I don’t seem to find the time to read a lot of blogs these days, but three posts really blessed me this month and I want to share them with you …

Enjoy! : )

Seven times Elijah had to pray before that mist began to rise out of the sea. Seven times! Do you think he was wondering what was taking so long? I mean, the fire had been immediate. So why the wait now?

Read more HERE!

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God doesn’t need us to be ready for Him …

Read more HERE!

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dear sixteen-year-old-jamie …

Read more HERE!

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Let’s do it. Let’s just write without worrying if it’s just right or not.

For only five short, bold, beautiful minutes. Let your mind and your words and your heart fly free; wild – no editing, no over thinking.

Won’t you join me?

(The Gypsy Mama)

Tender

Go

I wonder, in the first few seconds, if “tender” is one of those words that doesn’t apply to me as a single woman. Isn’t it related to love – the wedded kind and the maternal kind? I decide that’s silly. It’s just a word! My grandmother uses it to describe a joint of meat cooked to perfection. It’s hard to imagine a less romantic or poetic use of the word! (Although, I understand, my grandmother’s roast are delicious if you eat meat!) I let the word, tender, sit in my mind for a few moments. I turn it this way and that and suddenly I realise that tender is supposed to describe my heart. It’s supposed to be tender to the touch of God, to the miracle of Christ, to the conviction and the hope of the Holy Spirit, to the celebrating and the suffering of others, to the good and the bad, the laughing and the crying, the waiting and the rejoicing of this confusing, dizzying, exciting thing we call life. And, suddenly, the word “tender” applies to me too.

Stop

I’m not really sure what got me started. I wrote my first story when I was four years old and just kept writing! I was always imagining and telling stories to myself – the sort that began, “What if there was a girl like THIS and THIS happened and … ?” I wrote all through my childhood and teenage years and …

Read the rest of the interview HERE!

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Let’s do it. Let’s just write without worrying if it’s just right or not.

For only five short, bold, beautiful minutes. Let your mind and your words and your heart fly free; wild – no editing, no over thinking.

Won’t you join me?

(The Gypsy Mama)

Vivid

Go

Vivid is colour. It’s memories. It’s emotion. Vivid is living life with intensity or passion. Vivid is choosing to laugh when you want to cry. Vivid is working a job that requires sacrifice and service when you have a feeling that it would be easier to work in Sainsbury’s or Tesco. Vivid is dreaming when you’ve been disappointed and hurt. Vivid is embracing relationships in spite of the threat of loss and pain. Vivid is choosing a life that’s full of colour and the making of memories and emotion – happy and sad, sometimes together – and seasons of life and stewardship of gifts and, above all, the choice every day to LIVE.

Stop

These days I often run out of words between family and church, work and writing, studying and sleeping. I start to panic and think, “I need to write something!”

Driving through the countryside near my home and listening to the words of a man who lived for God and died when he wasn’t much older than I am now … that brings life back into perspective. I’m a scribbler, but my life isn’t about words. It’s about God.

You take the world by surprise

They won’t believe their eyes

When You come through the skies …

(Keith Green)

Does anyone else my age listen to Keith Green’s songs now? I grew up listening to his songs! He said, “Life is short. Make it count.” Today I’m making life count by editing “The Abolitionist” while listening to “So You Wanna Go Back to Egypt” today! How do you make life count today?

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Let’s do it. Let’s just write without worrying if it’s just right or not.

For only five short, bold, beautiful minutes. Let your mind and your words and your heart fly free; wild – no editing, no over thinking.

Won’t you join me?

(The Gypsy Mama)

Awake

Go

Awake. What do I do with a word like “awake”? Maybe I’ll skip this week. Oh, but wait, isn’t awake what I am at this moment? It’s what I’ve been for more hours than are wise most days this week. It’s what I’m not sure I want to be at this moment. Awake is what I wanted to be ALL THE TIME when I was a little girl. Awake is what I’m often too tired to enjoy now I’m all grown up. Awake requires that I open my eyes and my soul, but if my eyes are open for too long every day then my soul gets sleepy. Awake – REALLY awake – requires that I close my eyes sometimes. Then, awake, I can open my eyes AND my heart and see the sun shining through the leaves and the frost sparkling on the grass, the tears and smiles of others, the words on the page and message in the words. Awake is being alive to grace and wonder. Awake is dreaming dreams and visions. Awake is painful, but GOOD. And now I’ve REALLY run out of ideas about awake at four and a half minutes …

Stop

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Let’s do it. Let’s just write without worrying if it’s just right or not.

For only five short, bold, beautiful minutes. Let your mind and your words and your heart fly free; wild – no editing, no over thinking.

Won’t you join me?

(The Gypsy Mama)

Roar

Go

The word makes of think of lions – the big cats I’ve only ever seen at the zoo. It makes me think of the little cats I’ve seen in homes all my life. I don’t feel like a lion – more like a pussy. Life roars – oh, how it roars, with injustice and pain. Do I sit back, like a pussy in a window, at a distance from the bustle of life? Or do I roar too? Can I roar that justice matters and healing is a real life possibility? Perhaps the prettiest and tamest of pussies can become a lion. Jesus is called The Lion of Judah – the Lion, in other words, of His people. He’s not pretty and tame. He’s wild, He’s strong, He’s relentless. Imagine Him surviving in the desert. Didn’t He say, “Come, follow Me?” Perhaps, even when the sun is hot and the sand is scratchy, we’re called to follow Him into the desert. Perhaps we’re called to be lions. Perhaps we’re called to roar.

Stop

The ladies at the Girl Talk blog wrote one of my favourite new year posts:

Each year we make New Year’s resolutions for things we want to change, but we also have New Year’s hopes for things we can’t change, but wish we could. We long to receive certain desires of our heart that seem elusively out of reach. And maybe, just maybe, we will see those hopes fulfilled this year.

Read more here …

Nancy Leigh DeMoss says,

At the start of this new year, I want to challenge you to make a different kind of New Year’s resolution—not a resolution to lose something, like a few pounds or a bad habit, but a resolution to gain everything truly worth having, by committing to read the Bible every day in 2012!

What do you think? Let me know if you join me in accepting this challenge! Read more here …

Some words or a picture for every week of the year – all about {HOPE} …

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I just started reading “Kisses from Katie” and discovered this quote on the last page (yes, the LAST page, because I have a bad habit of skipping about in a book!). It’s true for all of us and I think it’s the perfect way in which to end {Hope 07/52/11}. It’s so FULL of hope for 2012 and forever …

Jesus is here with us and He is coming back. And I am young and sometimes tired and completely unable to understand why He has graced me with this plan for my life. But I am chosen. Instructed to carry the story of our Saviour, to shine His light in a dark and broken world. You are chosen too. His life and His strength and His grace, they will not run dry until He gets here, fresh rain on a parched land.

We wait for Him.

(Katie Davis)

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