My head is full after another crammed day. Not enough hours, too many things going at the same time, things left undone......
I wrote previously that I was Not a PC! yet, perhaps I am one, more than I think.
I operate a little like an underpowered PC at times. I have 'too many windows open' and this causes my 'screen to freeze'. My 'task manager' pops up to warn me and I need to reset my thinking.
What is my Ctrl Alt del in real life?
Is it a coffee break? (fat chance!)
Is it lunch? (even fatter)
Do I endure until I get home and 'Crash' in front of the TV?
Do I open the fridge and gaze within, looking for relief?
The bible calls these 'broken cisterns' (we go looking for water in broken wells).
Lamentations 3:40 Let us test and examine our ways and return to the Lord.
Often, our waking hours are a struggle to switch off. Even when we hit the off button, sleep will not come. I am grateful for God unplugging me at the wall and that usually, I sleep soundly. Long, long before man made computers and we struggled to overcome them locking up by switching off and on again, God made it part of our system.
We need to be switched off and switched back on again - Isn't that what sleep is? Hopefully, by morning I will have been rebooted with a whole new shot at the day.
Thank God for it.
Lamentations 3:22,23. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.
Wednesday 12 December 2012
Tuesday 11 December 2012
Trees of life
It seems ages since I last posted a blog. I love to write and I have poorly neglected it of late.
It was my son's 13th Birthday this weekend and we spent some time in the woods. The woods are a great place to go and listen. Sometimes illustrations come blindingly obvious to me and this weekend was one of those days.
Trees are planted in pots then planted out - often in rows in woodlands or forestry. I have planted hundreds and hundreds of trees in woodland. It is a most rewarding activity, knowing that you are planting for future generations.
When the trees are planted out they are generally staked and corrolex tubes placed around them. this protects them from pests like rabbits, dear or squirrels from chewing them. The stake is placed alongside to encourage straight growth and to support the tree whilst it throws down its roots.
In time, it naturally breaks out of the protective tubing, which lays discarded. however, the stake and tie are a very different matter. At some point there comes a time when the tie must be loosened and eventually, the stake lifted and removed. If he stake is removed too late and the ties not loosened, it will damage the bark of the tree and cause harm. If it is removed too early, the tree may not have roots deep and strong enough to stand under the pressure of the elements. Of course, there are trees that never were staked. Some grow strong, some grow wild, some fail - It's a big risk. How many garden centres have un-staked trees for sale? They know the value of staking!
This has such a powerful parallel with parents and children. We try to get it right but at times parents can be too lax and allow too much too early and we see the damage caused as youngsters gain their independence far too early without strong loving boundaries. We see week roots and damaged trees. Yet, the same can be true of over restrictive parents. We often struggle to see the growing our children have done without our noticing and get stuck in treating them 3 years younger than they deserve. This can also be damaging and our support turns into a tourniquet which stifles the life from our children.
This, perhaps, is why such hurt and pain is experienced during adolescence between children and parents. The youngster wants to sway in the wind and the parent simply tightens the tie when it ought to be loosened. It's a mine-field. So how do we do our best to avoid such tightness or dangerous freedom. We watch, we talk, we listen, we trust, we pray. Trees must be tended and if neglected, will suffer.
Lord help uncaring lax parenting which leaves the youngster at the mercy of the four winds without support or guidance. Help parenting which seeks to demand obedience, restrict, constrict and stifle with control being the goal, rather than allowing the necessary growth to happen and the movement to strengthen the roots.
Dear parent (myself included), pay close attention like the best woodsman and tend your young plants, saplings and trees.
Proverbs 22:6. Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.
It was my son's 13th Birthday this weekend and we spent some time in the woods. The woods are a great place to go and listen. Sometimes illustrations come blindingly obvious to me and this weekend was one of those days.
Trees are planted in pots then planted out - often in rows in woodlands or forestry. I have planted hundreds and hundreds of trees in woodland. It is a most rewarding activity, knowing that you are planting for future generations.
When the trees are planted out they are generally staked and corrolex tubes placed around them. this protects them from pests like rabbits, dear or squirrels from chewing them. The stake is placed alongside to encourage straight growth and to support the tree whilst it throws down its roots.
In time, it naturally breaks out of the protective tubing, which lays discarded. however, the stake and tie are a very different matter. At some point there comes a time when the tie must be loosened and eventually, the stake lifted and removed. If he stake is removed too late and the ties not loosened, it will damage the bark of the tree and cause harm. If it is removed too early, the tree may not have roots deep and strong enough to stand under the pressure of the elements. Of course, there are trees that never were staked. Some grow strong, some grow wild, some fail - It's a big risk. How many garden centres have un-staked trees for sale? They know the value of staking!
This has such a powerful parallel with parents and children. We try to get it right but at times parents can be too lax and allow too much too early and we see the damage caused as youngsters gain their independence far too early without strong loving boundaries. We see week roots and damaged trees. Yet, the same can be true of over restrictive parents. We often struggle to see the growing our children have done without our noticing and get stuck in treating them 3 years younger than they deserve. This can also be damaging and our support turns into a tourniquet which stifles the life from our children.
This, perhaps, is why such hurt and pain is experienced during adolescence between children and parents. The youngster wants to sway in the wind and the parent simply tightens the tie when it ought to be loosened. It's a mine-field. So how do we do our best to avoid such tightness or dangerous freedom. We watch, we talk, we listen, we trust, we pray. Trees must be tended and if neglected, will suffer.
Lord help uncaring lax parenting which leaves the youngster at the mercy of the four winds without support or guidance. Help parenting which seeks to demand obedience, restrict, constrict and stifle with control being the goal, rather than allowing the necessary growth to happen and the movement to strengthen the roots.
Dear parent (myself included), pay close attention like the best woodsman and tend your young plants, saplings and trees.
Proverbs 22:6. Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.
Thursday 23 February 2012
Spurgeon's Bible Treasury - ENOCH
Such a long time since I wrote anything.
Picked up an 8 Volume set of Spurgeons Treasury of the Bible today.
Really thrilled to have it. Thanks to The Salvation Army second hand books.
I hope to post up some various slices of the sermons I read. They are all pretty long but I may only pick a sentence from here or there. I will have 2,600 to choose from. Today, I was reading about Enoch. There is not much in the bible about Enoch apart from a couple of places.
‘Enoch walked with God: and he was not; For God took him.’
Genesis 5:24
From Sermon - ENOCH P33
I buried yesterday, one of the excellent of the earth, who loved and feared and served his God far better than most of us... One of the last wishes of his heart he had committed to writing in a letter to a friend , when he had little thought of dying. It was this, “I have longed to realise the life of Enoch, and to walk with God”.
Oh for a closer walk with God! He did but write what you and I also feel... I hope a consideration of the life of Enoch may help you towards the realisation of your wish.
What is meant by Enoch’s walking with God? His walk was testimony that Enoch was well pleasing to God... for the Lord will not walk with a man in whom He has no pleasure. Can two walk together accept they agree? If men walk contrary to God, He will not walk with them. Walking implies amity, friendship, intimacy, love and these cannot exist between god and the soul unless the man is acceptable unto the Lord.
If Enoch had been pleasing to God by virtue of some extraordinary gifts and talents or by reason of some marvellous achievements or miraculous works we might have been in despair... No man can be pleasing to God till sin is pardoned and righteousness imputed. No beloved, by faith, Enoch became pleasing to God, and by faith he walked with God. Let us follow in his tracks.
He walked with God. It was not that he thought of God merely, that he speculated about God, that he argued about God, that he read about God, that he talked about God, but he walked with God... In his daily life he he realised that God was with him and he regarded Him as a living friend, in whom he confided and by whom he was loved.
I scarcerly know an intercourse that is more free, pleasant and cordial, than that which arises out of consistent walking with a friend. If I wished to find a man’s most familiar friend, it would surely be one with whom he daily walked... When persons are constantly in the habit of walking together from choice, you may be quite sure there are many communications between them, with which no stranger may intermeddle.
What a splendid walk! A walk of three hundred years! One might desire a change of company if he walked with anybody else, but to walk with god for three centuries was so sweet, that the patriarch kept on with his walk until he walked beyond time and space, and walked into paradise...
He did not commune with God in fits and starts, but he abode in the conscious love of God. He did not now and then climb to the heights of elevated piety and then descend into the marshy valley of lukewarmness; but he continued in the calm, happy, equable, enjoyment of fellowship with God from day to day...
So I gather that Enoch’s life was a spiritual progress, he went from strength to strength, and made headway in the gracious pilgrimage. May God grant us to be pressing onward ourselves.
These snippets have merely written in the dust on the surface of this sermon. I trust it brings encouragement and a desire to hunger after the life Enoch knew.
Christ says in Matthew 11 – “Come to Me”.
Picked up an 8 Volume set of Spurgeons Treasury of the Bible today.
Really thrilled to have it. Thanks to The Salvation Army second hand books.
I hope to post up some various slices of the sermons I read. They are all pretty long but I may only pick a sentence from here or there. I will have 2,600 to choose from. Today, I was reading about Enoch. There is not much in the bible about Enoch apart from a couple of places.
‘Enoch walked with God: and he was not; For God took him.’
Genesis 5:24
From Sermon - ENOCH P33
I buried yesterday, one of the excellent of the earth, who loved and feared and served his God far better than most of us... One of the last wishes of his heart he had committed to writing in a letter to a friend , when he had little thought of dying. It was this, “I have longed to realise the life of Enoch, and to walk with God”.
Oh for a closer walk with God! He did but write what you and I also feel... I hope a consideration of the life of Enoch may help you towards the realisation of your wish.
What is meant by Enoch’s walking with God? His walk was testimony that Enoch was well pleasing to God... for the Lord will not walk with a man in whom He has no pleasure. Can two walk together accept they agree? If men walk contrary to God, He will not walk with them. Walking implies amity, friendship, intimacy, love and these cannot exist between god and the soul unless the man is acceptable unto the Lord.
If Enoch had been pleasing to God by virtue of some extraordinary gifts and talents or by reason of some marvellous achievements or miraculous works we might have been in despair... No man can be pleasing to God till sin is pardoned and righteousness imputed. No beloved, by faith, Enoch became pleasing to God, and by faith he walked with God. Let us follow in his tracks.
He walked with God. It was not that he thought of God merely, that he speculated about God, that he argued about God, that he read about God, that he talked about God, but he walked with God... In his daily life he he realised that God was with him and he regarded Him as a living friend, in whom he confided and by whom he was loved.
I scarcerly know an intercourse that is more free, pleasant and cordial, than that which arises out of consistent walking with a friend. If I wished to find a man’s most familiar friend, it would surely be one with whom he daily walked... When persons are constantly in the habit of walking together from choice, you may be quite sure there are many communications between them, with which no stranger may intermeddle.
What a splendid walk! A walk of three hundred years! One might desire a change of company if he walked with anybody else, but to walk with god for three centuries was so sweet, that the patriarch kept on with his walk until he walked beyond time and space, and walked into paradise...
He did not commune with God in fits and starts, but he abode in the conscious love of God. He did not now and then climb to the heights of elevated piety and then descend into the marshy valley of lukewarmness; but he continued in the calm, happy, equable, enjoyment of fellowship with God from day to day...
So I gather that Enoch’s life was a spiritual progress, he went from strength to strength, and made headway in the gracious pilgrimage. May God grant us to be pressing onward ourselves.
These snippets have merely written in the dust on the surface of this sermon. I trust it brings encouragement and a desire to hunger after the life Enoch knew.
Christ says in Matthew 11 – “Come to Me”.
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