born to give them second birth…

it is so so hard to find motivation these days. After a busy 2 weeks with choir engagements, i haven;t been able to find much time to sit and gt some work done, work that is due on 7th and 12th of january! this is a scary thought. So this week, between queen choir practices and carol singing I am trying to squeeze in some good quality library time…the only problem is…i just can’t focus! i can’t get my head around the fact that i am in final year and have a lot of work to do…i dwell on that too much and then don’t get the necessary work done!

anyways…I was singing with choir last night in the foyleside shopping centre in derry and it struck me…that people stand around and sing along to carols like O little town of Bethlehem and O come all ye faithful…but do they really understand what they’re singing about!? Only recently have I really started to think about the meaning of these carols…simply because in school and in church i always play them and never get to sing the words…but now i sing them and I have realised just how powerful they are…Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth! Born to save the world from sin! Born for us…what an amazing gift?! it is amazing that this is a gift for everyone! all we have to do is believe it and receive it!

Christianity isn’t a tradition! Christmas isn’t a tradition! Christianity is a lifestyle, it is a choice! The gift that the world received at Christmas is what made this lifestyle possible!

I just typed Christmas in to google image search there naively thinking the first picture would be of the nativity scene…it wasn’t…

it was a Christmas tree…now don’t get me wrong, Christmas trees are lovely and brighten up your home and make it look festive, but if that is what people first associate with Christmas, then what chance is their for lost people to find Jesus?!

ok so when i typed nativity in the google, lego nativity was the first picture…! its a consumerist world..but at least it gets the ‘true’ meaning of Christmas! No its not about lego…its about the birth of Jesus!!

Happy Christmas from greensleeves!

God’s faithfulness

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this summer! Part of me cannot believe how fast it has gone and yet another huge part of me can’t believe I’m not back to uni yet! It has been a summer of meeting new people and spending time reflecting on life and how God is working and changing me!

At the start of the summer I went on a discipleship team called Encounter in Greystones Co Wicklow. This is one of the most memorable and life changing teams and experiences I’ve ever been part of. I met so many people and was able to share experiences with them and let them into my life and talk and pray about challenges that I have faced and am going to face in the future. This taught me a lot about community. I know I’ve talked a lot about community recently but that is because I have learnt so much about the importance of it in my life, in anyone’s life! To have a community of people who you can open up to and share with is such a blessing, even if you don’t see them very often, knowing that they are just an email or phone call away is so special!

I was away on this team for a month and I truly believe that God put me there so that I could meet new people and be able to chat to them and learn so much more about how God wants to move me forward in my faith and how he challenges me in ways that I could never really imagine. Also I think I was in a place in my life where I just wasn’t feeling connected to anything, I was just floating along in life and somehow that needed to change and God obviously knew that and encounter did change me…not that I am a new person or anything, it just made me realise so much about how I’d been acting, how I’d not been taking my life seriously or literally, just sorta watching it go by! It was weird, for the first 2 weeks of encounter I’m pretty sure I cried nearly everyday! Sometimes happy tears, sometimes sad and painful tears, but all because God was breaking and softening my heart and I am SO thankful that he did! I think it’s an important thing to always pray about, that God would show us our hearts, like really open us up to ourselves so we know how to deal with things!

Anyway so I came home from that in the middle of July and was house sitting for 2 weeks. I was feeling pretty weird! I’d just come from an amazing month of community to find myself alone in a big house for 2 weeks! It had its pros and cons I guess! Yeah it was lonely and I missed everyone BUT it was a perfect opportunity for reflection and prayer and stillness! And having a free house meant plenty of time and space for little small reunions!

So I just sorta floated a long, always in the back of my mind thinking about how I needed a job…crap! But here we are…2 months later and I still don’t have one! But God is good and he’s gotta plan! I had applied for one job but didn’t get it! It sucks that after four years of having a job and having some money go into my bank every month it no longer happens! Aw well…just have to cut down my diet coke addiction! Which I think I’m managing to do quite well really…one 2x330mls today! AND I didnt have a single drop yesterday!! woop!!

Anyway…so not a lot else really happened all summer! A lot of babysitting and house sitting and dog sitting and all the rest of it! The odd little trip to portstewart and a LOT of catching up and hanging out with friends…drinking coffee and diet coke! If I had gotten a job straight away there would not have been as much time for these chats and catch ups and so I feel that God wanted me to be free to chat to people because He knows that’s what I needed…the job will come in time! I have faith that God will provide…yeah maybe I need to seek a little more…be more practical…I will someday!HA!

Now it’s time to get ready for uni…for final year! EEEK!!! Like…in the past few years God has taken me waaaay outta my comfort zone! Firstly with the whole going away to uni thing…I never in a million years thought I could but I did…not knowing a single person going to Magee when I applied…but through the summer I met people who are now my housemates and 2 of my best friends! God provides! Then a trip to Japan and even that was with people I knew…to a month away in Dublin where I only knew 2 people out of 35ish! But every single time God has been faithful and I have benefited from it…I haven’t always seen these benefits and good things at the time, but looking back I can see that God’s ways are perfect!

He never fails us.

He loves us too much to let us hurt for too long!

He reveals Himself in ways that sometimes we just have to seek!

I’m getting excited to see what He has in store for me next! Where else He’s going to take me, in or out of my comfort zone, I don’t care because I know He is faithful!

But for now…I just need to get rid of this horrible cold that is causing my face to be slightly puffy and extremely unattractive! Made worse by the constant flow of snot coming from my nose and my highly unattractive breathing technique I’ve got going n! BOKE!

I love blogging!

Good night!
x

community…lacking?!

All day long…I hadn’t had a millilitre of diet coke…I was doing so well…until I decided to go a wee dander into the town with my dog…I past a shop…diet coke called my name…I caved…life goes on!

Anyway as I was walking I was utterly amazed at how many houses I walked past all watching the same TV channel…well I’m guessing it was the same channel because it was a green screen with a lot of wee dots running around it…yes isn’t there some big match on tonight?! It’s been all over facebook all day…’can’t wait for g.a.w.a tonight’ and statuses to that effect…! I was particularly struck by the string of about 10 terrace houses all with the same channel on…now please don’t get me wrong here…I don’t intentionally stare into people’s living rooms to see what they’re watching, it’s just hard to miss a big green screen when it’s starting to get dark outside…it shines out!! Anyway this string of 10 houses made me a little sad because I just couldn’t help but think that this match gives so much opportunity for community! A chance to get to know your neighbor and share in a common interest and then maybe a drink or too and good craic and company, to be human beings together! Are we even capable of this anymore?!  Instead people are just sitting in their own houses, in their own company watching a green screen with dots all over it not interacting with others!! What has happened to the desire to have friends, to be friends and to need friends!?

It also made me think about how much of an opportunity the church has to reach out in this case! Not with a sermon, not with a praise night necessarily, but with a simple chance to love the community! To stick up a big screen in an empty church hall (church halls sit empty from week to week apart from the odd organisation…what a waste…when it could be put to use…!)and invite people in to watch said match with other people, Christian and non Christian! To extend an invitation into the wider community, to share fellowship just by watching a match! I cannot begin to count how many times this summer alone I have heard people ask…’how can we reach the community? How can we make church more appealing?’  Things are screaming out to be used! An empty church hall, a football match, tea and coffee…do the maths!! It soo simple and yet perish the thought that a church hall would be used for such heathen behaviour!

But even getting back to the houses in a row I mentioned, like is it so unthinkable for people to talk to their neighbours these days?! I mean why do people not want to have friends? There is SO much opportunity to do this but people just don’t take these opportunities! Opportunities to have community, to have friendships in their lives and they are literally on their doorstep…! I don’t really understand politics enough to go on a rant about sectarian divides and whatever else but I do know that the world in is a sad state if neighbours on the same street can’t even watch a football match together in the same room! Maybe I’ve got it all wrong and they just want to be in on their own enjoying it…but somehow tat just doesn’t strike me as a good enough reason!

To be honest I don’t know why I feel so strongly about this, I guess this summer I have just learnt a lot about the importance of community and impact that it has on our individuals lives! You can learn SO much from other people and it is a gift from God!

Christians especially, we should be going that extra mile to include people, we are commanded to love our neighbours, and so what a simple way to do it…!