Only one with a slightly geeky husband would have fairy lights wired up to a server!!!

Still only a geek would be proud of her glass-topped desk with the pink panther, a 750GB hard drive, fairy lights and a genuine Sony Bravia bunny model from the advert Bit messy though right now….

It was with great horror that I discovered the other day that when I was small, I resembled one of the moomins!  This is not something that one should wish to discover every day, it is not the greatest escalator of self esteem…

moomin and me.

Still a moomin??  Hopefully not…  *Paranoia*

Sometimes, our Christian life is a little prescriptive.  We keep up with current trends and we keep up appearances for the sake of ticking the Christian box.  Whatever your ministry, whether it is calling up your friend from work who has had a bad day, leading worship, leading a church/cluster/small group, making coffee, hospitality, serving the poor, having a career of integrity etc etc, I dare you to stop what you are doing to ask God what He wants you to do with it.

What is it that scares us about doing this?  I have come to the conclusion that none of us are very humble.  It is a fact reiterated most profoundly and perhaps unwittingly by the lead singer of Counting Crows that if you place someone on a pedestal you will watch them fall.  This is because human beings cannot and will not ever live up to the standard of Christ or, if you like, in the eyes of the world, ‘perfection’.  This is also why our heroes always disappoint us.  This is why Todd Bentley appears to have fallen so dramatically.  What he has done is so commonplace amongst anyone else in the world, but his elevation to a status that is ’superhuman’, has caused the impact of his topple to appear gargantuan.    Where do his followers look now?  I pray that they look to God, where their gaze should have been all along, in order that they do not still stare at Todd.  The only reaction they can give by staring at him now is a pointed finger, a new avenue through which to vent passion of a sort. This is not God’s intent.   God blessed that man for a time, but perhaps he too fell into routine and forgot to lose control enough to ask God what He wanted.

Arrogance comes in thinking that this could not happen to any one of us.  The minute we make that assertion is the minute that we begin a journey towards the floor from the pedestal.  It is our duty to come humbly before God and admit that we cannot run the Church, His bride.  How could we??  How dare we, in fact?

When I used to lead worship, I remember praying to ask God where He wanted us to go in the service.  Every time He spoke.  Are we scared of asking because we worry that He might not answer and we will have lost control?  Are we scared that He will say something ‘ridiculous’ like “I don’t want any singing today”?  What on earth would we do then??

Start small.  Ask God a few questions in your prayers;

What would you like me to do today?

Who do you want me to contact today?

Is there something I need to change today?

The results will be huge.

There is definitely something to be said for going to church and getting some prayer for healing.  I felt so much better afterwards that I went for a curry!!!  Today I am tired again but still much better than I was…  JT and Tom decided to take a gentle bike ride to Cirencester and returned looking like a pair of corpses!!  Ooops.  Lucy and I watched Enchanted (if you haven’t seen it I recommend it, it is brilliant!) and My Big Fat Greek Wedding (also brilliant).  We ate pizza and salad and chilled.

Later JT and I took a trip to the big Sainsbury’s and bought me a new winter coat in their clothing sale.  It is red not pink (sadly) but it was a bargain.

Being ill gives you a chance to read more… Therefore I have just finally completed the Chronicles of Narnia, Chart Throb by Ben Elton (priceless!) and am now reading The Lineage of Grace by Francine Rivers - cheers for that one Lucy!

Piano pieces on the go:  Sleigh Ride by Leroy Anderson (yes, I know, a little out of season but hey I might have learnt it by Christmas!!), Prelude in C# minor by Rachmaninov and Over the Rainbow by George Shearing.  Also ploughing on with Clair de Lune and various others.  Again, being ill enables me to play a but until I run out of energy!

Current music:  Cassandra Wilson - Blue Moon Daughter,  Rockstar by Nickelback because I had to re-convince myself that it was good after it got stolen by an advert!!  The acoustic version of Hey Ya by Obadiah Parker (brilliant) and various other shuffled compilations…

When you have had flu all week and wake up feeling horribly sick and miserable, you go downstairs from your shower and find awesome fairy cakes on your doorstep in a pot lined with jelly snakes with a pink smiley sticker on the top.  It totally makes your day. In fact, I have had a really good week considering how ill I have felt…  I will explain.

Moment of honesty:  Sometimes life really sucks.  I try to put a brave face on a lot of my illness because it is not very attractive to shake like a leaf, scream with agony, have your gut go into spasm or any other attractive manifestation that IBS brings out in front of people.  There are some weeks however, where everything gets too much and I break down a bit and get really fed up.  That happened this week when I got flu on top of the IBS and so after a few days of being miserable, I emailed my cluster from church and asked if they would pray for me.  They all said that they would and not only that, but they have been really kind to JT and me this week.

I have had cheery emails, phonecalls, texts etc then on Monday Dan and Sophie cooked us a delicious meal and brought it round with mini creme eggs for pudding and a magazine for me to read.  It was exactly what we needed, as JT has been working really hard whilst triyng to look after me and the house as well.  To have one evening with the stress off and a lovely ‘proper’ meal was a bigger blessing than they will ever know.  Jon and Sarah have also offered to make us a meal and today Jo and Sarah came round to see me with cake regardless of the fact that I am lurgy ridden.

I big them up on here not knowing if they will ever read it (I am not really sure who reads this blog sometimes!!)  Here is why they are amazing…  These guys didn’t do this to put on a show, in fact, maybe noone will ever know what they did and I am certain that they will never know how much it meant to us.  They never saw the smile that it put on our faces to know that people thought about us and about how they could help.  Whilst I hope that one day I can do the same for them, I know that their real reward is in heaven, because they performed an act that only God can see (so for His glory alone, an act of worship if you like - not everyone uses just singing to worship God).

I almost felt like you do when you are a little kid and you have been for a really long walk and you are just too tired to walk anymore. Then someone picks you up and puts you on their shoulders for a while and carries you for a bit.  If you ever read this guys, thank you.

Following on from George’s posts about the ‘dumbing down’ of society, I was astonished to discover that tuna contains fish…!!!

Look at this hilarious present I got this morning from my brilliant sis-in-law…  It is a tea towel holder!!