Advent and Christmas Journey
December 25th God is With Us Listen to the reflection here... (also available on Spotify HERE ) We build up Christmas day into such a big event, such a pinnacle of joy, that it is not at all unusual to experience fleeting moments of disappointment on such day as this. A child scrunches up their... Continue Reading →
Every miracle costs. No miracle arrives into comfortable situations, they arrive because we need them or because God planned them.
Bethlehem. It wasn’t just a location on a map. It was also a location within the long story of God’s presence with His people. And it was a location in an ancient promise.
Humility knows that all it knows is sometimes half the story, and all it sees is sometimes half the picture, and so is open to hearing more. Seeing more. Living more. With God.
This story, this moment, is the fulfilment of a promise. This is simultaneously the completion and the commencement of a plan. A moment foretold and foreshadowed as long as God's long story had been unfolding. A moment that is a line in the sand that will change every other moment from then on.
When heaven seeps into our plans, sometimes our plans are derailed and sometimes our tracks are changed in surprising ways, but always our direction becomes more than anything we could have imagined.
Sometimes saying yes to God is saying no to safety, security, and the future you'd always thought you would have.
When you hold a miracle in your arms anything is possible.
December 17th Silence to Singing Listen to the reflection here... (also available on Spotify HERE ) The silence in Elizabeth and Zechariah’s house must have felt so loud. But perhaps not as loud as Zechariah’s own thoughts as he processed the Angel Gabriel’s words. Words that left him speechless. He hadn’t believed in... Continue Reading →
When God is doing something new, the air is full of singing.
What this world truly needs is this song once sung by this insignificant teenager from Nazareth.
December 14th Strengthening Strength Listen to the reflection here... (also available on Spotify HERE ) In the beginning, in the first garden long ago, God drew close. As close as breath. And then with His breath He spoke truth into the hearts of the first human beings: Loving truth. Generous truth: ‘You are free to... Continue Reading →
December 13th Yes Listen to the reflection here... (also available on Spotify HERE ) What we say yes to forms us. One way or the other. Mary. She said yes. To God. She gave Him all she had. “I am the Lord’s servant,’ Mary answered. ‘May your word to me be fulfilled.’ Then the... Continue Reading →
In taking on skin and sinew and pulsing veins, in becoming an infant held by an inexperienced country teenager, God was declaring war on all the pretensions to power, all false kingdoms of the world.
This insignificant teenager from this nothing-town of Nazareth, she is first to hear His name spoken into earth’s round atmosphere...
There are always two stories at work. The story we see with our eyes and the deeper story of God at work...
God’s words have power within them. The power to create life…
We can live in the world our eyes can see, but it will only ever be half the picture...
It’s not more work or more money that fills the void and provides abundance, but the active presence of God...
Jesus came into the incredibly messy human story of ancient Israel, a story full of brokenness, frailty and failing. He didn’t just take on skin, light enfolding in tissued flesh, He took on a history and a story full of the foibles and flaws of a fallen, falling people...
If you run your finger over the lines of your life, what story does it tell?
This promise of a Prince of Peace begins with a people caught in the dark. Like us. Here on this spinning earth. This earth beneath our feet right here and now...
This one word: Immanuel sums up the entire story of scripture, the entire story of human existence...
December 2nd The Living Branch Listen to the reflection here... (also available on Spotify HERE ) The days were coming… but they were not there yet, and the aching pain of invasion and exile scraped across old wounds as ancient Israel strained their eyes into the distance hoping for the promise of hope. Wondering if... Continue Reading →
He ‘shall come’ . That was the promise all along. He shall come. The One to stamp on the serpents head (Genesis 3:15), the one to whom the sceptre belongs (Genesis 49:10), the one who will establish His throne in love (Isaiah 16:5). He shall come! This King. Because He has always been coming. From before all time began Jesus was on His way journeying to find us, woo us, search us out in grace...
Are you ready to push back the jingling rush and explore the true, beautiful, ancient Christmas story this Advent season? Because this little corner of the internet is about to light up and brim over with story, gifts, Christmas carols, Scripture and all the hopeful expectation this season offers. All free. All yours. In a matter of moments The Long Walk to Bethlehem will begin! But before we launch in I have a surprise for you...
One Day to Go! (and A Way to Keep Advent at the Heart of Your Home) The puppy sat whining at the fence unable to follow me, as I slipped between the fence wires into the wooded corner of our field. Resigning herself, she sat moping, nose through the fence, waiting. I was on a... Continue Reading →
Just three days until Advent begins... and I'm sitting here by the fire wishing for the same surprise we woke up to discover this time last year! This time last year the railroad tracks of our life upended in the most beautiful way. We awoke to powdery soft snow blanketing everything in brilliant white. We... Continue Reading →
The serene face of baby Jesus stared out at me from amongst the news headlines a few nights ago. His gentle face sandwiched between reports of the war in Ukraine and a UK national budget release. A Renaissance painting of the Madonna and Child that had been discovered in a garage had just sold at... Continue Reading →
It’s getting late in the day and the decent down the gentle slopes back to ordinary life has begun… Ordinary life in an extra-ordinary Kingdom.
Perhaps not so ordinary after all...
Day 39 Treasure On The Mountainside As you sit here on this mountainside, lingering one last time over Jesus’ words which we’ve explored together over these last 39 days, what has moved you? What has alarmed you? What has caused you to take a breath in wonder? As you engaged (to whatever extent you... Continue Reading →
Take a moment in the stillness and imagine yourself sitting on this Galilean hillside having spent a whole day listening, hearing, absorbing Jesus’ every word. Feel these familiar yet new teachings turn over and over like somersaults in your mind, like gentle rain on a dry heart...
In Jamaica, for many years (over a decade) we ran many programmes in inner city communities. Its a tough context and these programmes varied in effectiveness but we battled on, committed to being there and shining God’s love into these communities.
But then one day God stopped us in our tracks...
In that first garden long ago everything spoken into being by God was held together by His word. Everything existed because He willed for it to exist. We stand in this world today because He designed it so. Everything from the dawn of time has always been a delicate ecosystem held in balance by God’s word and will...
We were created to be fruitful. To bear good fruit. The first two words in our original blessing from God was…’Be fruitful’ and though this was very much connected with population growth of a people (a sign of God’s blessing) it was also connected with the proliferation of the Image of God on earth… we were to be fruitful in manifesting God’s image into the world...
Happy Palm Sunday! There is no Mountainside message today, just a day of rest. We are on the homeward stretch now, with just under a week left in our time on the mountainside. I hope this week you will find time to soak in Jesus' words as we walk through this special week together, a journey... Continue Reading →
Day 34 Good Fruit We, all of us long to feel like we are not alone in this world. Indeed the one ‘not good’ thing in all creation before the fall was for us to be alone… “The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make... Continue Reading →
Jesus came among the kingdoms of this world to found and establish a new Kingdom, the Kingdom of heaven – unique and separate and essentially spiritual, but also practical.
After teaching us how this Kingdom works throughout the Sermon on the Mount, He then showed us how to enter this new Kingdom...
Jesus was speaking to a people on this mountainside … to God’s people … to His people, Israel.
He was speaking to a people who had a strong sense of their identity, an identity formed over many years...
Our son Oliver doesn’t sleep well. He has a very creative imagination and a world full of ideas whirling in his mind. Between this and all the natural worries fuelled by moving countries and struggling to adjust, he’s very often up at night...
Sometimes I wish Jesus’ words were easier, tidier, less politically incorrect...
What we see of human beings on the outside is rarely the full picture. We see behaviours, hear words and observe actions, but each of us live inside a personal history and psyche full of doubts, fears, assumptions and emotional habits all fuelling our visible behaviours, but rarely visible to ourselves, let alone those around us...
I hope this little letter finds you resting in His presence and enjoying refreshing time with the community He has placed you in. Here is a little printable gift ... some of the most clarifying words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. See you on the mountainside tomorrow, Liz The printable PDF... Continue Reading →
One of the things that has struck me most in writing our way through the Sermon on the Mount is the generosity of God laced through it all… ‘Don’t see with stingy eyes, see with generous eyes’, ‘Love your enemy’ ‘Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.’ ‘When you give...’.
This day a few years ago I was down. Way down. Weighed down by worries and stresses and cataloguing my anxieties in a litany of self pity.
I was making pizza, rolling dough, cutting toppings, listing all the reasons why life was just too hard...
There are a lot of things in this world vying for the human heart, so many calls enticing our eyes, our time, our lives… so many convincing claims calling us to give our story over to their ‘sell’...
Day 25 Your Heavenly Father When my daughter was around eight years of age her imagination was captured by a lego set modelled on a speeder bike ridden by the young heroine from star wars. She started saving her pocket money towards it (which wasn’t very much) but also every night for several months... Continue Reading →
Memory is an interesting thing.
Many years ago I had a time that was, at the time, the most challenging season I had been through. This was not long after I had moved to Jamaica to be fully dedicated to the ministry in the inner city. I can clearly remember many of the moments that were so challenging … but just yesterday I was looking through some old notes I made at that time, and was shocked by what I had not remembered. None of my memories were false … but every single one of the challenges had ended up turning out so much better than I remembered. Some of them miraculously so...
Day 23 Look At The Birds Of The Air I don’t know what your experience of worry and anxiety is. For me, when I’m feeling anxious about something I ‘churn’. I go over things again and again in my head like I’m an out of control merry-go-round carousel going nowhere but always spinning. My... Continue Reading →
Happy Sunday! No mountainside reflections today... just a day of rest... and a gift. A poster of the 'worry' passages in the Sermon on the Mount... because we all need a little reminder sometimes. And... our family hot crossed buns recipe (for those who haven't had it before). So fun and easy to make... and... Continue Reading →
Jesus’ words on this mountainside, they sound like good advice, like a comforting mantra to live by, but Jesus isn’t giving us advice or a mantra to chant: He’s giving us eye surgery! Jesus is declaring… change the way you see! He is operating on the way we human beings view the world because we’ve been seeing it all wrong all along.
Day 21 Who Is Your Master? When Adam and Eve threw down God from the throne of their hearts that sad day long ago, when they listened to the whispering hiss of darkness and followed its lead all the way down to the "knowledge of good and evil", darkness moved in and took up residence... Continue Reading →
A single moment passes so quickly, yet can change a life forever. This moment in my adolescence has never really left me...
I have to confess. I love charity shopping. The thrill of the hunt, the thrill of discovering buried treasure. I love searching through the eclectically laden shelves of charity shops looking for that one bargain, that one thing that is useful or pretty or special in some way.
Day 18 When You Fast (Guest Post By David Campbell) ‘When you fast, do not look sombre as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your... Continue Reading →
This whole set of teachings, the Sermon on the Mount, and this whole moment of God in human flesh walking into human history … they are the dawning of a new reality...
Happy Sunday!
I hope you have a wonderful day of rest and refreshment. No mountainside meanderings today, just another little gift... a printable poster of our Lord's prayer. Enjoy!
This prayer nestles right in the heart of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount- because it is the heart pumping life to everything else. Connection with our Heavenly Father through authentic prayer is the pulsing life-giving source of our capacity to live our lives walking-out Jesus’ mountainside words...
What a strange paradox it is that the more we human beings strive towards self actualisation and a sense of personal self worth, the more it eludes our grasp. The more we fight to make ourselves feel valuable, the emptier our identity rattles...
This world that God created, this life He gave us was always brim-full with abundance and generosity, life and overflowing blessing...
Human souls have onion-layered depths that run so deep that sometimes we ourselves are not aware of what lies beneath...
Loving those who it is easy to love is easy. Anyone can do that. Even those with shaky morals love those who are in their "club", their "gang", their "crew".
But to love like God loves, now that's another matter. God's perfect love is generous love. Love that stretches past social boundaries, across the borderlines, extending love to those we wouldn't call "us", to those we see as "them"...
Sometimes this compass is so astonishingly upside down! How can it possibly point to true North? The directions we are accustomed to navigating life by dictate in our veins retaliation and revenge: From playgrounds to families to communities to government policy, when we take a hit we hit back. It’s a matter of pride, of reflex, of not looking weak, of saving face. This is simply (post the fall) how our world works. How we are programmed to think our world works...
Hello my Friend, Happy Sunday! Today is a day of rest and reflection, so no journey up the mountainside today. Just quiet space to connect with others and with God and reflect on your week in His presence awhile. And I have another gift for you: 40 Ideas to create a memorable Easter Season. 40... Continue Reading →
Today, as I write this, a young man I have known since he was in his early teens, Deron … a young man who has served as a team member in Fusion’s ministry in Trench Town … a young man with a young family … can not safely live in his own home...
We were created for trusting authentic relationships connected with threads of truth, trust and intimacy with each other and with God. In the beginning we knew where we stood and who we were as children of our heavenly Father...
God’s original plan for His creation was always faithfulness. His faithfulness mirrored by ours… like diamond-reflected-light splashing around everywhere.
But we, all of us on this earth right here and now, comprehend daily that this world is not the one He created for us. We are not the human beings He created us to be. Not fully. Not yet...
In a world that values autonomy, freedom… and rebellion, following Jesus’ commands is a radical act...
In our garden, it is now clearly visible that we have a stinging nettle problem. These weeds that 'bite' and leave a painful rash are beginning to sprawl across the surface of our garden beds. I looked into expensive weed killers, but discovered that these might also damage the flowers that are trying to grow among the nettles. The advice we have received is that the only way to deal with them is to dig them up by the root.
The nettles will grow if they are allowed to. Only our action will change this...
On moving to our new house I have discovered an underground network of stinging nettles in my garden beds. During winter, soon after we arrived here the nettles disappeared and I couldn’t see them, but now as spring has begun to arrive they have pounced and begun to fill my garden with stinging weeds that choke out other plant growth.
The issue isn’t the soil. It is what has been hiding beneath the surface of it all along...
A rest and a gift for you...
It is not just what happens to us in life, but the story through which we interpret what happens to us that matters. The story we live (often subconsciously) manifests itself in our behaviour and choices...
For just under a decade, our family lived in a small rural community on a hillside, overlooking the constantly buzzing city of Kingston, Jamaica. The brown boards of our rustic home were faintly visible from the city, but whenever we left the small one-bulb verandah light on at night, we could see it shining bravely, clearly visible from way down in the city. Light travels. Far and fast...
The message Jesus was communicating to His first hearers on that hillside under spreading skies that day (and to all of us here today, wherever we are in this world) is this: This world will have it’s challenges and we will have battles in it... but the Kingdom of God is here. Now.
Blessed are we when we navigate life with God's compass and live like we belong to a different Kingdom. Because we do...
Day 1 Ash Wednesday Blessed On this Galilean mountainside under vaulting skies Jesus begins to unfold His battle strategy for His Kingdom on earth: A people. An unlikely community of people who live their lives belonging to a different Kingdom. His. Jesus is calling a new kind of community together who are prepared to navigate... Continue Reading →
Did the grass crunch under His feet as He ascended the hillside that day? Did pebbles slide and roll between His dusty sandalled toes? Was the breeze warm against His cheek, or did it prick His skin with a chill?
I have this garden book I picked up at a charity shop a while ago, and all through winter I've been thumbing through it looking for the names of plants in my garden and what to expect to see growing there. Having only recently moved to the UK the plants are still becoming familiar to me (the difference between a plant and a weed for example!). This garden book, like a guide book tells me each month what to look for and what to expect.
A few days ago I flipped open to the chapter on March and my eyes fell on the title "Coming Alive"...
Well Christmas day has lit it's way around our spinning globe and now we wake to the sleepy remainder of Christmas week giving way to anticipation of a new year emerging. Thank you for taking time to walk through the Christmas story with me this season. For a little while this corner of the internet... Continue Reading →
There were angels, but Mary didn’t see them. There was singing, but Joseph didn’t hear it. There was dazzling light, but neither felt its blaze...
I have a silver watch that ticks on my wrist and there are days when it feels like a draining chain, hand-cuffing me to rush and hurry and breathless keeping up.
In our small life in this large world, it can feel like powerful forces in mighty places make decisions and we all fall in line, falling into the story line that they dictate, subjects subject to their script lines laid down.
December 22nd Radical Humility We hear Mary’s voice, we hear Zechariah's voice (for a while), we hear Elizabeth’s voice. Mary, Zechariah and Simeon even get a vocal solo song. But Joseph. He is silent. There are no mentions of his words. Only his actions. But his actions speak a thousand words, revealing who... Continue Reading →
There are days when life can feel like one big heaving mess. Like a game where happiness, hope and meaning stand unprotected in the Russian roulette line of fire. Aching days when sudden news cuts gaping holes in hearts, when a head spinning diagnoses alters the direction of a life, when sure plans sand-through-fingers fail, when hopes die and this world spins dizzyingly fast in directions we just didn’t see coming.
We run our lives on railway tracks of hope and expectation. We make our plans, and then build them, rail by rail, sleeper beam by sleeper beam. We weld them together in the direction of what we feel will make us happy, give us meaning, give us security, provide for our family. And we ride the rails in the direction of all our plans laid down. Lulled by the motion. Carried along.
What if your calling put you at odds with your whole world? What if God's will in you seemed like a kick in the face of all you had been told, raised in and led to believe? If you knew His call would leave you alienated and alone, estranged from your community, friends and even your family, would you still say yes? Yes to God?
When you hold a miracle in your arms anything is possible.
We all go about our lives day by day, hour by hour, the mundane shrouding the miraculous, and we forget. We forget that life itself is one unending miracle. We forget how to find joy or peace because we forget the miraculous story that we all inhabit: The long story unfolding all around us, for us and within us.
The silence in Elizabeth and Zechariah’s house must have felt so loud. But perhaps not as loud as Zechariah’s own thoughts as he processed the Angel Gabriel’s words. Words that left him speechless.
When God is doing something new, the air is full of singing...
We think our eyes are the part of us that see, but actually they’re the part that see in part.
God, once more, draws close and He speaks through His messenger to a teenager from nowhere. And she believes. She lives in the reality of God’s word. Her whole world hanging on His every word...
What we say yes to forms us. One way or the other...
King. It’s a word with baggage. We have other words with baggage, like politician, ruler, president. All these words carry stories. Stories of human failings and fallen-ness. Stories of political ambition and corruption.
December 11th His Name This insignificant teenager from this nothing town of Nazareth, she is first to hear his name spoken into earth’s round atmosphere. This name of this coming King. This name that is 'above every name’ (Philippians 2:9-11). This name full of power and light. This name of Him through whom... Continue Reading →
December 10th Two Stories This is a startling story, but not just because it begins with an angel’s visit. It’s the location where he was sent that may have raised eyebrows amongst Luke's early readers. On a surface level (the one we see with our eyes and live with our perceptions) this story could very... Continue Reading →
December 9th Speechless ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.’ Genesis 1:1-3 In the beginning... Continue Reading →
December 8th The Whole Story You can live in the world your eyes can see, but it will only ever be half the picture. Zechariah’s eyes were old. He and Elizabeth had seen an absence of things hoped for, empty arms cradling despair. And for Elizabeth, this childlessness meant shame (Luke 1:25). Their... Continue Reading →
December 7th Absence and Presence They were like Noah in righteousness but like Abraham and Sarah in childlessness. Just as God was about to do something new when he called Noah ‘righteous and blameless’ (Genesis 6:9) and just as God was about to do something new when He promised Abraham and Sarah a family,... Continue Reading →
December 6th This is the Genealogy of Jesus the Messiah Take your finger and run it across the names listed in Matthew 1:1-16, all lined up to tell you a story. Like many great figures of the Bible, Jesus' story begins with a genealogy. A genealogy was a family tree that acted as a way... Continue Reading →
December 5th Unfurling Hope If you run your finger across the round face of a sawn-off tree stump, tracing the circular path of its rings, it will tell you a story. Each line has a tale to tell, a story-line revealing years of droughts, the story of rains, the story of bushfires, the story... Continue Reading →
December 4th Prince of Peace She twists the wire around the branches, around and around and around, until all the unruly Christmas greenery finally yields and hangs submissive on the circular frame. There's an intensity to how she does this that most ten year olds don’t have. A determination. Because for this ten year old... Continue Reading →
