Reflecting Unconditional Love

FMF: While

‘While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.’

The teacher in me questions the use of ‘while’ v. ‘whilst’ and I may have misquoted this. However, I don’t want to go into a discussion of grammar, but to look at that amazing truth of our salvation.

I don’t know about you, but my heart is often thinking that when I’m more gracious, more sorted, more healed, more holy, more… then I will be better placed to be fruitful in God’s Kingdom.

My head knows this is not true. My head knows that I can do nothing to earn His love; and nothing I do can make Him love me more, or can make Him love me less, but this profound truth, that

While I was still a sinner, before I knew or wanted to know Jesus, whilst I ignored Him and lived totally selfishly… even then, He loved me enough to die for me – that I might live, abundantly and eternally.

Isn’t that just WOW?

I want to have such patient, unconditional love as that!

I need the love of God to flood my own heart.

I desire to see others as God sees them.

I recently learned a prayer to help me to love those who I find more difficult to love – those who hurt me and irritate…

It places me, a sinner, with the one I struggle and grapple with, the one I am forgiving and trying to love as He loves… the one I am meeting there at that cross, both of us sinners, both of us needing the forgiving, transforming love of God to renew our hearts and minds and reconcile us to each other and to the Father.

If there is someone you are struggling to love and to see as the Father sees, I invite you to pray this Gethsemane prayer and to remember that

while you were yet a sinner, Christ died for you.

“Lord, in compassion, identify me with the heart of my offender, with his hurts and wounds. Bring to death in me that which would declare him as sinful and me as righteous. I am not better than him. I am one with him at the foot of the cross. I cry out “Forgive us!” Set us free from the traps of hate. End all one-upmanship. Enable me to identify with the person you created him to be. Restore us, Oh Lord.”

(courtesy of Elijah House)

Every Friday, I join an online Christian writing community, Five Minute Friday. We are given a one-word prompt and write – unscripted, unedited, pure free-write – for 5 minutes. The prompt this week is: WHILE

Image reflecting the beauty and glory of the heavens, in the still waters below.

EYE CAN WRITE – book review

Eye Can Write: A Memoir of a Child’s Silent Soul Emerging by Jonathan Bryan

Hardcover, 192 pages

Published November 1st 2019 by Blink Publishing

ISBN 9781911600787

Jonathan Bryan has severe cerebral palsy, a condition that makes him incapable of voluntary movement or speech. He was locked inside his own mind, aware of the outside world but unable to fully communicate with it until he found a way by using his eyes to laboriously choose individual letters, and through this make his thoughts known. In Eye Can Write, we read of his intense passion for life, his mischievous sense of fun, his hopes, his fears, and what it’s like to be him. This is a powerful book from an incredible young writer whose writing ability defies age or physical disability—a truly inspirational figure.

This June 2022, I had the pleasure of meeting 16 year old author, Jonathan Bryan and his mother, Chantal. As Jonathan cannot verbally ‘speak’ to us in a conventional way, his mother read to us excerpts of Jonathan’s stories, his poems and told us of his journey.

I then bought his book to read more from the depths of his incredible otherwise hidden experience of the world.

I marvelled as he painstakingly, letter by letter, using the only part of his body that he can fully control – his EYE – and a spelling board, he carefully shared his frustrations, his loves, his understanding, his faith and experiences of life, education and God – which are a real encouragement and delight to read – and his journey towards finding a way to communicate his voice with the world.

Not satisfied with having a voice, this courageous young man has made it his mission to make sure that all children, who are labelled PMLD, or regardless of any disability, have the same opportunity to be given full access to education and to find and use their voice.

To accomplish his mission, he has set up a charity called ‘Teach Us Too’.

As an educationalist and a writer, this was one of the most moving stories I have encountered – both in meeting Jonathan and in reading his words in this perfect book.

It made me see how much I take for granted and how limited special needs educational understanding and provision currently is. It also made me see how undeveloped and lazy my own vocabulary so often is!

His story is so profoundly important to us all and his heart is beautiful.

What a remarkable story!!

You can find more information about Jonathan’s charity, ‘Teach Us Too’, here

Click here to see a video of him from 2018, when he was 12 years old.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_DNJIvazBI

Book cover of Eye Can Write: A Memoir of a Child’s Silent Soul Emerging by Jonathan Bryan

September Song of Thanks

Thank You!

Today I received a ‘Thank You’ card – a special blessing from a friend – a thank you for just being me!

So it has inspired me to publish my September Thank You’s to my God, my Creator, King and faithful friend.

I hope that sharing them with you will inspire your gratitude and hope in your heart.

A ‘thank you card to bless me

‘The sun comes up, it’s a new day dawning;

It’s time to sing Your song again.

Whatever may pass and whatever lies before me;

Let me be singing when the evening comes.

Bless the Lord, Oh my Soul…’

These are lyrics to a song I’ve claimed as my own, in response to God singing my song over me.

This has been a real break-through for me and I am so grateful.

For many months I have been asking God who I am and what is my ‘song’ – and at the end of September, through a good friend, He answered my prayer and sang into me my ‘song’ – showing me who I am.

I was also given a picture, a piece of instrumental music – ‘Lark Ascending’ – by Vaughn Williams – and a picture by Millais, that speaks something of the heart of ‘little me’.

‘Autumn Leaves’ by Sir John Everett Millais.

I begin with this because it has been such a personally intimate gift to me and has blessed me.

I am so grateful and humbled by so many other answers to prayer during September. Some of these have been long awaited answers and my heart rejoices in my faithful God.

Thank You Father God –

That I-M has rung the chemo bell and is recovering,

For healing DA and bringing him out of hospital

For speaking to DB in a dream and him being finally properly assessed in hospital,

For increasing M’s hours at work to qualify him for benefits and for the new vehicle,

For a time of rest, joy and bonding for S and J,

For breaking the stronghold of lies arising from incidents in young S’s life,

For putting the axe to many bitter roots of judgment, lies and vows in my own life and for the freedom You bring us!

For again providing me an Ablaze lesson,

For healing M and bringing him home,

For teaching me how to wear Your armour in Ephesians 6 and to tailor it to fit me,

For finding K a new home and for aligning and fusing the bones in her neck,

For a beautiful celebration of R’s life and blessed re-connections,

For S’s safe journey to R,

For a blessed 24 hours with D,

For new volunteers for the shop,

For working amongst the Alpha guests and bringing them back,

I also want to thank my Lord for the good fruit of restoring relationships in my life.

Whatever issues, concerns, desires, hopes, questions, or requests that you have, take it to the Lord in prayer. Take them and leave them there. Don’t pick them back up and fret!

He promises to hear your prayers and to guard your heart and mind.

Trust Him, He is faithful.

Though a mother may forget the babe at her breast, the Lord will never forget you.

Matt Redman – 10,000 reasons

❤ Lark Ascending

I hope you enjoy my ‘song’s too.

Have a blessed October.

ALADDIN’S ROAD

Every Friday, I join an online Christian writing community, Five Minute Friday. We are given a one-word prompt and write – unscripted, unedited, pure free-write – for 5 minutes. The prompt this week is ‘ROAD’

The word ‘Road’ brought two thoughts to mind and showed me the connection between them both. The first thought was the title of a book, the content of which once had a large influence on me, called ‘A Road Less Traveled’, by M Scott Peck.

The second thought was the Indian proverb, ‘Never judge a man until you have walked a mile in his moccasins.’

The connection to me was that our roads – our journey, our lives – are in many ways so foreign to each other and that to understand the heart and mind of another, we have to share much of the road with them and listen to their thoughts, behaviour and heart in the ways that they dare to express themselves.

To that end, I want to share the mind of another with you, a glimpse into the mind and heart of a dear acquaintance of mine, Michael Gardner.

He wrote this poem to describe his experience of life through the lens of “autism, O.C.D. and other mental illness.”

I asked if I might share his poem with you, to let you see something of his road, his life wearing ‘his moccasins’.

I am privileged to present his poem, ‘Is Aladdin Out There?’

Is Aladdin Out There?

(Thoughts on Autism, O.C.D and Mental Illness)

My world is insufferably insular.

I am trapped in a room so compact,

Thirty paces from North wall to South wall,

Twenty-two East to West, that’s a fact.

Enclosed in a concrete jungle,

In a suburb in a city near you,

Observing a complex labyrinth of mind-games,

My universe, a tomb with a view.

An existence of cluttered neurosis,

Order’d chaos inexorably ensues,

“RADIO TIMES” is my window, an oracle,

Television delivers my news.

Correspondence that’s filed and collated,

Each codex so meticulously placed

Alphabetical, numerical employment for one,

An environment hermetically chaste.

A germ-free haven to the human condition,

The scrunch of a newsprint floor,

Opinions one-sided, from the man in the mirror

The fear from a knock at the door.

Every day is an endless beginning

Countless dominoes toppling in haste,

Every echo a constant reminder

Of the time that I waste in this space.

I am the “Genie” inside of his bottle,

With the face peering ominously in,

I’m a prisoner to all my aversions

And the demons that scream from within.

By Michael Gardner

to ‘dot hi ‘i’ with a butterfly’ is Michael’s trademark.

Michael’s artistic trademark is to “dot his ‘i’ with a butterfly”, which I cannot do, so I said I would include an image of a butterfly and the request was for a Red Admiral.

Thank you Michael for sharing this with us.

(I will share any comments with him, if he would like me to, so feel free to comment.)