Musings on faith and real life
I’ve had odd Christmases before. There was the Christmas day in Uganda when we emerged from a morning church service to the sight of a young man parading down the street. As he turned his head towards me, four eyes caught mine, not two. Slowly I realised he had an inverted cow’s head balanced on […]
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When I was a medical student, our teachers asked us asked to have a discussion about whether we were responsible for caring for our parents in their old age. To my shock, fully half of those present said they wouldn’t care for their parents when they were older. Some didn’t see why they should; others […]
Read MoreOriginally posted on Don't Lose Hope :
“So often we try to make other people feel better by minimizing their pain, by telling them that it will get better, or that there are worse things in the world. But that’s not what I actually needed. What I actually needed was for someone to tell me…
Let’s imagine what happens if we try to help someone suffering from shame by using our usual method of explaining Jesus’s death. Rebecca: Oh hi Sarah – how brilliant to see you! How long is it since I last saw you? About a year? It was last Easter wasn’t it? Sarah: Yes, and it’s been a pretty rubbish year, too. Rebecca: Oh no, what’s happened? Sarah: […]
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March 23rd 2020 2pm. Weekly church staff meeting. How were we doing in the light of the government’s announcement the previous week that we should all be working from home if possible?. We sat round the staff room table trying to begin to think ahead and plan for the possible effects of the epidemic. We […]
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So many times at the drop-in we run in the church where I volunteer I have been talking to someone who is caught in an impossible cycle. They were abused as children, which continues to give them mental health problems. Because of the mental health problems they can’t get work. Because they can’t get work […]
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The tax return form sat in my Dad’s in-tray month after month, ignored, though the deadline loomed.My mother tried to remind him about it gently, and was brushed off with ‘It’s OK. I’ll do it’. But he didn’t. And she began to wonder if he didn’t because he couldn’t. He already had a diagnosis of […]
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A shiver runs through me when I recall you, street preacher: you stand there, politely dressed, in a neat space between market stalls, a small black book in hand externally polite, respectable, friendly even but with a stream of horror pouring out of your mouth. ‘Aren’t you afraid?’ you ask the passers-by. ‘If you […]
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I let out an involuntary gasp as I turned over the price tag. This child’s ski jacket was unbelievably expensive. But of course it was. If someone needed to buy a ski jacket in this village high in the Austrian mountains, the shop owners could charge what they liked. A ski jacket when skiing was hardly an […]
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It was very hard to understand God’s guidance once I became depressed. My husband was convinced he was called to work as an overseas missionary doctor. When we met, he thought that in me he had found someone who would partner him in working overseas. We trained in cross-cultural mission, applied and set off to […]
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A candle in my treehouse 