with you today. So here are my lessons from my amaryllis.  It may look dead, but that doesn’t mean it is dead! - For the first month or so of having our bulb, nothing seemed to happen! The bulb sat in the most beautiful glass bowl with moss and even little fairy lights, but while we were waiting for the growing to begin someone did comment that it looked like I was displaying a rather large onion! On the outside it seemed that nothing at all was happening, but inside there was an awful lot going on.  How true can this be for each of us and true is it that where we see something dead, God is ac...

Do you ever get songs stuck in your head and no matter what you do, or whatever song you try to listen to it doesn’t seem to go? It is often a cheesy pop classic or a tv theme tune. I have had a song stuck in my head for a couple of weeks now and it is my favourite Christmas carol! It’s a little bit late now as we are a week before Easter! However a few days ago as I pondered the words of the last verse I was struck that now it is more relevant than ever. The Carol is ‘In the Bleak mid winter’ written by Rossetti and the final verse reads: ‘What can I give him poor as I am? If I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb; If I were a wise man I would do my part, Yet what I can I give him, Give my heart I have always loved this verse of the carol and when sung on a cold evening in a dark church lit by Christmas trees and chritingles, I always imagine these epic characters in their unlikely roles in the birth of the saviour. I always imagine the shepherds ...

Mother’s Day is approaching. For some people it is a time full of joy and celebration, for others, however, it can be a horrendous time full of sorrow and pain. I fall into the second category. For the past few years, as we have been ttc it has got harder and harder.  For a while, as a single woman Mother’s Day was tough as it reminded me of a future I wasn’t sure that I would have. Then when I met Paul I suddenly became step-mother to three teenage girls and it brought a whole new dimension. Mother’s Day at church was filled with conflicted loyalty for the girls and a reminder that I wasn’t a real mum! I remember one year, one of the girls going to get me the obligatory ‘Mother’s Day gift’ whilst another having stern words with her that I shouldn’t receive a gift as I wasn’t really her mum and that their mum was at home expecting a gift. The whole while I felt terribly guilty that I had put everyone in such a position, happy that I was seen in some way as a mum and sad th...

Over the past couple of months God has really been speaking to me about the issue of opposition and facing difficult times, and in particular the last couple of weeks has shown this to me in stark contrast. Over the Christmas period At the Salvation Army in Mold we have been incredibly blessed by the generosity of the people in our community. We regularly receive donations of food from both Sainsburys and Tesco and in the run up to Christmas we were collecting and distributing food daily. We also, with the help of generous donations from the public, were able to provide hampers to families in need to ensure that they can celebrate Christmas too. We also ran a toy appeal and were able to give children all over Flintshire a present to open on Christmas Day. All in all thousands of people were effected by the work of the Salvation Army and we pray that many of those saw the face of Jesus in the extravagant love we tried to show.  A highlight for me was on Christmas Eve as Father ...