I am the product of ...
humid hot weather
inventing of imaginary places
far too many notebooks
mango and sticky rice
inky fountain pens
musty libraries and
the smell of rain on hot concrete
Rebekah Dickinson 18 September 2009
Thursday, 17 September 2009
A product of endless books
"I am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under the tiles. Also, of endless books." -C.S. Lewis
Monday, 31 August 2009
Ruth Myers
When I was at University, a friend gave me a copy of a prayer from Ruth Myer’s 31 Days of Praise. I have often come back to this over the years.
“I’m so grateful that the Christian life is not a rigorous self-improvement course or a do-it-yourself kit...that it is not a call to prove myself or improve myself by overcoming my own shortcomings and failures, in my own way, by my own resources. Thank You that, instead, You are at work in me and in my situation to break old patterns of thought and action, to create within me both the desire and the power to do your gracious will...and to make me a joy to You in new ways.
I praise You that “Jesus Christ is able to untangle all the snarls in my souls, to banish all my complexes, and to transform even my fixed habit patterns, no matter how deeply they are etched into my subconscious” (Corrie Ten Boom).Thank You for the many ways You use other people to counsel me and help me grow..and yet that Christ Himself is the Answer to my hangups, the one Source who can meet my deepest needs. How I rejoice that He is wonderful in counsel and mighty in power, and that He heals from the inside out. Thank You, too, for the Holy Spirit-the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength. I praise You that He is in me to enlighten me through Your Word, to flush away my anxieties and fears, my resentement and hostilities, my guilt and regrets, as water flushes away dirt and trash..to keep me filled with Himself and to flood my heart with Your love..to produce through me that fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control..and to enable me to give thanks for all things as the hours and days and weeks pass. I rejoice that You are able and do far more than all I ask or think, according to Your power that is at work within me-the same power that raised Jesus from the dead!” Ruth Myers 31 Days of Praise Page 74-75
“I’m so grateful that the Christian life is not a rigorous self-improvement course or a do-it-yourself kit...that it is not a call to prove myself or improve myself by overcoming my own shortcomings and failures, in my own way, by my own resources. Thank You that, instead, You are at work in me and in my situation to break old patterns of thought and action, to create within me both the desire and the power to do your gracious will...and to make me a joy to You in new ways.
I praise You that “Jesus Christ is able to untangle all the snarls in my souls, to banish all my complexes, and to transform even my fixed habit patterns, no matter how deeply they are etched into my subconscious” (Corrie Ten Boom).Thank You for the many ways You use other people to counsel me and help me grow..and yet that Christ Himself is the Answer to my hangups, the one Source who can meet my deepest needs. How I rejoice that He is wonderful in counsel and mighty in power, and that He heals from the inside out. Thank You, too, for the Holy Spirit-the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength. I praise You that He is in me to enlighten me through Your Word, to flush away my anxieties and fears, my resentement and hostilities, my guilt and regrets, as water flushes away dirt and trash..to keep me filled with Himself and to flood my heart with Your love..to produce through me that fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control..and to enable me to give thanks for all things as the hours and days and weeks pass. I rejoice that You are able and do far more than all I ask or think, according to Your power that is at work within me-the same power that raised Jesus from the dead!” Ruth Myers 31 Days of Praise Page 74-75
Sunday, 19 April 2009
Blotted out.
This was on Facebook daily bread and a great and timely reminder.
The Best Eraser
READ: Luke 16:19-31
“ I have blotted out, like a thick cloud, your transgressions. —Isaiah 44:22 ”
What is memory? What is this faculty that enables us to recall past feelings, sights, sounds, and experiences? By what process are events recorded, stored, and preserved in our brain to be brought back again and again? Much is still mystery.
We do know that memories can be blessings—full of comfort, assurance, and joy. Old age can be happy and satisfying if we have stored up memories of purity, faith, fellowship, and love. If a saint looks back on a life of Christian service and remembers the faithfulness of Him who promised: “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Heb. 13:5), his or her sunset years can be the sweetest of all.
But memory can also be a curse and a tormentor. Many people as they approach the end of life would give all they possess to erase from their minds the past sins that haunt them. What can a person do who is plagued by such remembrances? Just one thing. He can take them to the One who is able to forgive them and blot them out forever. He’s the One who said, “Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more” (Heb. 10:17).
You may not be able to forget your past. But the Lord offers to blot out, “like a thick cloud, your transgressions” (Isa. 44:22). — M.R. De Haan
The deep remorse that’s in the soul
No human eye may trace;
But Jesus sees the broken heart,
And can its woes erase. —Bosch
The best eraser is honest confession to God.
The Best Eraser
READ: Luke 16:19-31
“ I have blotted out, like a thick cloud, your transgressions. —Isaiah 44:22 ”
What is memory? What is this faculty that enables us to recall past feelings, sights, sounds, and experiences? By what process are events recorded, stored, and preserved in our brain to be brought back again and again? Much is still mystery.
We do know that memories can be blessings—full of comfort, assurance, and joy. Old age can be happy and satisfying if we have stored up memories of purity, faith, fellowship, and love. If a saint looks back on a life of Christian service and remembers the faithfulness of Him who promised: “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Heb. 13:5), his or her sunset years can be the sweetest of all.
But memory can also be a curse and a tormentor. Many people as they approach the end of life would give all they possess to erase from their minds the past sins that haunt them. What can a person do who is plagued by such remembrances? Just one thing. He can take them to the One who is able to forgive them and blot them out forever. He’s the One who said, “Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more” (Heb. 10:17).
You may not be able to forget your past. But the Lord offers to blot out, “like a thick cloud, your transgressions” (Isa. 44:22). — M.R. De Haan
The deep remorse that’s in the soul
No human eye may trace;
But Jesus sees the broken heart,
And can its woes erase. —Bosch
The best eraser is honest confession to God.
Tuesday, 3 February 2009
Ahl al-Kitāb Book Club
This is currently just a germ if an idea, but watch this space for further developments and watch out for more writing on new blog www.ahlal-kitabbookclub.blogspot.com (Ahl al-Kitāb means People of the Book in arabic).
Monday, 2 February 2009
If you don't have this book then sell your coat to buy it!
"What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it- the fact that he knows me. I am graven on the palms of his hands. I am never out of his mind. All my knowledge of him depends on his sustained initiative in knowing me. I know him, because he first knew me, and continues to know me.
He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when his eye is off me, or his attention distracted from me, and no moment therefore, when his care falters.
This is momentous knowledge. There is unspeakable comfort-the sort of comfort that energises, be is said, not enervates-in knowing God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love, and watching over me for my good.There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point in prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion me about him, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself and quench his determination to bless me.
There is, certainly great cause for humility in the thought that he sees all the twisted things about me that my fellow humans do not see (and am I glad!), and he sees more corruption in me than that which I see in myself (which, in all conscience, is enough). There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, he wants me as his friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given his Son to die for me in order to realise this purpose..."
Knowing God Ch 3 pg 45-46 J.I.Packer
He knows me as a friend, one who loves me; and there is no moment when his eye is off me, or his attention distracted from me, and no moment therefore, when his care falters.
This is momentous knowledge. There is unspeakable comfort-the sort of comfort that energises, be is said, not enervates-in knowing God is constantly taking knowledge of me in love, and watching over me for my good.There is tremendous relief in knowing that his love to me is utterly realistic, based at every point in prior knowledge of the worst about me, so that no discovery now can disillusion me about him, in the way I am so often disillusioned about myself and quench his determination to bless me.
There is, certainly great cause for humility in the thought that he sees all the twisted things about me that my fellow humans do not see (and am I glad!), and he sees more corruption in me than that which I see in myself (which, in all conscience, is enough). There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, he wants me as his friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given his Son to die for me in order to realise this purpose..."
Knowing God Ch 3 pg 45-46 J.I.Packer
Why I love Bookshops
"It is the most friendly vocation in the world,” he announced…“A bookseller is the link between mind and mind, the feeder of the hungry, very often the binder up of wounds. There he sits, your bookseller, surrounded by a thousand minds all done up neatly in cardboard cases; beautiful minds, courageous minds, strong minds, wise minds, all sorts of conditions. And there come into him other minds, hungry for beauty, for knowledge, for truth, for love, and to the best of his ability he satisfies them all…Yes…it’s a great vocation.”
“Greater than a writer’s?” asked Felicity.
“Immeasurably,” said Grandfather. “A writer has to spin his work out of himself and the effect upon the character is often disastrous. It inflates the ego. Now, your bookseller sinks his ego in the thousand different egos that he introduces one to the other…Yes…Moreover, his life is one of wide horizons. He deals in the stuff of eternity and there’s no death in a bookseller’s shop. Plato and Jane Austen and Keats sit side by side behind his back, Shakespeare is on his right hand and Shelley on his left.” He paused for a moment while Felicity took Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights gently away from him. “Yes. Writers, from what I’ve seen of them, are a very queer lot, but booksellers are the salt of the earth.” "
Elizabeth Goudge
“Greater than a writer’s?” asked Felicity.
“Immeasurably,” said Grandfather. “A writer has to spin his work out of himself and the effect upon the character is often disastrous. It inflates the ego. Now, your bookseller sinks his ego in the thousand different egos that he introduces one to the other…Yes…Moreover, his life is one of wide horizons. He deals in the stuff of eternity and there’s no death in a bookseller’s shop. Plato and Jane Austen and Keats sit side by side behind his back, Shakespeare is on his right hand and Shelley on his left.” He paused for a moment while Felicity took Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights gently away from him. “Yes. Writers, from what I’ve seen of them, are a very queer lot, but booksellers are the salt of the earth.” "
Elizabeth Goudge
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