Ebenezer

I started running away at a very early age. I ran to a world where toys could talk, fairies existed and where I assumed the title of ‘Princess’.  My mum remembers frequent occasions when she would see me pottering around talking animatedly with myself.  As she put it, ‘It all seemed so real to you’. 

Books fuelled my imagination and provided another way of escape.  There was rarely a morning that didn’t see me eating breakfast with a novel in my hand completely oblivious to my family and the occasional amused guest.

Over the past few weeks our pastorate has been looking at the Lord's prayer.

I love the fact that the prayer begins ‘Our Father…’ – the implication being that this prayer is for those who already have a relationship with God. 

For a long time I hated my name.  Why?  Well firstly it seemed that nearly every other girl my age was called Rebecca. In my year at school there were five of us. Five! Admittedly between the five of us there were three different spellings of the name. Which brings me on to the second reason why I hated my name so much. No-one could ever spell it.  And this still seems to be the case.  Without fail people spell it ‘Rebecca’ and when I try to correct them, it throws them into total confusion. Conversations, usually at the bank with a queue of people behind me, go something like this,

Last week I was suffering from post-Focus fatigue.  And I think I had a particularly bad case.
I was grumpy, irritable and often close to tears.  I felt frustrated, angry, vulnerable and, as the title of this post suggests, raw.
I just couldn’t understand it.
Despite my reservations, Focus had been amazing.  God was awesome, the weather was perfect, I got enough sleep (as unbelievable as it sounds) and I met some fantastic people.  I was challenged, inspired and even surprised at times (God definitely has a sense of humour).  Yet by Wednesday last week I was a wreck.

Here's another talk I did for the pastorate girls...

In Philippians 4:19 Paul writes, ‘My God will meet all your needs…’.   But what exactly does this mean?  We pray, ‘Give each day our daily bread…’ Luke 11:3, yet does God really meet our every need?  And if so, how?

I think God provides for us in 3 areas: practically, emotionally and spiritually.  And I think the book of Ruth not only shows us that God does meet all our needs, but it also gives us some clues about how he does it.

One of my favourite sayings is, ‘God has a sense of humour’.  This is particularly evident, I think, in the people he chooses to do his work.

Gideon is a brilliant example.  Found in Judges 6, Gideon is perhaps best known for his demand for signs from God – wet fleece, dry fleece etc.
However, I think Gideon also tells us a lot about the type of people that God often uses. Most importantly: they are not necessarily the type of people we would choose. 

I recently gave a talk to the girls from my pastorate on our weekend away.  This is it:

‘Be still before the presence of the Lord and wait patiently for him to act.’ Psalm 37:7 (NLT)

We live in a society that considers waiting to be a bad thing.  We have fast food, credit cards that let you ‘buy now and pay later’ and diets that promise instant results.  Our society says that having things instantly is our right.

And apparently this means that I have to answer the following questions. hmmmm.

1) Four jobs I've had:
* GAP retail assistant
* RE secondary school teacher
* receptionist at an opticians
* pea musher for a guy doing research. I kid you not.

2) Four movies/shows I've been addicted to:
* Jonathan Creek (ah.... Alan Davis)

JK Rowling has recently written a wonderfully scathing attack on what society considers beautiful.  

One of my favourite quotes concerns her daughters: 

"I've got two daughters who will have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don't want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones [ouch!]; I'd rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny a thousand things, before 'thin'."

Well folks, last night I threw my first ever proper grown up dinner party.  Despite my fears about giving my guests food poisoning (does turkey mince always smell so strange when cooked?), my brownies congealing at the bottom of the pan (the first time Delia has ever failed me), burning myself twice and some pre-dinner party email wars about the quality (or not) of the Sound of Music (it's a wonderful film)...