PASSIONATE CREATIVE CHRISTIAN

This orchid is called – The Pentecost Orchid

Good Morning,

Does anyone reading this know the origins of this orchid?    I found the picture today in my Flowers File.   What I was believing I was to share vanished as I looked at it.   The following words came to mind.  These are written on a desk calendar somewhere  in my records.

On this Sunday let’s all stop for a moment and simply marvel at the beauty and wonder of the world around us. No matter what the weather or our circumstances let’s stop, look and listen.   Be inspired!   Be Blessed.

The more I actually look and study nature the more I am amazed at the Creator.                                                           Louis Pasteur  

Peace! Blessings! and Hope!  across the airwaves to ALL.

Good Morning!

          Tenacious tree climber.   An early morning visitor.

     Technical glitches – the computer failed.   Several days passed before restoration and then, the power was ‘switched off’ for maintenance. Days of ‘cut off’  quietness.

One link can never be destroyed by outside circumstances.    I prayed.   An answer came to me in the night and I made a decision.   I wrote it down as it flowed and sent it as a ‘letter’ to the folk who look after my health care.  The decision is  No to all protection tablets not necessary for maintaining life but ‘protection’ for the……… what if’s. I believe I heard… quality of life with and in HIM means absolutely the future is in His Hands.        John 10:10 ‘I have come that they may have life and have it more abundantly’, resonates strongly in my heart.    PEACE flows like a mighty river.  I thank God for all medical people and all their help.   I thank God for my healing after this particular journey.     Forward – length of days – future ALL ahead. (as He determines).

Thank you to all who prayed and ‘connected’ with me these past few weeks and Judy I thank you for your comment.    Yes! indeed I heard His Answer.

Blessings! Peace! and abundant Grace! be with all who read these pages.   May we too find like the koala in the tree illustrated, that although life is precarious  and technologies are scrambled and uncertain we can EVER climb and keep on aiming upwards.

Mid-week thoughts

                                                                       Good Morning!

                                                          First streaks of daylight

Life is often full of uncertainties.    This was proven to me in my blog post today. I thought I had finished and safely published.   I’m not sure what happened but it disappeared and I found it had not been published at all.  I return now……. what I said before is unimportant my prayer that what I will now write may encourage or bless someone.      Hope is like a torch we must cling to even in the midst of uncertainty.

Yesterday I met with the doctor following my five weeks of radiation and five weeks of ‘recovery’.      I am grateful and should feel exultant about the result. Unlike many whose lives will be limited by their experiences, I have been told the future for me promises to be longer life and promising.   Gratitude for this Grace knows no bounds.

However,  even in this there is uncertainty.   I know God has given great medical advances in our lifetimes.   He is behind many significant break-throughs etc.  For the rest of my life I may have to take a small  insignificant tablet – one per day.   This tablet is like a ‘safeguard’.   However, there can be side effects.  In some cases many.  Few are life-threatening but life-limiting.   In other cases none at all.   Therein lies the uncertainty………I therefore cling to the hope that in ALL Things Jesus’ statement ‘I have come that they may have life and  live life abundantly.    John 10:10 can be fulfilled.    May we all be grateful and thankful for every day we live!  (No one has any certainty about how long).

Day follows night……flood comes after ebb….spring and summer will succeed winter.    Hope then!     Hope ever!   God fails not.

Charles H. Spurgeon

Blessings and prayerful thoughts to others journeying through life with uncertainties. May HOPE blaze brilliantly.

p.s.  I found the missing blog.   It has been published in a separate link on the Home Page. What I wrote earlier was actually more concise than the above.  The sentiment is the same.  Have a great day and Week!

         THANKFULNESS AND CONTENTMENT

This is an Australian picture.    I did not take it but found it in a folder of ‘stored’ Animals’. Thank you to the photographer and whoever sent it to me.

After a hard day at work these dogs indicate to me the absolute gratitude for what they have and the contentment of being together in the experience.

‘Give thanks with a grateful heart’ is the psalmist’s regular theme but Contentment goes  deeper.       Finding, as travellers on this highway of life that we can be thankful for what is about us ….indeed for many and various things.is necessary and vital.   We can indeed be thankful for even the seemingly ‘little’ things like ‘getting up’ ‘Breathing in a new day.’

However, true CONTENTMENT only comes when we sit , settle and KNOW physically, emotionally and spiritually that no matter what situation we find ourselves in we are content.    This place does not necessarily lead to JOY.     This place may never make us HAPPY in the hyped ordinary way of things.

CONTENTMENT is a whole of life consuming place where peace reigns.

The Apostle Paul wrote.       ‘I have learned to be content in ALL  circumstances, in my lack and in my plenty.’        Phil: 4:11

    This day,  this coming week lets ensure that we take the twins with us on our journey.

       May Thankfulness and Contentment  wash over all our lives in waves of reality. 

Live!   Love!    Make a difference to someone else’s day and week.

Blessings!

Good Morning all!

  ‘There is a river that flows from the Throne of God’..…Rev:22:1

LIVING WATER.

On the last day of the feast Jesus stood and cried out saying ‘ If anyone thirsts let him come to Me and drink.   He who believes in Me, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.  John:37,38,39 John 10:10b. I have come that you may have life and have it more abundantly.

Christ crucified. Christ Risen!

John 11:25.   I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in me though He may die, He shall live,   whoever lives and believes in ME shall never die!

RESURRECTION LIFE is life in fullness.   Come! drink! Live in Him.

Dear ones,  Rejoice in this day.    REJOICE.          As the year progresses we will remember in gratitude as we live our life with Him   many things………Ascension……Wow!  His Kingship. and then remembrance of the day God the Holy Spirit, came to dwell forever WITH and IN us…Pentecost!

What a glorious and wonderful RELATIONAL GOD is our God.

   REJOICE!…….REJOICE……….REJOICE…….REJOICE…….live! 

A child’s simple expression of the Resurrection.

      All the theology! All the clever mind analysis and thinking of the Easter Story is superfluous .  All the cover over with Bunnies and eggs and commercialism are but a smokescreen.

May be, it  should come back to the simplicity of child-like questions and answering this 2018 Easter.

WHO?     WHY?       PURPOSE?   DOES THIS REALLY MATTER TO ME?

DOES THIS HAVE ANY RELEVANCE TO MY WORLD?     DOES THIS MATTER TO THE DYING CHILD or to the UNLOVED PERSON IN THE STREET?

If the answer is Yes to any question and the query is still WHY?

Then, the challenge to myself and to everyone else is …..Let’s open up our arms, look above our circumstances and really get the personal answers.  Let’s get the answers from ABOVE.

Because it may be hyped up, covered up, analysed until  its no more than a  myth or a ‘past legend’.     Yet, Millions, countless millions have died and are still dying for what is their TRUTH.

What is it all about?????       How should it impact my daily life? Can I be changed?   Can I be an instrument of change around me???

HE IS UP!

Happy 75th Birthday,26th March, 2018  David, mate and best friend.

                                                                                 *****

Have you ever heard of a man call Mark Galli? Yesterday, I read a piece he wrote.  He said,

I am writing a Theology of Play.    I believe that Resting, celebrating and Playing are central to life in the Kingdom of God.

We must be disciplined about the importance of our Prayer Life, Our Sacred Times of Remembrance and what we ‘Do’  in our Love and Service to the Lord

But!

When we Rest, Celebrate and Play – and this is vital for human-well-being, we can do this with FREEDOM  in the FULLNESS OF JOY as we live our whole of life with  Christ as  Saviour and Lord.

                     Many Happy Returns of the Day, David. 

Blessings and Love to all.!

PALM SUNDAY

   GREETINGS!                                                                                                      Thought to ponder

I don’t think I ever understood why there was so much death and sacrifice involved in covenantal worship.  Animal sacrifices etc.     I had this thought as I remembered that today marks the beginning of a journey.    We remember the last few days in the earthly life of Jesus Christ.   The story of the entrance into Jerusalem  – hailed as A KING, this man on a donkey rode over Palm Fronds….( maybe coats etc as well.) Palm fronds were waved.       Exalted, esteemed He came.        Brokenness even here in this silent symbol of  palm leaves, speaks to me of a powerful thought for us all.    There has to be death to bring new life…………Christ’s Death opened the doorway and shifted the cosmos between life and death………IN Resurrection!

Today it struck me that it is in ‘broken-ness’ and self-denial human beings can still respond in our worship of the Divine.  Job and David both learned that in sack-clock and ashes….their recorded histories highlight………….Unworthiness, humility and brokenness.      Worship and Forgiveness!     ‘I KNOW my Redeemer liveth ‘…Job.

No more need for animal sacrifice. (or even sackcloth for us)    It is FINISHED.   The New Covenant brings life, liberty and freedom.       The difference is that now when, in the broken-ness of our earthly conditions,  we worship, we  KNOW the flooding back of  New Life found only in HIM.

Just a thought!   Broken palm leaves some-how seem both   kinda sad but beautiful as well.       What are your thoughts?

Good Morning! – A mid-week moment of contemplation

Last night in a dream, I returned to the Gordon River, TASMANIA,  where a few years ago I took this picture.     Today, when I woke up I knew it was to be part of my ongoing reflective, more contemplative journey, to Easter remembrances.    I found three reflection scriptures:

PAST:     Mark 14:72…… Peter reflects on what Jesus had said about the crowing of the rooster and his denial.        Peter wept.       Knowing forgiveness yet ..not wallowing..but remembering.

PRESENT:    Luke  14:31-33 .   A reminder that being a disciple will be at a cost …..entailing surrender.

FUTURE;      Acts 21:12-14        Paul is determined to look ahead in his Calling to follow His Saviour and walks onward despite warnings of dangers in Jerusalem.

In simplicity, two words have come clearly to mind.      Humility and commitment.       Maybe, this is my mid-week challenge  to live in my ordinary life.

Perhaps, indeed for ALL of us  to live  in everything we undertake,  be it the mundane, the necessary………the caring for others, the pesky phone calls,……..the daily may be irritations,  or the more ‘enjoyable’ when we flow in something we love……… that humility and commitment be the yardsticks by which we judge successful completion.

Gentle Thoughts for us all to ponder.

                           LIVE!  Shine His Light in your daily  World

LOVE  

Good Morning!

A Sunday Reflection – Lent 5 in Christian Calendar  

                      Martello Tower, Saints Bay, Island of Guernsey.      English Channel.

I have always loved pictures of hills, or looking across toward them.

Ordinary life is often like valleys and hills and I have found by focussing on the possibilities of climbing higher and looking beyond has  given me hope. It’s a reminder of  Psalm. 121 ...I will lift my eyes – unto the hills. From whence comes my help?…..My help comes from the Lord. who made heaven and earth. v1

As Christians, the remembrance of ‘a green hill, far, far way without a City Wall.’ A hill called Golgotha, should be coming to our minds more clearly  as we approach Easter. This remembrance should be deeper, profound, life changing and eternally  challenging.

Let the Easter Bunnies hop and a world with constant push for materialism and excitement continue to roll onwards,  BUT……….let us truly stop and think.

The Easter story is about suffering and dying. Sacrifice.    The Easter story is about a SAVIOUR.   The Easter story is about RESURRECTION...but the Easter story would not have by itself lived on ……Today millions are willing to die for its TRUTH.   If the story had ended there, as an event in the ancient past. .

We must also remember that the story did not end with RESURRECTION. Thank God!

The sinless Saviour’s SPIRIT……..Eternal Spirit..….even from the Beginning of life itself GOD ..(perhaps even before recorded creation history)………   was sent by the Saviour Himself to this Earth to live on  in all who will believe in Him and accept the Gift.    Now this is:

H O P E 

(At the highest hilltop level)

Thoughts, prayers and Love!