Blogspot - personal update

23RD April

I have been finding that I have been depending more and more on the TV to pass the evenings, so I asked our pastor if he could recommend some books I might find helpful. The first had a wonderful title, ‘The Happy Christian.’ Surely just what I needed? But no. Some of you will have already read of how God healed my broken heart by repeating his promises to me. ‘I am delighting myself in the Lord, and he is giving me the desires of my heart.’ 

Instead of sending my Mr. Right back to me, or one even better, God gave me a wonderful joy and contentment in my singleness until, when eventually Joel, my Mr. Right came along, we were able to enjoy more than 20 fruitful years together before I was able again to renounceself-pityand again declare, ‘I am delighting myself in the Lord and He is giving me the desire of my heart‘From supporting Joel in his pastoral ministry, and then his support of mewhen God called me to write, -yes, and the joy I have received as I have shared with the planting of Grace community church.

But what is my problem? Where has my happy Christian gone? 4 years ago, I was weeping bitterly when I found they had dragged me back from the gates of heaven. I had lived independently until then. I had thought I was ripe for heaven, but evidently not. 

I have been 3 years now in a Care home, where Joel and I used to come in to take a service. Now I have a different role, but God has not left me. I am still delighting myself in the Lord, and he is still giving me the desires of my heart. I have put away my ‘Happy Christian’ book, and now I am finding deep comfort from another, which our wise Pastor has also loaned to me, ‘Invest your suffering.’I am so grateful for those who still have the patience to continue to help me to write my blogspot as well as those wonderful friends who refuse to let me give up, and most of all for such a wonderful Saviour who has promised never to leave me or forsake me.

Children of the City - Part 3

Continuing the story - Children of the City

It took a while for the dust to settle and for Judah to realise how he and his friend had been so miraculously delivered from having become an offering to the god/ gods of the Ninevites. But where were they? And who had been busy caring for him and his companion? Bowls of stew had been placed nearby, and he could hear a chatter of children’s voices.

Every now and again they were aware of falling masonry, but they were protected by an overhanging shelf where these homeless children seemed to have found a refuge. Nobody seemed to be in pursuit of them now.

Judah and his friend were content to be fed and cared for by these friends of the ruins of Nineveh but little by little they regained their confidence and began to explore their surroundings, taking care to keep out of sight. But one evening, Judah was arrested by hearing a conversation that was in clear Hebrew, his own mother tongue.

Signalling to his friend, they crept closer but the summons must have been to call the lads indoors and the refugees knew they needed to scurry back to their own bolt hole, but not for too long.

Who were these speakers of Hebrew who were surviving within the great city of Nineveh?  Themselves still surviving through the kindness of these refugee lads, Judah and his friend returned each day to their hidden hiding place. But had they been discovered? How was it that a generous meal had been left for them each morning?

No longer having to live as scavengers, the mystery was unwrapped. First Judah and his friend
were taken to meet the lady of the house, now no longer a slave, but honoured as a beloved wife and trying to get accustomed to conversing in the language of the Ninevites.