Transformation

Each year, our church holds an ‘Art Installation’ to which all members and attenders are invited to contribute. We are given a theme which, this year, is ‘Transforming Love’, and are encouraged to create something that depicts this, using any medium we choose. Some produce beautiful paintings, sketches or sculptures. Some make mosaics or models from all sorts of materials. Some fashion jewellery or other handcrafted item of clothing. And some. like I myself, create with words, writing poems or reflections or short stories and occasionally adding graphics of some description.

If you live anywhere near western Sydney, you are warmly invited to visit this year’s Art Installation which is currently open each weekday this week and next (2-16 October) from 9.00am -12.00 noon and 7.00pm -9.00pm, plus Saturday 9.00-12.00 and Sunday 9.00-1.00 and 5.00 to 8.30 at Parramatta Baptist Church, 84-94 Kleins Rd, Northmead NSW.

This year, as soon as I saw our theme ‘Transforming Love’, I thought of my own journey of coming to know God’s amazing love more and how I have experienced God unfolding my own wings over the years and enabling me to fly. God knew the desires of my heart, even before I myself was fully aware of them. And, just like the forgiving father in the story of the lost son in Luke 15, God welcomed me home with open arms and set me free to be more of the person I was created to be. The old has gone and the new has come, as the verse at the end of my words below states—and I am so thankful for that.

Transforming Love

Swathed in garments of guilt and shame

Hiding hurts, fearing to fail

Begging to belong, to blossom

To find a friend, to fit

Looking for love

Reaching out

Grace of God

Open arms

Found

Free

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!  2 Corinthians 5:17

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Those unexpected benefits

There are always new things to learn in life, aren’t there? At times, I hear or read of some author or composer or artist and realise I have never explored any of their work, despite how interesting it sounds. At other times, I see glimpses of intriguing places on TV I know little about. Then occasionally, I poke my head into the inner workings of my website and quickly retreat. How true it is that, the more we learn, the more we realise we don’t know!

I discovered this again recently when helping a granddaughter with her art assignment. Now, I am a writer—definitely not an artist. In fact, I know nothing about art. Granted, I was helping because of my writing experience, but one does need to know something about a topic before writing about it! And so began my journey of reading how the 16^th century artist Titian, the 20^th century artist Picasso and the present-day artist/photographer Morimura have portrayed the female form!

To my surprise, I soon became truly interested. It was fascinating to discover what certain symbols meant in their artworks and how these artists connected with issues in society. As a result, I am now keen to find out about other artists too and learn to appreciate their works more.

Then, last week, our oldest granddaughter asked my advice about her religion assignment for the Catholic teachers’ college she attends. She was simply checking she understood what she had to do, but our conversation set me thinking. This assignment involved the parable of the lost or ‘prodigal’ son—or, as some call it, the parable of the forgiving father—and one task was to explain the main theological point of this story. So, I decided to try it for myself—I was sure I could write five hundred words on the topic easily and quickly.

I turned to Luke 15—but, as I began writing, the whole profound nature of this parable Jesus told began to impact me more and more. Soon, I had to stop and reflect on it all over again. How arrogant and uncaring was that younger son, in asking his father for his inheritance then and there? Then how could he have gone off and wasted it all? In the light of all that, how could the father in the story keep watching out for him, then embrace him and welcome him home with such joy and compassion? But … I wouldn’t have been as resentful as that older son was—or would I?

As I sat there, I was overwhelmed once again with the enormity of our heavenly Father’s love for us in seeking us out, running to embrace us and welcome us into his family, as we too return home and believe in Jesus. I did nothing to deserve such compassion and forgiveness. Instead, it is all about grace—the most amazing, wonderful grace.

I did not anticipate such a profound and humbling experience that morning, as I sat thinking about our granddaughter’s assignment. Yet what a joy to be reminded in such an expected way of the incredible richness I have in God!

I too am loved. I too have come home.

… this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ Luke 15:24

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Sharing the joy

Have you noticed in this COVID time when there is so much bad news around how wonderful it is to hear good news? It can feel like soothing ointment on a raw wound or a cold, thirst-quenching drink on a boiling hot day, can’t it?

One Saturday recently, I received an excited text from a friend. She had just discovered she did not have to pay a certain bill she owed—and it was for a sizeable amount. Way back, I had read something online that suggested she might not have to and mentioned this to her. Then, as soon as she could, she investigated further and stated her case. Many enquiries, pleasant/unpleasant phone calls and requests for various documents followed, but my friend is determined and did not give up. And finally, her perseverance had been rewarded.

She was so relieved that she could not help sharing her good news with me straight away—and I was so glad she did. At first, I could not believe that some little idea I had suggested to her way back, without much faith, had actually borne fruit. After all, I did not know much about the matter and am no expert when it comes to understanding various financial technicalities. Yet it had happened. It was true. And the fact that God had used me, even in my ignorance, to play a small part in bringing this good news to my friend added even more to my joy.

Later, as I reflected on this whole event, I could not help thinking of Jesus’ parables of the lost sheep and lost coin, where he comments how natural it is for the owners involved to want to share their joy when their search pays off:

Then he calls his friends and neighbours together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ Luke 15:6

And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbours together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin. Luke 15:9

That is exactly what my friend was doing via her text, I realised. And how wonderful it was to rejoice together and shake our heads over God’s amazing grace and provision for her!

But then I realised Jesus’ aim in telling these stories was to point out something so much more wonderful than that even:

I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents … Luke 15:7

I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents. Luke 15:10

I marvelled again then that, when I experienced the love and grace of God in my life, repented and believed in Jesus with all my heart, joy erupted in heaven. Just as Jesus taught in his parable about the lost son, there had to be a party held in heaven to celebrate the moment:

… we had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found. Luke 15:32

Wow! Just as I loved sharing in my friend’s joy, so God lovingly celebrated my new birth. What an amazing reminder of how much I matter to God—and of how much you do too!

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Second chances

‘My tomato bushes have started blooming again!’ our daughter announced recently with glee.

‘Well, I don’t think my one poor plant’s going to do anything more,’ I told her. ‘I’ll pull it out soon.’

Somehow, that ‘soon’ of mine did not happen—and just as well, because last week, when I went to check how my other pot plants had fared in the recent heat, I discovered that tomato plant had taken on a new lease of life. There it was, standing tall and proud again, its new green leaves reaching high and with several yellow flowers on display as well!

As I looked closer, I saw how some of the dead branches that had already borne juicy, little tomatoes were still there, but had shrivelled up and given way to new, strong, green ones that had emerged from the main stem. Could this be possible? I checked online—and, sure enough, I discovered there actually are tomato bushes that produce more than one crop a season. I remembered buying my plant at a nearby market, with no idea what I was actually getting, except that it was some dwarf tomato. Now I discovered I must have bought what is called an ‘indeterminate’ variety, as opposed to a ‘determinate’ one that is programmed to bloom and fruit in abundance just once a season. So it seems I can look forward again to walking out onto our balcony and picking even more of those flavoursome, little tomatoes to add to our salads from time to time!

As I thought about my rejuvenated plant, however, it seemed to me that God wanted to show me something more through it. How many times in my own life, when I felt as if I had died inside after some bad experience or deep disappointment or loss, has God drawn me close, comforted me and given me strength to go on and keep being fruitful? How many times in my life, when I felt so disgusted with myself at making some sinful choice and ignoring the Spirit’s voice within, has God picked me up, forgiven me and set my feet on solid ground again? How many times even now, each day, does God lovingly continue to encourage and inspire me when I feel I have nothing much more to give?

I love the story of the lost son Jesus told to the tax collectors and ‘sinners’ who had gathered around him, as well as the critical Pharisees and teachers of the law listening in (Luke 15). The story ends on a gently rebuking but joyous note, as the father reasons with his older son:

‘My son,’ the father said, you are always with me and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ Luke 15:31-32

Yes, when I too was dead, God gave me new life, as I was born anew through the Spirit. And now, each day, God continues with such love and grace to restore and renew me, as I seek to bear more fruit. I am so grateful for that second chance in my life—but also for that third and fourth and fifth and …

Is that how you feel too?

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Those brain fades

I could not believe it. I had just finished carefully parcelling up two books of mine a customer had purchased through my website. I checked my laptop to find out her address and wrote it clearly on the front of the parcel. I started writing my own address on the back—then stopped, horrified. Without thinking, I had begun to write our old home address. Oops!

To put a positive spin on this sad event, we have been at our new address for only around five months—which isn’t long, compared with the thirty-two years we spent at our old address! Obviously, five months is not long enough for such key pieces of information to embed themselves in my brain, ready for automatic recall.

Now I had a dilemma. Should I tear up all that good wrapping paper I had used and start over? Or should I simply cross out my silly mistake, eat humble pie, risk my new customer’s raised eyebrows and write the correct address underneath?

In the end, I chose the latter, after ruefully telling my husband what I had done.

‘Ah well,’ he said, ‘the other day, for the first time since we moved, I headed home to our old house after I finished shopping, instead of our new one!’

Hmm. I wonder what would have happened if he had tried to put his key in the door?

Yet when we still lived at our old house, I too did something similar once. As I drove home late one night along Victoria Road, thinking about all sorts of things, I suddenly realised I had gone straight past our street and was heading for Parramatta! Eventually, I managed to get back on track, but all the while, I found myself thinking, ‘How could have done that? How could I have forgotten where I was heading after all these years?’

In the natural, it’s not ideal to forget where I live or drive right past my own street. But it’s a much more serious matter when I begin to do the same in the spiritual. How often, in the busyness of life, have I failed to remember where my real home is? How often do I wander around, looking for peace and comfort in the wrong places? How often have I lost sight of who I am and where I truly belong? How often do I head in the wrong direction, oblivious to those promptings of the Spirit and so preoccupied with my own thoughts and ideas rather than God’s? Yet God is always there, arms open wide, offering us the most wonderful homecoming of all, just as Jesus showed us in the story of the lost son (Luke 15). Each day, God longs to provide the rest, peace, shelter, safety, strengthening and restoration we need—yet all too often I seem to have lost God’s address.

I wonder if, this Christmas, we all need to make it a priority to find our way back home to God, to that place where we truly belong?

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Matthew 11:28-29

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Just one little word

Recently, I had reason to think more about the great power one particular little word in our English language can wield. Yet this word seems to stick in our throats so often or is too much even to think about saying because the stakes may be too high for us.

Yes, it’s that one little word ‘sorry’.

Now it appears this is a hard word even for two-year-olds like—well, like our beautiful, little grandson Zain to say. Recently, while visiting us, he did something naughty and, as a result, his dad took him on his knee and decided Zain needed to say sorry. But no—that was not an option for our Zain. Not at all. Time after time, he sat there, shaking his head and refusing to say that one little word that would resolve the situation. Yet how could he, a two-year-old, know how to be so stubborn? What might cause him to decide he was not prepared to stoop so low as to apologise?

Now at that point, his conflict-avoidance grandmother decided to resort to bribery and offered him a lollipop if he would say sorry. But even that did not change his mind. When his dad began to eat that lollipop instead, there were great cries of anguish—but still no sorry. That lollipop began getting smaller and smaller until it had almost disappeared. Yet that little word was never said.

A few days later, out of the blue, Zain apparently said to his mum:

‘Lollipops at Nanna’s house. But I didn’t get one. I didn’t say sorry.’

Even at two, he understood what the issue was and how high the stakes were. After all, a lollipop is a big deal to a two-year-old.

But what about us when it comes to saying that little word? How mature are we about this?  In particular, what happens when we know we need to tell God we’re sorry? There’s much more than a lollipop at stake, in this case. Yet I for one, just like my grandson, so often seem to have too much pride and stubbornness to admit my faults, even to such a loving, forgiving God. On top of that, I seem to have an endless, inbuilt supply of excuses ready as to why I don’t want or need to admit to those ways I have fallen so far short of how God would want me to behave.

It doesn’t matter.

God will forgive me anyway.

It wasn’t so bad, after all.

Others have done much worse than I have.

I’m too ashamed—I don’t even want to think about.

I hope, like Zain, I will grow up one day.  I hope I wake up to myself soon and remember how important it is to keep short accounts with God. I hope I never forget the freedom God’s amazing forgiveness brings when we come before our loving Father with contrite hearts just as that prodigal son did.

How about you? Is sorry a hard word for you to say too—especially to God?

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 1 Jn 1:9

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Lost … and found

I have a friend who is very good at losing things. I had thought of basing my next novel on my friend’s exciting exploits but figure people would probably not believe the half of it!

It all started when my friend was seven. She was given a gold signet ring as a special Christmas gift—something she had long set her heart on. However, it was a little too big and one day not long after, while she was playing at the beach, it slipped off and was lost in the sand. She and others searched in vain, praying they would find it, but it was impossible. The next morning, my friend went back to the beach, no doubt a little disconsolately. She began building a sandcastle, letting the dry sand run through her fingers over the top of the castle, when lo and behold, the ring appeared! It had lain in the sand there for a whole day, even when the tide flowed in and out over it.

Years later, my friend lost a beautiful, little butterfly brooch she cherished, given to her by an older relative. More years passed, until one day when she visited a second-hand shop with a friend, she happened to see a brooch exactly the same as the one she lost. Needless to say, she bought it then and there, redeeming ‘her’ brooch for some relatively small amount. Was it perhaps the very one she lost? We will never know.

Then more recently, while my friend was moving into a new home that is situated at the top of a long, steep driveway, a ring she was wearing came off and rolled down … and down … and down … quickly disappearing from sight. Certain she would never see it again but desperate to find it, my friend slowly walked down her driveway late that night with a torch to look one more time. And then she saw it, lying right at the bottom between two rubbish bins on the footpath, gleaming in the light of her small torch! It could have disappeared in the grass anywhere along the way, rolled into two large drains nearby or bounced right across the road. Instead, it apparently rolled in a perfectly straight line as it went on its merry way down to the road below.

And then there were the gold earrings my friend’s daughter gave her. She had no idea where she could have lost them, so eventually her daughter gave her another pair. Then one day when my friend was tidying some linen in a cupboard, she found a folded over placemat. Wondering why it was folded the way it was, she investigated—and yes, there were the earrings, neatly lying just where she must have left them.

My friend well knows the meaning of rejoicing when something she has lost is found and relates very easily to the woman Jesus tells us about in Luke 15 who loses a coin. But I am sure she understands God’s heart well too for his lost children and shares in the wonderful rejoicing in heaven when one of them turns back to the Father.

… I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents (Luke 15:10).

This Christmas, let’s rejoice in our ‘found’ state as we remember our Saviour’s birth. And for those of you who still feel lost, may you too find peace and joy this Christmas as you welcome the Christ Child into your heart.

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Novels? You mean … fiction?

For the past six years, I’ve spent a lot of time writing novels.  I’ve completed five and am part way through my sixth.  So far, my first three have been published and I’m hoping that trend continues, because I truly believe in the power of a good story to impact people’s lives.  Novels can change us and the way we think, as we engage with the main characters and enter into the tragedies and triumphs they experience, agonising along with them over the choices and decisions they make along the way.  Good stories stir our emotions, moving us to reflect on our own lives and our responses to situations, I believe. 

And you know, I reckon I’m in good company in believing this.  After all, even Jesus told stories – quite a few of them, in fact.  I’m sure his stories captured his listeners’ interest, much more than a long lecture such as the other rabbis of the day may have given.  I reckon the crowds remembered his stories too – and that they made them think.  And somehow to me, stories respect the reader or the listener, taking them on a journey and giving them the opportunity to decide where they themselves ‘fit’ in it all.  For example, in Jesus’ story of the lost son of Luke 15, am I perhaps that lost son, selfishly bent on doing my own ‘thing’?  Am I the older brother, unwilling to rejoice that my kid brother has come home at last?  Could I honestly forgive like the father in the story did?  And is that how God forgives me?

Recently someone told me that for her, if a story has been imagined by the writer, then somehow it seems more possible that she could actually do the noble things she sees a character doing or choose the better path he or she might take.  A ‘true’ story might well inspire, but it’s not her story.  Do you agree with her, I wonder?

Or do you agree with the lady who some weeks ago, after hearing I was a published author, asked me sweetly what sort of books I wrote?  When I told her I wrote novels, she looked at me with an almost horrified expression and blurted out:  ‘Novels!  Did you say novels?  You mean … fiction?’

It was obvious I had succeeded in truly shocking her.  Was she perhaps among those who classify fiction as far too frivolous or escapist – as not actually … well, true?  Did she feel it’s all a bit ‘suspect’ because the characters aren’t ‘real’ people and didn’t ‘really’ do the things they are made out to do?

I’ll probably never know.  But I’ll keep on writing novels, because I believe that’s what God has called and gifted me to do.  And I’ll keep on hoping and praying that what I write will not only be enjoyable, but also make a difference in the lives of my readers.  Besides, if Jesus told stories, then that’s good enough for me.

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