Preaching with a purpose

I used to find life itself to be a treadmill, a continual circle of getting up, eating, working going to the toilet, going to bed ONLY to start the same routine next day. I guess that was a part of being depressed.   If we treat this life as all important we are going to get into trouble.  Even if you are rich and famous everything can become a bore.  We should be living this life as well as we can, but be looking forward to the next, something you can only do if you have Jesus as your Saviour.  When you are sorted for the next life this life becomes an interesting prelude to the next. A simple life on little income is but an hors d'oevers to the bliss which it will be to worship our Lord Jesus in heaven.

Sometimes I think that writing a blog is like working on a treadmill; you just have to keep plodding on.  No-one is interested in what I wrote about last week of last year, but only in the thought of the moment.  Perhaps I should go back over old ground.  So why do I keep going?  I think I have important things to say.  Of course a lot of what I say is quite commonplace but when I speak about Jesus I believe I am saying very important things.  I know that not everyone wants to spend any time at all thinking about Jesus, but I hope that what I have to say will reach to the heart of someone who longs to hear that there is hope and good news in Jesus.  This is for the person new to thoughts of Jesus as well as for the ones who already know Him.  We all need to remind ourselves of what Jesus can do for us, or has already done for us.  Sometimes we get depressed with this life and forget what a wonderful Saviour we have.  All this life's prob...

I have had five restful days in the Principality of Wales.  Apart from Wednesday even the weather was kind. The rain on Wednesday contributed to the enjoyment of rapids in a river next to the place where we were shown how coracles are made and used.  Many people think they are special to Wales, but we learnt that these small, flat bottomed boats covered in hide of various sort,s are known in many parts of the world, including Vietnam and India and amongst the Native Indians of U.S.A. If you know of any other places where they are used, please tell me in the comments. Our coach driver was very Welsh with a strong accent.  He kept training us to say Welsh place names, which was good, but I think I'll stick to Russian, even though I have to go further to use it. Our hotel was comfortable and the food good. It is good to get away but coming home is the very best thing.  There's no place like home.

I've just finished reading Dostoevsky's masterpiece.  I found it fascinating although I did not agree with all his conclusions.  I was surprised that Raskolnikov did not get the death penalty back in the 1800's.  Eight years in Siberia did not seem quite justice, but then I did not know what Siberia is like, until tonight.  I went to BBC iplayer to see if there were programmes about Russia and discovered one about prison life out in the wilds of Russia, probably Siberia, the exact location was not revealed.  It was a fascinating programme and tied in nicely with what i had read in the classic.  It always seems to me that the prison warders are also given a sentence although,of course, they clock off duty and go home to their families.  However, perhaps the whole family is kind of serving a sentence. Raskolnikov speaks of the woman he murdered as being a "louse." None of us has the right to judge another in that way.  From such thoughts come the ac...

Rushing and gushing The white water flows, Over the rocks, While the thundering grows Louder and louder. I can't hear you speak, As the mighty river travels down Hundreds of feet. Feel the mist in your hair And on your face, While the waterfall descends With consummate grace. I could stay here all day And be caught in wonder, My brain being numbed By the constant thunder. But turn away I must With a beautiful memory in time. Return to life from this bliss sublime. Gradually as we trek away the noise grows less, Saying "Come back soon O do say "Yes"."

I passed the 13+ and went to the Grammar School.  I cycled a mile each morning and then caught the bus to take me about ten miles to the school.  After a while a new music teacher came to our school and he wanted to start an orchestra. I was able to learn the violin.  We learnt in a group every dinner hour.  The teacher was very enthusiastic and it was catching. I put the same enthusiasm into violin playing as I now put into learning the Russian language.  If my teacher had known then that I would sell my violin to go on a Russian holiday he would not have been amused.  I have not played my violin for several years, to start with because of cataracts.  When thinking about if I wanted to play again I decided not.  It's not much fun to play on one's own and not practical as I live in flats.  Using a practice mute also makes the experience less enjoyable. I decided I do not want the stress of playing in a string quartet.  Keeping in the rig...

Now I have a computer, an iphone, a  tablet, a camera and a car, but what did I have as a child.  One of my favourite delights when it was raining was to go up the path to the coal shed.  Here the rain seeped under the top door and ran in a little rivulet down the dirt floor, through the shed.  I spent many hours making little dams with bits of wood and small pieces of coal, and deepening the bed of the "river" by scraping away the dirt floor.  That is the sort of amusement that gives you lots of time to contemplate about life and anything in general.  Down  the lane there was also a stream where I could walk up and down and walk under the bridge. There was some talk of polio but I survived.  Then there was the ancient yew tree which had branches low down and was easy to climb.  As a little girl of two I had been taught to stamp on the naughty berries, to keep me from eating one thus avoiding fatal consequences. Much of my childhood was spent...

In the Autumn in the village where auntie B worked there was always a Sale of Work to raise funds for the little Congregational chapel. A sale of work consists of the women of the village making items such as knitted layettes for babies ( a layette is a set of matching clothes.) Also toilet roll holders, these would often be a knitted doll to cover a toilet roll to make the bathroom look attractive!! There would be crochet doilies to put on coffee tables and matching sets of leg warmers and mittens. Everyone donated something they had made and everyone bought something. The women enjoyed making the little bits of nonsense and buying something too.  It was a win- win situation. How simple life was then except that there were farm accidents where the men sometimes lost a limb or even their life. In those days every women learnt to knit and sew; nowadays girls don't even know how to sew on a button.  I can't remember Auntie B knitting, but her foster sister Peggy knitted a mounta...

Auntie B did any work she could find, mostly on farms.  She did house work. At Christmas she plucked turkeys.  She had a little mongrel terrier dog who loved to be with her.  One day she rode off alone on her bike, having shut the dog in the house.  After a while she heard panting and found Toby was chasing her.  The house walls were made of cob, a soft mixture of straw ,clay, water, and lime. Toby had scratched a hole and squeezed through such was his desire to be with Auntie B.   Later Auntie B moved to a village five miles from home to be a housekeeper for two men who had a coal delivery business.  Some people speculated on the chances of her marrying one of them but I think she decided they were both too mean with their money.

In the first world war in a town about fifteen miles from where Auntie B lived was a little family, father, mother and baby girl.  Father went off to the war and when he came home many months later he had two little girls! He decided to take on the second little girl as his own.  He then went back to the war and many months later he came home to find he had three little girls.  This was too much for him and he said that the last little girl would have to be fostered out.  Unbelievable to us they advertised her in the shop in Auntie B's village and auntie B saw it and pleaded with her mother to take on the little scrap.  After some resistance her mother agreed.  She had had eleven children of her own most of whom had by now grown up, Auntie B being the youngest surviving child. So the little girl whom we will call Peggy came into this home and flourished.  Although Auntie B was to have no children of her own Peggy became something between a daughter and...

Two posts ago I spoke of Auntie B who was born in 1900.  She told me the sad story of how whilst working in the kitchens at a school she had badly damaged her knee so that she was taken off to hospital.  At this time, in her twenties, she was engaged to Bill, but while in hospital she heard that he was "playing around" with another girl.  Whether this was true or not she took umbrage and on next seeing Bill she threw her ring at him and that was that. One day when she was in her eighties a letter arrived.  Incredibly it was from Bill.  He told her that he had come from about thirty miles away where he lived, on a coach trip with a group of friends.  They had called at the pub in her village and he had asked the locals if they knew of Auntie B.  They did and said where she lived.  She replied to his letter and went to stay in his home for three weeks.  How amazing is that.  Bill had married and had six children.  I often wonder if sh...

Today I looked into my six-year-old grandson's eyes and shared the wonder of discovering the world anew.  He drew robots and lifeboats and mocked my efforts to draw like him, but very gently.  Most of all it was the look of wonder in his eyes that charmed me.  I hope I have captured some of his enthusiasm and will take it with me into tomorrow.  How foolish people are to spend so little time with children.  Parents these days are encouraged to spend less and less time with their children, because material things are seen as more important than they really are.  A child doesn't need gadgets but time to be listened to.  It's time you really made your child much more important in your life.  Find time for your child by throwing out some glitsy gadget that gets between you and seeing the real wonder of being six.

It seems an awful pain that modern technology is continually being updated.  Today my techie son-in-law informed there were updates for my phone.  This resulted in me spending a lot of time and using a lot of ingenuity to get these updates.  What a panic it causes for old biddies like me.  Nothing stands still in this age, I don't suppose it ever did.  I used to marvel over the changes my 90 year old aunt had seen.  She was born in 1900 when cars were a rarity.  We have a photo of my first husband's mother sitting on his father's knee before they were married and their chair is right in the middle of the road outside our aunt's mother's house.  It's true it is still a rural road but you certainly could not sit on a chair without being disturbed frequently. I expect our aunt could almost remember when the road was just a dirt track, but lived to see computers coming into frequent use. You wonder how she could cope with it and yet here am I determin...

Some of the nicest, cleverest and most interesting people are the disabled.  Today I was with a friend who had her back broken when she was a young woman in a farming accident.  A huge bale of hay knocked her down and did the damage.  She is now in her eighties and although paralysed from the waist down, she has led a full and useful life albeit from a wheelchair.  She has a positive view on life and gets on with it without complaining. Another example of a disabled person is the young Russian singer Danil Pluzhnikov.  He is fifteen but only 98 cms tall.  His legs are not strong and he can only walk short distances and when performing on stage he needs a stool to sit on for some of the time.  I find it very difficult to think of Danil as disabled because he is such a power house of energy and determination.  Because he has suffered from childhood, he understands how to express emotion in his songs and this makes a strong connection to his listener...

I've just had the television on in the background and there was talk of Isis in the Middle East and a bomb on the Underground in Britain and then someone was speaking of the gun mass murders that happen in the U.S.A. With all these things happening around us every day when are we going to see sense and realize that we are all sinners.  If we are being nice people it is only because the wrong provocations haven't come along.  Put in a different position we would all reach for the gun and call it self defence. Put somewhere with limited food and water we would fight to survive.  If you are prepared to gossip about your neighbour you are capable of more than just character assassination. I remember as a school girl really not liking someone and wishing they would move away.  That has the seeds of murder in it.  Most people will say I am talking rubbish and move on to another blog, but if you are perturbed by what I say, maybe you would also like to know the solutio...

What were my motives?  What did I not like about the situation last year?  I felt that the power to decide where our country was headed had been taken away from us and Europe was deciding instead, and those in Europe making the decisions were not voted for by us and so did not have a mandate to decide.  I wanted our borders to be secured and for us to be able to decide how many people came into the country.  I am not against immigration I just want it to be sensibly controlled.  We are a small island and space to live is limited.  Already the countryside is disappearing under more and more housing. I am well aware that our services and in particular our NHS is  highly dependent on immigrants and these people should be welcomed with open arms.  On another level the immigrants who do a large amount of the agricultural work are also invaluable. I am learning to teach English as a Foreign Language and hope to help immigrants settle in this country and...

Of course friendship online can blossom into face to face friendship.  Many men and women have found marriage partners online.  I have an online friendship with some Russian ladies and I was able to meet them face to face this summer. However this can be a dangerous situation as some people masquerade behind an imagined identity.  The handsome forty year old whose photo is on screen may turn out to be eighty.  You may be chatting to an embezzler, rapist or murderer. These things need to be considered.  You need to move with caution, but on the other hand life is full of risk. Sometimes you have to take a chance, knowing that you have to live with the consequences. Use your instincts about a situation and draw back if you are not happy.  If we never took risks we would all live in a darkened room never letting anyone meet us.  Of course there are people who live like that and spend all their time on the net feeling cocooned from the pressures of face to...

It's always good to know there is life beyond the computer.  This week I have been away staying with a friend, a real live friend, not just someone on Facebook. Real life is always to be preferred to social media but it is also exciting to write words which can we read by people from all over the world. I'm not sure how long I have been writing here but I have had over 40,000 views.  I'm not exactly going viral but that is not my purpose.  I just want to reach out for the ones and twos who are searching for the truth which is found in Jesus. If you search for Him with all your heart, He promises you will find Him.  Don't give up!

I have been away for a few days with no wifi.  This is why I have written no posts.  Sometimes it is good to get away from the news.  Nothing has happened in the world that I could do anything about. Some people have to miss the news altogether or they have terrible problems worrying about it and I would recommend that those people do just that.  In the days before television and radio we all got along fine without knowing what was happening until it was well and truly over.  I find I can watch the news and not be upset, but actually I feel this is not a good state to be in.  Obviously I have become De-sensitised to the truly awful things happening in our world, Every time I think about this I am alarmed that I can calmly watch other human beings suffering and am little moved by it, at least on the surface.  Although the world is shrinking the hurricanes in the Caribbean and U.S.A. seem far away.  If I am not careful I can think these things canno...

I cannot say I have ever suffered much persecution.  We suffer more from apathy in the U.K. Many of our churches have been steered so far off course that there is no need for anyone to persecute them.  As a young women I used to read about persecuted Christians. I don't know quite how I dare to address my brethren who are suffering persecution.  I'm sure you know far better than I do that your Lord is with you and will be always. This world's troubles are hard to deal with at the time, but we have to realize that there is a most glorious future for us when we join our Lord in heaven.  What a wonderful day that will be. Look up, always look up.

Your therapist will tell you you have to have self esteem.  The road to Jesus tells that we can have no self esteem.  The Christian, however, discovers there is something better, Jesus esteem.  Jesus has loved His people so much that He went to the cross and suffered for them.  He knows that we are worth that.  It is not a matter of totting up all our good features, but it is to realize although we are not worth it, in one real sense, yet Jesus loves us so much that He took the full force of the curse of the law upon Himself so that we can be free. That is mindblowingly wonderful if you can take it in. Say "Thank you," now.

I used to get quite a lot of depression when I was younger.  One day I learnt an important lesson. I was desperately trying to  pray and then felt I could not pray anymore.  I just said one more prayer, " O Lord I can't hold on to You any longer.  Please hold on to me." That is about the best prayer any of us can pray. It is so important to realize that we can do nothing for ourselves.  All our best efforts fail.  We just need that cry for help which says, "Please hold on to me Lord Jesus."

Knowing God's will for your life is not a matter of desperately seeking with panic in your heart.  If you are trusting in Jesus, God is bringing about His will for you in everything that happens. Do not panic.  All you have to do is be aware that the Almighty God has you in His care and is bringing about His will in your life in each event that happens to you.  He is your Father and cares for you.  You just need to surrender to Him, to accept each day with its trials and troubles and happiness too as God's will unfolding for you. Wherever you are in the world, whether it is easy or difficult to live there, this is the place God has placed you in. If you are trying to change this situation make slow decisions.  Wait and talk with God.  You need to realize that God's will for you is actually the very best for you even if it feels tremendously difficult.  Surrender to God and tell Him you want to go His way as you know that is the best way, even though fr...

If you are sad and lonely not knowing where to turn in your life, I can offer you no comfort at all unless you will put your trust in Jesus.  A psychiatrist might offer you treatment and it may seem to help, but ultimately we have to face God and having learnt to love ourself we will fine that without Jesus that is no comfort at all and we will have to face ourselves as we are in our sin with no Saviour to wash us clean.  It is no good getting ourselves mentally sorted if it only lasts for this life. We need to look towards the future and face the prospect of eternity. It will be no good at the end of time to say, "But I don't believe in eternity." The truth will be obvious and it will be too late.  I do not hope to win the world over to my beliefs I just hope that some weary, lost little lamb will turn to Jesus and be saved.  Is that lamb you? Jesus said of Himself, the Good Shepherd, " the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them...

This is just to show my Russian readers that I am still studying their language.  It is a made up story.  My daughter does not really live in Scotland. История лета Вот историяб которую Я Вам сказала не правдиваяю Я начную Обычно летом Я езжу в гости ксвоей дочери в Шотландею. Я поехфдф на машине и осталас одну ночь в районе озёр.   Если у Меня время Я езжу через деревниу. Обычно   Я приезжау во время обеда. Mo я дочь живёт в Лох Ломонде.   Когда Я пр n езжау овцы блеяутю   Тогда моя дочь знает что Я прибыла. У неё четыре овцы и она использует их шерсть дле прядения вязания и тканья. Обычно Мы ходим пешком каждый день но ето зависит от погоды.   Когда идёт дождь Мы седем дома n Я играю и Мы поём.

Today I met with a friend who was at university with me back in the late 60's.  We hadn't seen each other for about twenty years and if we had not seen our photos on Facebook we might not have recognised each other. She had her husband with her.  We spent a happy time reminiscing but more than that speaking about our lives today. I have another friend who went to school with me.  I see her about twice or three times a year.  We usually have lunch together. It is God who places people in our lives and for a purpose.  Often we don't know what that purpose is.  I have other friends who live in my village who went to school with me but I hardly ever see them.  I used to go to school reunions but couldn't help feeling that the really interesting people were too busy getting on with their lives to come! For instance a boy in our class went off to Hawaii to study marine biology.  I looked him up on the internet and he's still there.  I don't think h...

In Britain we have many churches and cathedrals that people come to visit and marvel at their architecture.  Most of these buildings have been the cause of the death of many men who worked to erect them.  For them they were not places of beauty.  I have a friend who considers those sorts of churches to be prisons.  The more important the building the less the people in the congregation hear of the true gospel.  They become places for civic ceremonies and musical concerts ,instead of places where Christ is truly honoured.  I do not say this of the Church of England alone, for it seems to me there is a big problem in all the denominations.  There used to be evangelical colleges that trained young men to preach the gospel, but then they liked the idea of being able to give degrees and so linked up with universities who in their turn insisted on various changes to the curriculum.  The thing I notice about universities is that they are man centred and ...

Why will you go?  Is it because you have done it all your life and it is what your parents taught you to do? When we look at the early Christians in the New Testament, they didn't have big buildings to meet in.  They met in small groups and learnt from the scriptures together.  These scriptures included the letters of Paul.  From these we learn that they had elders to teach those who had gathered.  They did not have one man who did all the teaching and was revered and honoured above the rest. They were all part of the body of Christ and all played a part in keeping close to the teachings of Jesus and His apostles. Jesus said, "Where two or three are gathered in my name there am I in the midst." Each brother (and that includes the women) has a part to play.  We are meant to come together and discuss together the wonderfulness of salvation. If you are in a group of more than about twenty it is more than likely you will grow lazy and blend into the background ...