Mary had a Little Lamb

I have never read “Mary had a Little Lamb” written like this before – have you?

Mary had a little lamb,
His fleece was white as snow,
And everywhere that Mary went,
The Lamb was sure to go.
He followed her to school each day,
‘Twasn’t even in the rule.
He made the children laugh and play,
To see a Lamb at school.
And then the rules all changed one day,
Illegal it became,
To bring the Lamb of God to school,
Or even speak His name.
Everyday got worse and worse,
And days turned into years.
Instead of hearing children laugh,
We heard gunshots and tears.
What must we do to stop the crime,
That’s in our schools today?
Let’s let the Lamb come back to school,
And teach our kids to pray.

Curiouser and Curiouser

Image from here

Curiouser and curiouser – today I went to the physio, and he told me that I have not one disc bulge, but four – ahem, I had thought that this was going to be easy to remedy the disc bulge, but four of them are going to be a trifle more difficult. The posterior (bulging backward) disc bulges that I have are L2, L3 and L5, while the anterior (bulging forward) disc bulge is L4.

At the moment, the physio has given me one exercise – lying face down with three pillows under my tummy. Treatment consists of ultrasound once a week, with hot wheat packs in between to ease the inflammation. On my visit today he said that we will continue on the road that we are on until the muscle pain settles, and then we are going to have to go the opposite way to try and heal the posterior disc bulges.

It seems that when I fell down the cellar steps, I really did a ‘good’ job of hurting my back. Little things, such as putting the nebuliser into the boot of the car bring on intense pain;  it’s not until you I do something, and it causes intense pain that I realise how much damage I have done.

One thing that I do know, and that is that God allows certain illnesses to happen for His glory.

And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.
And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?
Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. John 9: 1-3

I need to have a voice of thanksgiving, but this is not easy unless I draw on God’s strength, and then, and only then will He give order and meaning to my life. I need to draw on God’s strength, and know that His grace is sufficient for me. We are told to glory in our infirmities, and that God will use the weaker vessel for His glory – that’s me!

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong. 2 Corinthians 12: 9, 10

Lord, I am willing to be used for Your purpose – take me, use me, mould me, shape me to achieve your purposes here on earth! I need to remember that God works all things together for our good, and I need to give Him my thanks, no matter what happens, even if I don’t understand the “why” right now. Trusting God means that I am not drawing on my own understanding, for it is not for me to understand – God is our omniscient (all-knowing) Creator God, and I lay my life in His hands.

Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. Proverbs 3:5

Bricks

Sometimes, we I as a Christian, ‘say’ things without really thinking through the consequences of what I’m saying, and God says, “Whoa, wait – that’s not what I meant!” Then He goes through all sorts of ways to try and reinforce what He actually did mean.

Yesterday was one of those days, and God made sure that I really knew that the way that I was thinking was wrong, and I find it utterly amazing that God will use several different ways of reinforcing the same idea. Sometimes I wonder if it would be easier for Him to use a brick to get His idea across!

To backstep just a little, I said that I wouldn’t like to be found in creased clothes when Jesus returns, but then one of my dear friends, Ruby said, “We are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. We each must have the wedding garment to enter the marriage feast on that great day!”.

Just to reinforce that point, Amanda came here with the idea of writing almost the same thing. She wrote, “Oh Ruby, you took the words right out of my mouth! I came back to say the very thing you said!!”. Now, as if that isn’t amazing enough, our Bible devotion this morning was all about false hope, and it stated that, “God’s standard of perfection, however, requires a totally sinless life. There’s no way any of us can ever be ‘good enough’. It is only through the sacrifice of the sinless Saviour that we are made righteous. God made Jesus ” who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21).

It is not important what we wear when Jesus returns, for we shall be,

“arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints”. Revelation 19:8

I truly look forward to the day when we shall meet with Jesus, and be arrayed in the fine linen of His righteousness.

Accept the teaching of the world

And hopeless you will be,

But trust in God’s eternal plan

If you want life that’s free. - Branon

Dear God…

This powerpoint presentation is another one that we had sent to us from Pastor Quentin, and I thought it was ever so cute – kids really do say the darnedest things! I hope that you get a laugh from some of them.

Painting the Church

This was an email that we received from our pastor, Pastor Quentin, and we truly did get rather a giggle from it ~ I hope that you enjoy it as much as we did – rather a play on words, here.

There was a Scottish painter named  Smokey Macgregor who was very interested in making a penny where he could, so he often thinned down his paint to make it go a wee bit further.

As it happened, he got away with this for some time, but eventually the Baptist Church decided to do a big restoration job on the outside of one of their biggest buildings..

Smokey put in a bid, and, because his price was so low, he got the job.

So he set about erecting the scaffolding and setting up the planks, and buying the paint and, yes, I am sorry to say, thinning it down with turpentine..

Well, Smokey was up on the scaffolding, painting away, the job nearly completed, when suddenly there was a horrendous clap of thunder, the sky opened, and the rain poured down washing the thinned paint from all over the church and knocking Smokey clear off the scaffold to land on the lawn among the gravestones, surrounded by telltale puddles of the thinned and useless paint..

Smokey was no fool. He knew this was a judgement from the Almighty, so he got down on his knees and cried:

“Oh, God, Oh God, forgive me; what should I do?”

And from the thunder, a mighty voice spoke..

“Repaint! Repaint! And thin no more!”