I love blogger but it has issues.  It does not want to send me my emails.  It does not want to notify me when your blogs are updated.  It spits comments & now...NOW it will not let me post pictures. Consequentially [yes, blogger there are consequences to your actions *sigh*] I have shifted house.  Yet again.  Sadly I could not keep my old user name but it is still the same old Ganeida.  So if you would all kindly update your links.....Gratias. Here is the new one.

Summer salad.

With the advent of summer we are eating more salads.  Doesn't everyone?  Only having grown tired of the regular offerings I went on~line looking for something both tasty & filling.  This ginger~soy rice salad is exceptionally yummy.

How it's going.

Both the Hebrew (Nebrah), and Greek (Proph) used for prophetess means (female preacher). (Young's Concordance, Pg. 780.)



Several years ago I was chatting with the Lord, as you do, & the Lord gave me this scripture:

The word of the Lord came to me, saying,

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

before you were born I set you apart;

I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

Sad to say my initial reaction wasn't even:

“Ah, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to ...

Instead I laughed.

I live on a tiny island: 17k long X 3 wide at its widest point, population under 3 000.  Seriously, Lord?

When I realised the Lord was serious about this I went into denial.  And the Lord just kept thrusting this scripture at me until I reluctantly accepted that it was so.

I quietly flipped.  I knew nothing about New Testament prophets.  I did not, never had, belonged to a church that had a 5~fold ministry.  What I read was not particularly helpful but when the Lord calls He also euips & so I found myself at Rhema Bible School.  This was still not particularly helpful ~ at least as regards the prophetic.  It was however helpful in grounding me in dealing with the charismatic.  I know it's weird but seriously people this whole house was operating in the charismatic gifts & totally clueless.  Absolutely no idea.  How could we?  We did not belong to churches that taught on this.

When I asked the Lord [as you do ☺] why I was in Rhema His unequivocal answer was *Preaching & Teaching*.  Ok. *sigh*  I pottered along, just trying to be obedient, struggling with the extroverted elements of the charismatic that made me cringe & the Lord waited patiently.  Firstly He showed me how the use of Tongues could help me centre more quickly allowing me to hear from Him more accurately ~ & yes, I know some of you don't go there.  All I can say is the proof's in the pudding & it works.  Then I got teaching on the anointing which helped me understand what was happening when I preached & how to flow with God's Spirit much, much better.  Then the Lord showd me how the Prophetic works for me in preaching & teaching because I always ask, always have, what the Lord wants me to say to His people.  And the change the Lord had me institute was to have my outline, have my scripture then leave Him room to flow through me so that in essence I was shining a light on the path the Lord would have His people walk. Whew! 

And I have found myself in a most amazing place.  I have a deeper awareness of God's Spirit within.  My love for my Lord & Saviour just keeps growing until there are moments when I feel like I am about to explode from not being able to contain it!  I am preaching with much more confidence, & authority.  Far less of me, far more of God.

And having gone to great pains to get me into school & headed where He wants me headed, the Lord also opened up preaching opportunities.  I have been getting 1~2 a month, some short, some full length.  Getting my research done while studying, travelling & evangelizing has not always been easy but being able to move more freely in the Spirit has really helped here too.  And the little church where I am ministering is starting to grow ~ enough that the Lord is speaking to me about the church preparing to deal with an influx.  You read here.  You've heard me blather on often enough  on this subject & I know it's the Lord's heart also.  It's one thing to get bums on seats.  It's another & different thing to get people saved but it is a whole 'nother ball game to grow believers to maturity ~ & that takes the whole church!  Working together. *sigh* 

It's not that I don't like people.  Truly it's not.  But I'm a Big Picture thinker.  Visionary.  I get frustrated when the people start lagging behind God's vision & I know I have to be patient.  So very patient.  Like God is with me. Yep.  Just like that.



Summer in the garden.

One benefit of summer was that each day we had more light to read by. ~Jeannette Walls

Peaches.

Nectarines.

Promegranate flowers; the promise of things to come.

FINALLY...!!!

This is one performance that just goes on & on but Queensland peeps, if you are interested, this show finally goes to air on the ABC this year. 

 CURSE OF THE GOTHIC SYMPHONY Sunday 30 December @ 10.15pm
Randall Wood/ Australia/ 2012/ 82 mins

Other states I'm not sure about & if you're overseas, sorrow & all that.  ☺

A Variety of Wildlife.

You know you're less than urban when this amount of wildlife lands on your doorstep in a matter of days...

The tree snake that lives in the creeper outside the door....

A good sized mud crab....

Mullet....

The friar bird nest outside Dino's window.  Let's hope that this year they don't raise a cuckoo....

Butter~wouldn't melt~Marlow

Who brought home this Striped Marsh Frog so gently, for Star.  Not hurt at all & Star released it back into our garden.  The link will let you listen to its call, which we * hear* so constantly all year we no longer actually hear it!

Graduation

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.”~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The proud parents.

The flag ceremony.

The class of 2012.

Our pastors, Patsy & Tony, Cameneti, our Dino & the school Dean, KAren Workentin.

The Graduate.



Whew!  Everything is whirling into end of year madness ~ but at least certain things will then stop.  

This week I had the school's homiletics class ~ which means I had to present something because Rhema is all about being a doer of the word, not a hearer only.  This would have been less of a problem if I were not also  preaching on Sunday ~ which would be less stressful if Dino was not graduating on Saturday....& we also have a seminar on the Thursday & break up on Wednesday.  Meanwhile I have been sitting up till midnight to co~ordinate the last of Star's work ~ the last time ever I will have to do this so a bitter sweet moment.

Always prone to panic attacks where no panic is necessary I was just a tad upset as the homeletics class was the only class I had approached with any semblance of confidence, boosted by the fact most of the class had hit a bigger panic button than mine over *public speaking*!  Not me.  I minored in drama at Uni.  If nothing else I was confident in presentation, though after a week of the Dean's bracing comments on what to do/not do I decided ignorance was definitely bliss!  Anyway, having gone to the Lord in a panic He reminded me I had been rehearsing this testimony for weeks in my head & it was just a simple matter of putting some scripture to it.  I was pleased with how it went.  It is far more nerve wracking to speak before a woman who has spoken around the world to large audiences than our little island congregation.  Dino did his today ~ very good though inexperience meant he didn't finish as he wanted having misjudged his time. 

I have Friday at home ~no classes~ & though we will go over for church as usual I will at least be able to use that day for Sunday's preparation.  I have been getting a regular spot each month, enough to keep me in practice, not enough to overburden me while I am in school.  I realised today how blessed I am to be getting that regular practice.  I am *performance hardened* as Star would happily inform me.  It's not that I don't still get nervous, because I do, but I know how to deal with it.  It is not debilitating.  I know how to engage with an audience.  What I have to watch is how I feed of the audience! lol

I am looking forward to Monday when all I still have left to deal with is is Star's singing.

Liddy has Blogged.

Liddy has Blogged.

Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some unto honour, and some unto dishonour. ~2 Timothy 2:20

I believe I mentioned [at some point] that a great wrenching was taking place.   Somewhere in the foggy recesses of my mind it has occurred to me that vessels are cleaned before use, scoured even.  It's not painful so much as leaving one feeling raw, tender & far more exposed than one likes.

Garrulousness is a wonderful camouflage.  People think they are being told things when in reality all that talk is just a think smoke screen.  Sadly, so far as I am concerned, smoke screens are unacceptable to God. *sigh*

Anyway what we have been...not so much discussing, because that suggests a 2 way conversation, more the Listen up & shape up robust pep talk I get when I'm being flakier than usual....aspects of the anointing.

The anointing. *sigh* Even Christians don't share a common language.  Certain terms mean different things to different people.  Mention Baptism in the Spirit & one lot rhapsodizes about tongues while the other lot declares No Such Thing!

Anyway....

If you don't believe women belong in the 5~fold ministry just bear with me.  I understand your arguments so you don't need to reiterate them here.  Been there, done that.  Over it.  The fact of the matter is not about doctrine.  It is about relationship.  The one I have with God.  When He says Jump I might quibble for a bit but we both know that in the end I will jump.  How high, Lord?

Like calls to like.  Every believer has the Holy Spirit in them.  Every believer has a gift & calling from God ~ & those gifts & callings are irrevocable.  Something happens when people know the gift they have from God & are operating in it the way God wants them to.  I've always been aware of it.  See I love God's word.  Talking about God & His word makes me supremely happy.  It makes the Holy Spirit within me sing for joy because part of His job is to magnify Christ.

Lately there has been a shift.  I am far more aware of what happens to me & around me when I go to preach.  It is far, far stronger ~ & at times it feels a little uneven.  It makes me a little uneven.  But all has been explained.  I have been mostly aware of the outer anointing because that is very tangible: physically all my ADHD ~ emphasis on the hyperactivity~ comes to the fore because the Spirit knows we get to talk about Jesus & He's always excited when we get to do that!  I can sense the presence of the Spirit descend ~ a combination of light & warmth & empowerment.  Hard to explain but I know exactly when it arrives.  Just as I know when it leaves.  Stronger with some messages than others.

What I have been less aware of because it doesn't manifest physically is the inner anointing ~ which is just the presence of the Holy Spirit within me.  I am aware of when the 2 unite.  It's like a spiritual explosion & there is great power to speak.  My job is to ensure I feed my spirit enough that the inner & outer anointing stays balanced.  

And because I am sorta flakey I thought this was something all Christians experienced pretty regularly because we all pray & we all minister in some capacity ~ or should.  I think I have been blithely making assumptions I shouldn't have.  

Do you remember at the end of Lewis' The Last Battle they are urged to come Further up & further in?  For me that is what the anointing means.  It's God's invitation to come closer, to come right in to the Holy of Holies, to nestle under his wings, snuggle right up against His chest.  Something happens in that place.  Who I am falls away & there is only Christ ~ & Christ in me.  From that place Christ can manifest through me to shed abroad the love He has for the world He died to redeem.  Yes, it is humbling but it is also exciting.  And there is great joy in it because I can feel my Lord's pleasure in doing His will.  It is from that place one begins to understand just what Satan has robbed us of, how much he has blinded even the eyes of the Believers.  It generates a holy anger to want help people reclaim all they have been robbed of.  It is the reason any gift at all is given, that the lost might be found, the found discipled, the discipled established & the established sent forth to further the kingdom of God!

The Proof's in the Pudding.

Great spirits have always been violently oppressed by mediocre minds. ~ Albert Einstein

I have a little confession; I've been worried about this year ending. 

 Is Star ready for the world?

More to the point, is the world ready for Star?  

What do you do with the child who, so it seems, has been born for just one thing & one thing only, when that thing is as intangible & illusionary as music?  What work will she do?  How will she make her dreams come true?  And if they don't, how will she cope?

And of course my ego is on the line too because I've been saying loudly for years how much better homeschooling is.  It seems I was right.  I should listen to me better.

Star let me know she wanted to do the Support~a~Reader program & volunteer up at school for their reading program.  I've done this so I know what the work entails but I was rather chuffed just the same.  I thought it showed initiative. I thought it would be a great learning experience.

No.  The irony has not escaped me.  It has not escaped Star either.

Because if there is one thing you can rely on Star for it is that she is never going to march to anything but her own drummer.   Unlike her sister, who also graduated from homeschool, Star had no interest in taking any sort of an exam.  She wasn't the least bit interested in having any sort of a bit of paper that declared her a competent student.  We all know bits of paper are important.  We all know bits of paper count.  I'm academically inclined so I fretted that my daughter was making a hard row to hoe but bottom line, she's the one who will pay the price.

All term Star has arrived diligently 5 mornings a week to read with the grade 2/3 class.  Mostly she has had to walk because the school bus, which she could catch is...well, it's a school bus: noisy, crowded bedlam.  And she walks home.  Sun, rain or wind.  She is cheerful, co~operative, helpful & willing. Oh, & punctual!  She gets up early for this! She has dropped the odd clanger.  Star & math have never been a happening thing but how do you forget that the ACT is a territory & part of Australia?  Only Star!

And school loves her!!!  Enough to start chatting paid work with her.  Enough to suggest she do her Teacher Aide course on~line.  Enough to ask her if she could teach some of the kids music.

Star's going to be ok.  If she can get enough flexible work to pay for her music we'll both be happy. 

Thank you, God.  Is this sorta how you felt when you sent your son? 

Books &Seminars.

It is being a busy week.  Tony Cook has been teaching on the 5~fold ministry.  I'd never heard of the man.  My ignorance of the Charismatic movement is phenomenal but this is one teacher it has been an absolute joy to sit under!  His doctrine is as sound & wholesome as a good apple but he is the sweetest, gentlest man & I finally have an answer to a question that has been driving me nuts for the best part of 2 years. 

Today we sat under his ministry for a one day seminar ~ geared for pastors but applicable to any Christian who can handle strong meat. I was desperate for caffeine by the half way mark & having secured my Styrofoam cup found a convenient pillar to hold up & opened my book.  I'd reached the exciting bit where blood & mayhem were creating havoc & I zone out rather well.  It never once occurred to me that these dos are for networking [a term I associate with men in expensive suites & Old School Ties] & that's what everyone else was busily doing while I was in England solving bloody murder!  *sigh* School finds me a little odd.

I can't think what God was doing.  I seem to get all the bits actually relating to people wrong.  I like paper.  It has no opinions.  As the Dean said, doing a double take over the lurid cover, it was a very secular book! I have to keep  self editing!  I do like a good crime thriller but there's no escaping that in the name of gritty realism they are neither for the faint of heart or tender of conscience.  Unless you are made of pretty sturdy stuff this is one writer I'm not recommending though it has turned into a gripping read ~ & it was a gift,just in case you're wondering.

And I have no trouble changing gears to grapple with the pastoral epistles & the dilemma of Timothy, who I'm pretty sure would have loved to have brained Paul for haring of to Philippi & leaving him to deal with the irascible Ephesians & Paul's robust advice to buck up & get on with it. 

So having covered the Apostle, the prophet & the evangelist [losing the plot on this one now] we deal with teachers & preachers tomorrow, just in time to make me feel totally inadequate & inferior ~ & idiotic because inferiority is, apparently, a form of pride. *sigh*  And these people wonder why I hide my head in a book all the time!

Great Southern Land of the Holy Spirit.

 The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows his handiwork.

As a nation Australians tend not to get overly excited about being Australian.  Of course we live in the best country in the world better but out of consideration for others feelings we're quiet about it & just toss another snag on the barbie.

We're the same way about religion.  Quiet.  Practically comatose.  For goodness sake we don't want to be thought wowsers!  Ssssh.  It would never do if people knew we actually believed there was a God.

So sometimes it's good to be reminded what a rich Christian heritage we do actually have ~ despite what the secular history books fail to teach.  I get so excited every time I think what Australia's full, proper, first name actually is: Great South Land of the Holy Spirit. The Spaniard,  Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, is responsible for that.  Equally surprising is the fact that to the north of us are a whole swag of Muslim countries who knew we were here, traded with the northern tribes but never invaded because we were, apparently, full of evil spirits. Which is side~tracking somewhat because amongst other things there are a number of prophecies in regards to the part this country is to play in the last great revival.

All of which I knew about.  Then last week Dino was standing under the stars, which everyone in this house rather likes to do because devoid of street lights, city lights, & with only the odd house light or two our stars spin like giant Catherine wheels & a meteor shower is a sight to behold!  And Dino said to God, Show me something about you in the sky.

So God did.

He got Dino to draw a cross.  At the top is the crown of thorns.  On either arm are 5 fingers representing Jesus hands. There are 10 toes at the foot ~ & a mark to show when the soldier's sword pierced Jesus side & His blood gushed out.

If you live Down Under you know what Dino drew....

God has even set His seal in the sky over us.  I thought that was pretty cool.

So next time you're outside at night & looking amongst the stars for the Southern Cross remember God has visibly set His seal over our land too.  One just for us.

Quitting

If you are walking with Jesus, in the Spirit, you need not fear going too far. No believer has gone as far as God wants him to go.~ A. A. Allen

 

Surfer's.

With the Indy happening this weekend the place was even more congested than usual.  Not that it made any difference to me.  I concede defeat.  I am not an evangelist, no matter what anointing people seem to think there is on the witness.

I scribbled a couple of verses in the wet sand, realised the tide was coming in not going out, went & sat under a tree on the boardwalk & watched the passing parade...

Which included a barge that had got lost, was inside the shark net, did a 360 & headed back out to sea.  Who knows.

And a street musician.

I'm not usually a quitter.  I usually dig my heels in, stubborn past the point of stupidity ~ & it's not fear because I spent over 1/2 an hour chatting with the lady who took up residence beside me on the bench.  But she was a spirit~filled born again Christian & this is what invariably happens to me!  I hone in on Christians. 

And that's the other thing.  I am not an initiator.  It's not that I dislike people & despite my anti~social tendencies I have been very well trained & always put my book down when someone wants to chat with me.  Nope.

Seriously.  It's scary what goes on in my world.  I always lug a book around.  Yes, I'm a reader but I also travel a lot.  I wait around a lot.  Invariably I fill the empty minutes with printed words.  I do it at school too.  Ten minute breaks are not generally long enough to have a proper conversation.  I can't remember the last time I started a conversation.  But I've always got people coming coming up to chat with me ~ & I get seriously dumped on, which is scariest of all.  What on earth sort of vibes do I give out that invites other people's deep dark secrets?!  I'm not complaining.  I just think it's weird.

It's weird because I understand the anointing.  I preach under the anointing ~ or believe me I'd never get up & say a word in church!  I know what it is to operate in the power & authority of the Holy Spirit.  So where is it when we evangelize?

I know it can't be manafactured.  I know it can't be manipulated.  I know it can't be mimicked.  Theoretically every Christian is anointed to share the gospel.  Theoretically.  I also know there is nothing harder than operating without the anointing ~ & nothing more damaging  to the Gospel.  I'm over it.

I think I have 2 more of these to do next year.  It's school & I have to go out but I'm done.  I give up.  This is one subject that's totally defeated me.

When the Spirit Moves.

A sinner can no more repent and believe without the Holy Spirit's aid than he can create a world. ~ Charles Spurgeon

I owe a debt of gratitude to the Society of Friends [Quakers] though we part ways theologically on a number of issues because they taught me how to listen for God.  I had become caught, as I suspect far too many Christians are, on the thorny dilemma of prayer ~ for why pray at all when all is foreordained & God knows everything?  Perchance I could move past that a second dilemma was wont to shipwreck my efforts because the need is so great that prayer became overwhelming.  Sadly one cannot pray for everything & everyone.  We are finite, limited human beings ~ & so I was wont not to pray at all. I came from a church background that talked at God.  I had never learned the gentle art of listening  to God ~ let alone having an actual conversation!

Quakerism opened me to other possibilities.  I flirted with silence for years, too immature spiritually to understand this too is a discipline & requires practise & some degree of maturity to be succesful.  However it was so attractive to my mind I persisted & eventually grew up enough to make some inroads in my understanding of prayer.  Enough at any rate to begin to understand what people saw in it, why they loved it better than anything else & to seek to go deeper in my own prayer life.

I learned to love silence.  I learned how to be quiet before the Lord.  I learned to hear from Him.  And then He sent me to Rhema.  To say I was not impressed would be a massive understatement.  I make no bones about how difficult I have found the charismatic style of praise & worship.  It is just not *me*.  That it is biblical was no consolation.

Dearest, who was tired to death of hearing me sing the praises of silent worship, entered into the joyful singing with enthusiasim while I was still plugging my fingers into my ears in order to cope.  However much I didn't want to I had to admit the Holy Spirit was in this style of worship too.  I could sense when the anointing arrived & the Holy Spirit began to minister but I was being dragged kicking & screaming ~ metamorphically.  I was the proverbial toddler having a massive tantrum.  Of all the places to land me this would never have been my first choice.

As others have found before me, once you've encountered God up close & personal other considerations fade into insignificiance.  What matters is getting it together with God not the method by which that takes place so if God wanted me to worship like this ~ then so be it!

Now charismatic churches are like chalk & cheese.  Some are waaaay over the top & out of order.  Some are anal retentive.  One of the pluses at Rhema is that they make room for moves of the Spirit while keeping order.  As part of the praise & worship they make space for individual prayer.  Yes, some people pray in tongues, & some sing in tongues but plenty don't.  They just pray in their ordinary every day way but there is strength in corporeate worship & so they do pray out loud.  Perhaps surprisingly this has never disturbed me as much as the music.

We attend church on Friday nights, partly because it saves us having to travel on yet another day with all the attendant costs, partly because I'm working in the office until the service starts but mostly because Friday nights are what they call a * Believer's Service*.  It sounds impressive.  What it actually means is this is the service they dish up meat & strong wine so come prepared to be stretched, to be challenged, to participate!  I have no problem with any of that & as I said, what drew us, what kept us coming back, was the teaching.

Over time I've sort of got used to the amps being turned up louder than I find comfortable, the hand waving & the people dancing in the aisles.  I've got to know some of the songs so I shut my eyes & shut out the church & enter into prayer.  Silence has taught me something.  I turn unerringingly towards the Spirit like a compass needle heading straight for magnetic North! 

On Friday God had a surprise for me.  As the praise & worship ended & the church entered into prayer I sense the anointing poured out over the church so strongly I couldn't believe we were still all standing upright!  Wow, I thought.  That's pretty cool.  Patsy got up to lead the church out of prayer & begin to preach but she'd barely begun when the most amazing thing happened.  Spontaneously the entire church lapsed into silence & flowed deep into prayer.  I know plenty of preachers who would have got up & preached anyway.  Patsy did not.  She followed the Holy Spirit's prompting & let Him minister to His church.  For an hour & a half the church worshipped in the sort of amazing silence I have only ever before experienced in a Quaker Meeting.  And no~one wanted it to end.  People were reluctant to walk out & go home.  Messages began popping up letting people know Children's Church was over & people really needed to come collect their kids.  Dearest was blown away.

God is God.  How He moves, when He moves ~ that's His choice.  The thing is none of us get to stay on the mountain top.  I mean I get Peter.  He was all for staying in the glory & letting the world go to pot.  Meanwhile there was a child in need whom the other disciples were unable to minister to & work to be done.  I get it but I do like the mountain tops.  The view is something else!

Food for Thought.

Be ye fishers of men….You catch them, He’ll clean them!

Think conservative churches.  The Amish are about as conservative as you can get. So would it surprise you to know that they became a byword for disorder & fanaticism because of *aberrations* amonst their congregations?  Read: they were charismatic in practice & belief.

The Huguenots, who so inflamed the Catholic church in France they were persecuted almost to the point of extinction, were noted for the prophetic anointing amongst their children & a strong bent towards manifestations of the Holy Spirit.

The Quakers I've talked about before.  Visions, prophecies, raising the dead, tongues & such uncompromising consciences that at one point 15,000 Quakers languished in English prisons!  And they had a really bad habit of calling out the judges who sentenced them!

Under both Wesley & Whitefield's preaching people fell down under the power of the Holy Spirit.
When God moves signs & wonders follow.  Where there is stagnation, there is no Life.

Pause for thought.

Why has the Christian Church become so afraid of the power of God ¬ even gone so far as to deny it?  Every Rivival in history has been accompanied by signs & wonders.  When religion gets in & formalises everything the signs & wonders cease & all that is left is religion.

God loves to reveal Himself to His people.  He likes to get up close & personal. So why do we grieve the Holy Spirit by pushing Him away because how He reveals Himself does not fit in neatly with our doctrine?

I knew about the Quakers & Methodists but the thought of Anabaptists whirling about under the influence of the Holy Spirit gives me something of a massive giggle.

The Best Hamburger in Sydney.

My Dearest once lived at the end of Tom Ugly's Bridge & just round the corner from the little fibro house he lived in was the cubby hole that produced the best burgers in Sydney ~ & it literally was a cubby hole.  Squeezed between proper sized shops on either side the Burger Place was long & narrow, just a counter width wide with a grill for the buns & burgers.

There was nothing fancy about these burgers & you got no choices.  They were a plain bun, lightly toasted, with the usual lettuce, tomato, beetroot,onion but everything was crisply fresh .  They arrived fast with heaps of filling ~ & they were cheap!

How things have changed.  First we got Macca's & now we get gourmet.  I dunno.  I take the meat out anyway but I like my burgers simple ~ the way they used to be.  Back in the day.

Saturday's Concert.

Despite the rough waters of the bay & a stiff breeze to go with it, Brisbane was stiffling Saturday afternoon.

Star had an early call for St Stephen's.  The acoustics here are absolutely glorious but no~one. I think, likes the huge cross hanging over the altar & in front of the organ pipes.  Star loathes it.  I obect to it being both theologically incorrect [for Christ is risen] & biologically improbable.  Others worry about it coming adrift & plunging on to the choir.

The requirm swelled about me till I was floating in a sea of pure sound where each part was clear & distinct yet part of a whole.  Enough to make you cry if you were so inclined.

After rehearsal we had a lot of time to fill so walked down to the mall so Star could eat.  I was taken by the similarities with this fresco & Jo's Friday's artist.

AVAE opened & closed the program but the bulk of it was sung by Exaudi & Qld Festival Chorus doing excerpts from Mozart's Requiem.  Too lovely.  And of course Alo Tolmei [?] from Murray Island who led in prayer in the Murray Island language & filled the cathederal with the presence of the Holy Spirit.  Powerful stuff!

Then we watched the 11.05 pull out of the jetty without us!  *sigh*  I was so tired but some things just can't be helped & we did eventually make it home to the great delight of the cats & with no strange mishaps at the underground parking.

St John's Cathederal.  Very lovely.  Star was singing with a sadly depleted choir for the lunch time concert on Thursday.

Between school holidays & work commitments most of the performance hardened choristers were missing.  As my mother has hopscotched it to England for 6 weeks we didn't go away these hols so Star found herself holding down the thirds on her own ~ which would have been less of a problem if the newer members had not had so much stage fright.  Perhaps luckily there was a large crowd making a terrific din in the side aisle after an earlier event.

I found myself escorting the representative for the Murray Island choir that Alison has been working with & found he knew the cousins of mine who worked at Bamaga for years & years.  Small world.

Star & I were mighty pleased to be back at the jetty safely.  One way or another Brisbane was worse than usual.  Grey street sent us on a wild detour &, unusually, Star got in rather a flap.  She only just made her call time.  On the plus side I got free parking.  Then, for some strange reason, Brisbane traffic seemed determined to wipe us out yesterday.  No.  It was not Star's driving.  She did very well but she was rather upset with the bus that decided it wanted to be in her lane when she was already using the space it wanted!  Perhaps we were in his blind spot.  Perhaps he just didn't look but it was a closer call than either of us liked.

Aren't the Welcome Swallows delightful.  The nests are messy & they do like to nest under the eves along all the jetties but we get great delight in watching the chicks grow up.  These ones are nearly ready to fly & will soon join the adults that dart in & out of the oyster laden pylons of the jetty.

One day I am going to write a book called something like Experiments in Prayer ~ because that's pretty much how my prayer life goes.  It's just one long experiment.

And every so often God ups the anti.

I went for a long time when I didn't get prayer.  Seriously, I couldn't imagine God wanting to listen to a long dull list of grubby little sins & an equally long dull list of all the things I wanted Him to do for me.  Surely He had better things to do, running the world & all.

I am seriously grateful to the Quaker tradition.  From it I learnt something that changed my life, changed my whole attitude to prayer, revolutionized the way I thought about prayer & what I thought I was doing.  I learnt it was possible to rest in His presence.  Nothing else.  I didn't have to say a word.  I didn't have to feel guilty for all the things I should have done but hadn't, nor yet for all the things I'd done that I wished I hadn't.  I think it's why I love this song so much.  In His presence everything else dwindles to insignificance & from His presence true prayer rises up unbidden: prayers of love & adoration; prayers of supplication & intercession; prayers of gratitude.

When I began preaching prayer was my lifeline.  My prayer has always been What do you want me to say to your people?  I've got pretty het when God's been a little slow by my reckoning on giving me His answer but He's never failed to come through.

And with so many Christians in the house I sort of took it for granted that everyone had a different gift mix: Liddy, evangelist/missionary; Dearest Intercessor/administrator; Dino, evangelist/....?[I don't want to say yet because even Dino doesn't have the fullness of this picture yet!]; Me ~ well, I'm the visionary.  The rest try hard to keep my feet partially on the ground but you know how it is....

I don't like stepping on other people's lines.  I don't like crossing boundaries.  I don't like poaching on another's *territory*.  Consequentially I know very little about lots of things that fall outside my gift mix.  That includes prayer.  I know about resting in His presence.  I know about the Prayer of Tears. I know about getting Words of Knowledge & something of the prophetic but intercession has always been Dearest's bunny.  It is a rare gift for a man.  Nearly all the intercessors I know are women & because of that I think the gift works differently for Dearest than it does for women.  Just my thinks.  I could be wrong.  I often am.  And it's pretty much why I've never wanted this particular gift.  I'd heard the stories.

Anyway [yes, this long rambling post does have a point] last Sunday night I shut down the house, collected my cats & headed up the stairs to bed.  It was pretty late because it had been a biggish day & I was still pretty wired, still sensing the anointing from church, & I was pretty sure I was going to have trouble sleeping so I wanted to be sure my body was screaming for rest ~ which I can assure you it was! ☺

And the Spirit started at me!

At bedtime.

Ok.  Not happy, Jan, but if you want me to pray then pray I will.  Not that He cared to fill me in about what I was to pray for but the sense of urgency grew & grew.  If you are an experienced intercessor you will have twigged what was going on but I'm not & I didn't.  I fumbled round & fumbled round all the while a growing sense of urgency & desperation blossomed.

The next thing the thrum of a helicopter began ~ a not unusual occurrence as medical helicopters are used regularly to airlift patients to hospital but this was the heavy woomp~woomp~woomp of the big Search & Rescue helicopters & I knew whatever I was praying for was to do with the helicopter. A little while later it came straight overhead, ,just skimming the treetops, both search lights blazing across the sky & began the methodical quartering of the terrain that means they are looking for something ~ or someone..

I continued to pray for maybe another 3/4 of an hour then as suddenly as it began the sense of urgency stopped. I rolled over & went to sleep.

This is what I was praying for.  It has distressed me no end.  And yet how much God cared for this man ~ enough to make sure there were people praying for him as he headed into eternity because I'm sure I wasn't the only one.  God has more sense than that. I need to let it go but the image of drifting across a dark ocean in a still sea while hope dwindles, is finally snuffed out, & letting go to sink beneath the waves is doing my head in. Still.

The Saga of Grandma & the Jam Spoon.

 Forget Diamonds.  A girl's best friend is chocolate!

Once upon a time there was a little girl who was so good  butter wouldn't melt in her mouth ~ not. She was a very happy little girl, much like this one here, only smaller, & she liked sweet things.  She particularly liked jam.  Strawberry was good, but she would take her jam any way she could get it.

Her grandma knew this about the little girl & out of the kindness of her heart when she removed the jam spoon from its dinky little pot she handed it to the little girl to lick clean.  She made sure there was plenty of jam still on the spoon for the little girl & everyone smiled indulgently as the little girl licked & licked until that spoon was cleaner than clean.

When there was no more jam on the spoon the little girl held out the spoon to Grandma ~ & Grandma, as Grandma's do, handed the spoon back to the little girl, thinking they were playing the timeless children's game of I'll give it to you, now you give it to me.  They were not.  What the little girl had in mind was more jam!

When no jam was forthcoming the little girl took that spoon & threw it! Wham!  Right at her Grandma & got her right between the eyes, rather like David taking out Goliath.

The little girl is a big girl now & yes, she still likes licking the jam spoon ~ & the honey stick, the cake bowl, the cookie dough ... & yes, her mummy is saving this story for when the little girl has little girls of her own & they do something wicked, like trying to take out Nan~Nan with a jam spoon!