Lessons Learned – Faith, emergencies and anatomy!
We have just had an amazing weekend at our church – very inspiring, encouraging and challenging – all rolled into one!
A team came together from other Methodist churches to share with us – the theme of the weekend being There’s More of God for us.
Here are a few lines that have really struck a cord with me :
“God can use me.
God wants to use me
God needs to use me, my gifts, my talents, my personality, my home, my job, my failures and my insecurities……….
But how?
……What I do have, is the Father’s gift to me. But what I choose to do with it, is my gift to Him.”
Last night in church we came together to share where we go from here, both within our congregation, and as we reach out to our local community, and their needs.
I rarely speak in public, and had NO intention of speaking, but I found myself going to the front. What I said is a bit of a blur as the tears flowed…but everyone was so supportive….and a number who spoke after me said they would not have had the courage to, until they saw me up there! When I came home, I received some lovely phone calls, texts and even visits, showing that they cared.
The two main themes I came away from the weekend with, and I will share as my first two lessons this week are:
– we need to give ourselves more opportunities to share our own stories of our journey and faith within our church.
– we need to be more open, and share our fears and insecurities. It is too easy put on a mask, especially in church, to pretend we have it “all together”. A member of the congregation shared a lovely image of broken pots with light shining through the cracks. She explained that to her we were the broken pots, the light was God, and through our imperfections God can use us.
On to other lessons!!!
My daughter rang me from school today to inform me she had forgotten to take her packed lunch to school. I asked her if she had her dinner card (to use in the canteen) and her emergency £1 coin. She informed me she had spent her £1 on a sticky iced bun at breaktime as she was SO HUNGRY that it was an EMERGENCY!! So I learned that my daughter’s idea of an emergency was much different from mine! Fortunately she had enough money left on her dinner card, as I was not able to deliver her packed lunch.
My 5 year old son, who became a Christian last week, fell at the park and cut his knee. He was asking all sorts of questions about the blood, and where it came from etc. We explained about his heart, which pumped the blood around his body, and that his heart was full of blood. “No” he replied, “my heart isn’t full of blood, it is full of Jesus!”
Lesson 5 – I am VERY excited about my new store, opening soon, which will be selling my jewelery/jewellery creations online (www.janmarydesigns.com). However, I won’t have much stock left to sell if my sales levels continue at this rate. Not that I am complaining, but it is certainly keeping me busy. Here are a couple of recent items for sale.
Later this week I will be reviewing a Wii game, and will have the chance to give away FIVE copies to UK commentors.
Finally, the two winners of the £25 Marks and Spencers Vouchers (courtesy of www.voucherscodes.co.uk) go to
Domestic Godd-esque
quasi serendipita
Thanks to everyone who entered, and I promise some day to post more about M&S Percy Pigs!
For more lessons learned around the bloggy world, visit Musings of a Housewife