Things Too Wonderful

Christians have times of suffering too!  There is the temptation sometimes to think that we are exempt from suffering, or difficult times; that God will protect us from anything painful or horrible. 

But sometimes he doesn’t. 

We live in a fallen, messed up world and we suffer sometimes: sickness, relationship breakdown, injustice, financial difficulties, stress, pain… God does not cause these things.  Life happens and sometimes it hurts.  We need to respond to that.

Like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego (whose story is told in Daniel, chapter 3).  Three good, Jewish boys, exiled unjustly to a foreign country, stripped of their culture, identity and even their names but getting on with the job.  Outwardly they were obedient to their captors, but inwardly their hearts were kept for God alone.

The next thing they know they’re heading for the fiery furnace. Continue Reading »

God has really been challenging me recently through Isaiah 45:3 

“I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places”

Which I take to mean that there is treasure to be found when times are difficult and you feel like you’re going through dark places. 

There is something about suffering which makes us more receptive to God.  Maybe because we are crying out for answers and maybe because there is nowhere else to turn.  I know that on the days when Steve just can’t get out of bed and I’m feeling weighed down by the responsibility and difficulty of it all, that I am more open to hearing God.  Probably because I need His help so much on those days just to get through.  Continue Reading »

I became a christian in the May of the year I turned fifteen.  It was the best decision I have ever made.

My Dad was in the army, and I had spent most of my life moving from one army base to another; a new home every year/eighteen months.  By the time he left the army, to give us a more stable secondary school education, I was twelve, and I had already learnt not to get too close to people, because you’re always going to have to say goodbye.  We moved to a small market town in the North of England, and started to try and put down some roots for the first time.

I didn’t feel as if I belonged.  The kids there had known each other since infancy and I just didn’t fit.  I was Continue Reading »

There was a time, when Steve was at his illest in hospital, when I wasn’t sure if he would live or die, and when the whole world just seemed black and cold.

I was angry with God - incredibly angry!  I felt abandoned and desperately disappointed: I was in the very worst of bad places. I didn’t even really know if I believed in Him any more - but if He did exist then part of me just didn’t want to know anyway.  To be honest, I hadn’t been in a great place in my relationship with Him before Steve got ill.  Now, it was a thousand times worse. Continue Reading »

If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times this last couple of years: “You’re coping really well”.

I appreciate the encouragement but actually I’m fed up of ‘coping’. 

I want to live again, without this constant feeling of having to battle all the time with the consequences of ill health in the family, the financial difficulties that has brought, the pressures of trying to hold it all together and the many other things which just seem to come one after the other.  I know that there are lots of people reading this who feel exactly the same, although your actual situation might be different.  ‘When is all this going to come to an end? Continue Reading »

Don’t you absolutely hate it, when you are going through a really tough time and some well meaning christian has all the answers for you?!  Maybe that’s never happened to you.  Bless you! It happened to us - more than once.

When Steve had been struggling with ill health for over a year - one thing after another - and all the prayers and laying on of hands an anointing with oil seemed only to have led to disappointment (and I believe 100% in all those things - but I’m telling it like it is: for the longest time nothing seemed to happen) it was hard sometimes to keep trusting.  We had some amazing support, and the people who helped most were the ones who didn’t have all the right answers for us, but the ones who encouraged us to keep going regardless.

The problems came with the ones who thought they did have the answers for us: the ‘Job’s comforters’ as we called them, because he had some too.  These were the ones who knew exactly why Steve wasn’t being healed, and it was usually his fault: “You’re obviously not seeking God enough” , “There must be some sin in your life.”, “There is some sin in your life, Continue Reading »

When everything started going horribly wrong, we were about a thousand miles from home in the South of France.  Steve had collapsed in agony and we didn’t have a clue what was wrong.  We called an ambulance and they came and took him away - I didn’t know where to or how to get him back!  They did leave me a receipt, but the desolation of watching that ambulance drive away with my delerious husband in it, leaving me alone with two small and tearful children was quite indescribable.

I did track him down again - with the help of the wonderful people in the next door tent.  The hospital had diagnosed food poisoning.  It wasn’t.  His appendix had ruptured and although we didn’t know it at the time, he was life-threateningly ill.

Continue Reading »

My son was in an inter-school cross country race yesterday.  He’s been training for it for ages and building up his stamina and perseverance and he was really excited.  With eight year old enthusiasm he planned his tactics all the way there in the car and prayed that the rain - which has been falling for weeks - would hold off. 

He made a reasonable start - although he was three rows back at the starting line - and was steadily moving through the field when: disaster!  A small hill and an enormous patch of mud, churned into a quagmire by a hundred little feet from the race before, and one by one, the thirty or so boys in front of my son went flying and he had no way of avoiding it: flat on his Continue Reading »