Wearily upward

When I was 19 I led a youth and churches ministry team visiting the nine churches in the seven towns around where I grew up. We visited schools, did assemblies, youth camps and ministered at church Services for a year. Before one of these church Services I distinctly remember praying, "Lord, may everything that happens at this Service be to your glory alone." Halfway through the second song of the sung worship (which I led on guitar, alone) one of my guitar strings snapped. I kept on playing for what it was worth, because there were still two more songs to go! About two verses and a chorus later, another string snapped, rendering my guitar uselessly out of tune. We finished the song a capella , which was nice, but I was pretty shook up. Uncomfortable. Even angry, trying to figure out why this happened. Surely this was a spiritual attack! How could God allow this disruption, this distraction to happen while we were worshipping Him? How could He allow me being uncomfortable w...

It's been a while since I last posted a blog. Various things influenced this: my oldest starting reception and thus adapting to a new weekly pattern, being in the US for a wedding, a sense of being overwhelmed with preparing for Christmas Services already (it's almost November!), feeling pressure not to think about Christmas yet (it's not even November yet!), and viewing loads of flats/houses in an effort to move at the end of November. But mostly, I think, I haven't been writing because I was using all these very real things as excuses to cover my lack of inspiration. Although... reading this paragraph again, it seems that it may be because of November... Anyway. I have found that being busy can be as much of a hurdle to achieving my goals as being lazy is. It is incredible how much of my office I can (and want to) sort out and rearrange when I have a talk to prepare for or a Christmas Service to plan (yes... in October...). I can very easily keep myself busy with ...