Hope For Today

Dear Friends, God - Our Ultimate Father This coming Sunday, Father's Day, can be a difficult day for many people, for a variety of reasons. Some may have never known their father, others may not have had a good father, for others their father may no longer be with them. Perhaps you are one of those who finds the day hard.  Today, I want to focus on God, our ultimate Father. No matter what our experience has been concerning our own father, God is available to each one of us as a good and loving father. His desire is for each of us to know what it truly means to be his child and to know him as Father. We all have some idea of what a good father looks like. The good news is that God exceeds and goes beyond that picture we have. He is the only truly good, loving and perfect Father. Psalm 103 gives a lovely description of God as our ultimate Father. 1 Let all that I am praise the Lord; with my whole heart, I will praise his holy name. 2 Let all that I am pra...

Dear Friends, I can't, but you can, Lord For a few years now I've become more interested in contemplative prayer and it is changing the way I pray. One form of contemplative prayer is breath prayers. These are great to pray at various moments during the day and help to bring me back to an awareness of God's presence with me. I recently read the novel 'Sensible Shoes' by Sharon Brown and I've utilised a breath prayer which came from this book. The prayer is this: "I can't, but you can, Lord." When I face new situations or need to move out of my comfort zone, fear can be a natural emotion for me. I'm so quick to think such thoughts as: "I can't do this. I'm not good enough. This is beyond me. I'll fail." Perhaps you too feel and think similarly when you face the unknown. The above prayer is really making a difference in the way I live and respond to different situations. First, I acknowledge I am not ab...