The day now past had many encounters and was full of blessings, challenges and battles today and found me return home so cold that I snuggled up to get warm and woke a couple of hours later - which is a rather rather interesting phenomenon I usually reserve for care homes in the Winter!
Today's encounters were interesting as many are taken up with what is a rather average loss of celebrities and yet to them appears to be something out of the ordinary - a portent of things to come and the indication of a year to be forgotten. Oddly I would have said Brexit, Trump, Johnson (Chump) and many other things made 2016 a year to forget - but hey ho!
Personally I'm looking at a year of blessing in the lives of those with whom we have engaged and the ways in which I have seen God work around me. Not been an easy year but it has been a year - and there are many things to reflect upon.
But the many people I have engaged with today for that I am grateful - and moderately happy with the person I was and the person I was working with and for. For the blessings, I thank God and for the increased workload: Well that's a bonus, innit? The devil makes work for idle hands - hopefully it appears that I might never get to work for him then ;-)
The opportunity (and ability) to stand with those who mourn is so a blessing - may tomorrow as we bring the other partner of a marriage a the final service just weeks after their other half be a blessing and bring some healing and comfort. Lord use me to shine your light in that dark place.
So onto sleep and the new day beyond.
2 comments:
Sometimes our encounters with others can be negative, but most are positive. I can't think of the last time I had a negative encounter, even on Jury Service earlier in 2016, all of the encounters with fellow jurors were positive. Perhaps because I was openly reading a book by J John called Soul Purpose, which is about how God works in and through us. It provoked conversations, some of which were "I believe in God, but can't come to church because", which were useful in exploring with them their reasons, and sharing those of my own, which at one time put me in a similar position - and how God has worked in me to overcome the stumbling block that was separating me from him.
One interesting conversation was with a young man, mid-twenties, whose father had been a very Evangelical Christian, and had some quite extreme views about sin and punishment for them - they had turned him against active Christianity, as he couldn't accept a God who wasn't merciful. We explored this a little together, and hopefully I was able to reassure him that Jesus was love and the Vengeful God depicted to him, particularly from the Old Testament, wasn't how God actually was - in that his promises of Salvation were based upon love and a repentant heart in us, not on hell fire and brimstone.
It's at times like these, when I might have been tongue tied in the past, that somehow God gives me the words to use, that are comfortable to use and are true, and hopefully reflect God's grace to the person being spoken too.
I know that I will meet resistance, but the reality is that there will always be some people who live in darkness willingly, and getting through to them might not happen anytime soon, but hopefully, a seed might be sown that will bear fruit in the future.
God wants everyone to come to him, he is patient and will wait a life time (ours) if needed. How many death bed conversions do people experience? Conversion of heart can happen at any time.
Indeed - but we want it done in our time and our way don't we :-)
Thanks for post,
V
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