Hope For Today

Dear Friends, My blog has just had its first birthday!  A year has gone by so quickly and I'm so grateful to God for enabling me to write a new post once a week for a whole year.  On my own it would have been impossible and if anyone had told me more than a year ago that this would be one way I could serve God I don't think I would have believed them. I want to thank you, dear friends, who have faithfully stayed the course with me so far and have given me so much encouragement along the way.  God has blessed me so much as I have followed his leading and I trust that as you have read these posts that you too have been blessed and encouraged by God. When a Christian friend made the suggestion of writing a blog I could so easily have got swept up in the moment, getting carried away with the idea without stopping to consider whether this was of God or not.  It is often my way that I go full steam ahead when I get an idea without considering...

Dear Friends, With the death of Jesus on that first Good Friday, his followers grieved and mourned not only for Jesus' death but also for the death of their hopes and dreams and the loss of purpose and meaning to their life.  Their hopes were dashed, their dreams deflated and their purpose for living destroyed.  All these things had been wrapped up in Jesus and who they thought he was and his purpose for coming.  Even though Jesus had explained it to them, they had misunderstood him.  They thought he had come to save them from the tyrannical rule of the Romans, they thought he was going to be their military leader.  For 3 days they were grieving the loss of a loved one and they were in despair over all that they had lost.  Two disciples on the road to Emmaus said to a stranger (they didn't at first realise it was Jesus in his new resurrection body) " We had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to rescue Israel. This all happened three days ago." Lu...

Dear Friends, My Auntie was recently diagnosed with cancer and had to go in to hospital to have an operation.  Friends and family have all been praying for her, and as the date came round for her operation my prayer was that God would give the medical staff the skill to treat her and to also be sensitive in their care of her afterwards. I received a text after the operation from my cousin (one of my Auntie's daughters).  She told me that her Mum's nurse was the sister of my cousin's old school friend and the nursing assistant was a lady who was deaf.  My cousin was so thankful to God for this because she believed he couldn't have chosen two better people to care for my Auntie. You see, my Auntie was born deaf and learned as a young girl to lip read.  She does this very well, but of course, to be able to read lips she needs to have the person who is talking to her facing her, and not covering their mouths when they talk. My cousin shared with me in another ...