Pressing On

In 1 Thessalonians 1:3 (NIV) the Apostle Paul wrote "We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labour prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ." It struck me afresh how important "hope" is ... This was brought home in stark fashion this week as we saw the traumatic scenes in Japan, where thousands are still missing, but hundreds are "camping" on gymnasium floors. However they have a 'hope' that the Japanese Government or International Community have the infrastructure and resources to deal with this and that they will eventually be able to return back to what they had before. I hope there confidence is well placed. I was struggling as I remembered those millions around the world who would, if given the chance, probably trade their lives for those Japanese people living on the gymnasium floors. Again, the pictures that bombarded all of us who watched any of the Comic Rel

Another week done and a week of watching events unfold in other areas of the world that seem to have a surreal apocalyptic nature the them, having the luxury of viewing this from a distance can lead to a sense of helplessness and disconnectedness. It is encouraging to see the UK Government offering support, but I am waiting for the inevitable backlash from those who feel that we, in the UK, should not be spending any money supporting those overseas when we have such cutbacks here in the UK. I hope the Government will have the strength of conviction to press on ... a dose of perspective is what is needed at times, to stop us being inward looking! What can we do to the people of Japan? ... Pray for them of course! As for the rest of the week, which seems so mundane in comparison with the other events on the world scale!! On Monday we attended the funeral of a very special lady, Dr Helen Kennedy, who had first arrived on West African soil as a WEC missionary in 1954. What then followed w

The turmoil that is going on across the Middle East and North Africa, has dominated my thoughts and prayers this week, and has had an effect on the working week ... One knock-on effect of the crisis in Libya, is the almost 100,000 displaced people, forced out of their adopted countries due to the fighting. We spent time as a family praying for this situation and everyone around the table was asked 'what would you take if we only had one suitcase into which all we could take with us was placed?' an interesting topic of conversation. (Incidentally, throughout our time in Africa we always had an emergency bag in case we needed to evacuate quickly, so it was not quite as unusual exercise as it might have been for them.) but this is also an opportunity to give of our time and effort to support the people so deeply affected by this, so it was a real privilege to work with other Christians to bring teams together to go and support the humanitarian effort taking place on the border. Th