Goodbye 2016

Well Christmas is done and I hope you had a fabulous time with family and friends.  As the year draws to a close I have a special prayer I want to share with you:

2016 has come and gone and the memories will linger on
If this year has brought pain through mourning and grief
I pray that in 2017 God will turn your mourning into dancing
If the year has brought you heart ache with a loss of relationship
May God bless you in the New Year with new relationships to strengthen your walk
If this year has brought sadness
May you know peace and joy
If the year has brought financial loss
May you know prosperity the way God meant it to be
If the year has been wrought with sickness
May God bless you with healing and good health
If the year has been riddled with weakness
May you know strength in every way
However if this year has brought you health, joy, peace, strength,wisdom and blessing
May you know all these and more in far greater abundance in the year to come!

Happy New year and all the best for 2017!!!!!!

Celebrate and remember

So the holiday season is well under way. I have reached the end of my first week of leave but unfortunately I will have to be back at work for one week before taking the Christmas week off. The break was necessitated by my nephew Daniels 21^st birthday which we celebrated on Monday. It was wonderful to be able to sing happy birthday to him in person this year.

21^st birthday's are always such a wonderful time to reflect and reminisce. I remember all to well seeing him on the day he was born, he was so small and cute. I remember the wonderful times playing with him in the back yard of their home in Roodepoort and oddly one of his first words was, “Outside.”

As the year draws to a close it is always time to reflect on the year that has passed. Sadly Honey's passing was a painful event to deal with but there are other good things to remember and treasure like Topaz arrival amongst other things.

We should never fail to take time to reflect and remember as year draws to a close. It helps us to put life into greater perspective and to know that whether the year has been good or bad, God has been with us all the way.

Mint deep

Well the weekend was uneventful, that is except for the bi-annual mint culling taking place. Mint culling? Yip, I pull out every tiny piece of mint out of the clivia bed that I can see........and there in lies the secret. Why do I take out every piece that I can see? Because the real mint roots are much deeper in the ground and the surface stalks and leaves are just the surface pieces.

Mint survives and thrives but making use of two propagating methods. It spreads roots under ground and the stalks and leaves on top can also become roots if that stalk hits the ground and the plant senses that by putting roots down it will obtain a ground holding position.

That should be a lesson to us in our faith.....we should have deep roots under ground and we should be able to make roots on the surface where they are required to cement our position and help us gain ground.

That speaks to me about having tenacity and courage to stand your ground. Sometimes you can face impossible odds but if you are rooted and grounded in your faith, you will not be moved by the circumstances.

MRI

I had a fall at the beginning of the year which resulted in me needing to get some physiotherapy, which I did. To complete the process though the doctor requested that I have an MRI done. Having had one before and also surviving an apesectomy under local aesthetic, I thought this would be a walk in the park.

Boy was I wrong. I was too casual about it and did not prepare myself for it and to make matters worse this time I had a cage around my head to keep it still. I made it through almost all the scans okay but by the last one I was beside myself and had to take a break and return to have it done again. Luckily the practitioner realized I would do better without the head cage the second time round, which I did.

I must admit in some ways that is how this year has felt, suffocating...... and yet in many other ways, liberating. I have made peace that some things may never come to be and yet at the same time I have full trust in God to do what He has said he would do. Either way, I'll be okay.

When you are feeling pressed on every side it can be really hard to trust God, yet in all things that is precisely what He expects from us. Our unwavering trust in His will and His will alone is what guides us we feel as though we are going off course. That trust will bring us safely home.

Winding down

As the year winds down and the holiday season draws near, it will be wonderful to start finding a little more time for the things I am so looking forward to doing, being creative.  Be it art, gardening, making new Christmas decorations who knows but it will be fun. 

Time for friends and family and time to unwind the mind and body.  Winding down in a necessary part of life and I am asking myself more and more questions about how can I make more down time possible?  This year has had precious little of that. 

God knows my heart though and I know that over time he will give me the wisdom to know when to make small changes and when to make the big ones.  Down time allows me time to connect my spirit to God's and hear what he wants for my life. 

It is only when that focus is clear that I can then turn my attention to ministry, what does God want me to do with this writing gift in the year ahead?  What does God want me to share with you to encourage and uplift you in every way that I possibly can?

Well the answers to all these questions and more will soon be answered when that down time begins!

Tumbling down

This afternoon I was busy with the normal kitchen work, washing dishes, when next thing I hear rattling and crackling and all of a sudden I'm being attacked by boxes and a falling cat...you guessed it, little Topaz getting up to mischief.  She was obviously trying to get to the corner spot which I have now blocked seeing as as the corner is a piece of wood being held in place delicately by some silicone. This is something I have been trying to stop her from doing for some days now, since I noticed the piece starting to fall through.

Well missy got as big a fright as I did and by the look of shock on her face I could tell no reprimand was going to be necessary, she had learned her lesson.  For the rest of the day she has been quite good by comparison....shame!

I suppose the lesson is clear we all get up to mischief from time to time and it is only when things come tumbling down around us that we learn.  Let's try not to learn the hard way, lets learn to listen when God says NO!

It's all very interesting

Humour just has to be one of my favourite things and any time there is some kind of political turmoil you can bet you the jokes will fly.  It is easy for us here in S.A. to take a non emotional approach to looking at the American elections, but we all know in truth that what happens in the USA does not stay in the USA, it affects global markets and the lives of almost everyone. 

Most interesting for me this time round though is reading the articles about the opinion that it is the American evangelical movement that seems to have had the last word in this election.  Being anti abortion myself, I can well understand that more people voted for Trump than Clinton on this one issue alone. 

That being said, I respect Trump as a business man and although he was blowing hot air about a lot of issues at the heart of it, America is a capitalist society and money talks.  People want a leader who will develop the nation financially.  This lesson is one that most South Africans still have to learn and stealing Bill Clinton's campaign theme phrase, "its the economy, stupid."

Back to the church though and its role in this election.  I could not be happier that this is one core outcome that the media are highlighting.  It means that the Church of Christ in America is finally standing up and making themselves heard in a powerful and meaningful way. 

In history, although many nations plundered Africa for its wealth, the one thing that America did right was send missionaries to this continent, lots of them.  I have been personally impacted by this by the very close relationship that our family had in Nelspruit with the Christ family, who were here to do just that, spread the word of God to African people during our nations difficult apartheid years.

This election should give hope to all Christians that they too can make a difference in the politics of their nation if they will stand up and vote....and where you can't vote...Pray!