Pondering the Psalms - Psalm 26

Each Sunday I am going to choose a Psalm and write down some brief thoughts on  it.



Today I'm looking at Psalm 26

I'm looking at this Psalm in six parts:

V. 1-2
Who is worthy to say this to the Lord?
Do we walk in integrity?
Have we trusted without wavering?
Are we confident of having God find no fault in us when He tries us?


V. 3
The reason David says he has kept true to the Lord is firstly because God's Love is steadfast and he has recognized God's faithfulness.


V. 4-5
Secondly it is because he has kept out of evil company.


V. 6-7
Thirdly it is because he has kept about the place of the Lord, praising God and telling of His greatness.


V. 8-10
Here David expresses his love for God's House and his desire for God to accept him.

V. 11-12
Because he walks in integrity he knows he is in the right place and he is going to bless the Lord there.



3 Things stand out in this Psalm:

Questions, Relationships, Blessings.

Questions.
The first two verses bring up all the questions stated above and thinking on these questions will keep us very humble because it would be impossible to meet this standard.

Relationships.
David recognized the steadfastness and faithfulness of God that was essential in God's relationship with him.
Then David also realized that he needed to abhor evil, stay close to God, worship God, love God's House and be acceptable to God because that was essential for his relationship with God.

Blessings.
David blesses the Lord because of the fact that he is in the right place and God has looked favourably on him.

Oh that we were careful to 

consider these questions, 

grow our relationships 

and 

bless the Lord in everything.

Then we could be like David and say to God

I don't need you! - A Dose of Encouragement

I looked at something the other day and had to say to myself

"No, I can't do that.  I need Fred to be here for that."

Another day I found myself saying  

  "I need Fred to fix that."



Windows 10 was here but I was saying to myself

"I can't accept that update because I need Fred to check it out first."


Or on the phone with the kids I'm saying

"I need your father to be home to be able to do that."

"I need dad to be here long enough to be able to have a holiday."


When we were putting up the new garden shed there was one day when it was just Fred & I because our son had to work so I was continually asking Fred

"Do you need me for that bit of the shed?"


Then there are the times when I can be more independant and say

"I don't need you for that."

Often when we don't ask for help from someone it is because we don't need it.

But sometimes when we don't ask for help we do need it, we just think we don't need it.


This all got me to thinking about how dependent or independent I am and I figured out that it all depends on the situation but also depends on how I feel at times.

Sometimes I will feel like I almost want help, not just need it.
Other times I really do feel like I want to be able to do it myself and not need help from anyone.

Of course there can be a great sense of satisfaction when I can say I don't need anyone to help me, I can do it myself.

It can be hurtful too, to hear those words said to you

How many times do we hurt God when we speak and act 

as if we don't need Him?

We do need God all the time.


Yes there are times when we don't even realise we need Him because we think we can do things by ourselves but if we are truthful we know deep down that we do need Him.

We need Him for the wisdom to get through all situations.

We need Him for His hand of protection wherever we go.

We need Him for the way He loves us unconditionally.

We need Him because He is the only one that really knows and understands us.

We need Him because we are not complete without Him.


Is He always there when we need Him?

Yes!

God is always there when we need Him.

But do you know something else about God?

Do you know that He does not need us?

That's true

God does not need us!

Does it seem hurtful to us to think about that?

Well God is completely self-sufficient so He does not need us - it is a simple fact about the character of God.

However there is somethings far more joyful to dwell on instead because even though God does not need us,

He Wants Us!

Selah - Stop & Think on it!

God wants You!

God doesn't NEED us, He WANTS us!

Pondering the Psalms - Psalm 50

Each Sunday I am going to choose a Psalm and write down some brief thoughts on  it.


Today I'm looking at Psalm 50

I have picked out just a few of the verses to dwell on:


V. 5
When we became Christians we entered into a covenant with God through the sacrifice of Jesus and so we should be coming to Him remembering that He expects us to make sacrifices for Him.


V. 7
God wants His people to listen to Him because He is their God.


V. 14
The main sacrifice He desires of us is Thanksgiving.


V. 15
He wants to be glorified through us His people as others will see how He helps us.

V. 16-22
God speaks in a contrasting way to the wicked, He has not been blind to their ways.


V. 23
We are not honouring God when we do not come with thanksgiving in our hearts.
We must all put our life in order and then we will be able to glorify God, so we must come with praise & thanksgiving at all times.

There are two main aspects of our lives that are highlighted in this Psalm in verses 15 and 23.

Prayer   
God tells us to call on Him in our time of trouble so we shouldn't feel bad using this type of emergency prayer.
God will deliver us - it is a promise!   What if we hadn't called on Him?

We shall glorify Him by:

• Turning to Him
• The way He answers our cry of help
• The faith built up in our hearts through this experience.

Praise   
Obviously if we are complaining we have not got a heart of Praise and we are being disobedient to God and will not be able to bring Him glory.
Praise & Thanksgiving will also open us up being used more by God.

God wants more Prayer & Praise in our lives.

I am reminded here again of man's chief end 

or 

as we like to say these days "our purpose"

which is 

to Glorify God and Enjoy Him forever.

Simple Ribbon Storage Solution - Organising My Home

I have been trying to get a good storage solution for keeping ribbons and strings etc. for the last few years.   You would think it was easy to find a simple solution for ribbon storage but rolls of ribbon are likely to move in different positions and then the ribbon becomes loose and that annoys me.

I had been searching Pinterest and Ebay and Amazon for all the different boxes and rails that are out there to buy and to make.


Here are a few of the ideas I had found and some I actually tried.


Plastic Storage box

This is the type of plastic container that my spools of ribbon had originally been in

but they always moved about and un-wrapped in this.




The Bekvam Spice racks from Ikea 

These were recommended by various bloggers.

Screen Shot 

I could not really consider this even though they are very cheap because I did not have wall space in my study (at an easily accessible height).



Thin Dowel Rods

Many people have made up something themselves using thin dowel rods to slot the rolls of ribbon along so I considered that because maybe it would have been possible to connect to something already in the study.

I didn't really have anywhere I could use for the dowel idea.

But....

This led on to thinking if it was possible to come up with an idea to attach something from one side of my wicker & metal shelving unit underneath the shelves.


However  in the end I decided this was not a viable solution either.



Pringles Cans / Postage tubes

Some people are very creative and made ribbon containers from tubes.

And I did happen to have a few of these in the house so this was considered ....

until I decided that it was too much effort to cut it down along the length of it and then paper it or paint it or somehow to decorate it.

Plus the biggest downside to this was that some ribbon spools are quite large and I didn't have a tube wide enough and the spools I had were different diameters, so some might move around inside.



Drawers with Ribbon Cards

This also seemed to be a very popular idea but I just could not understand why.

Perhaps I was just too lazy to 

• take my ribbons off the round spools they were on,
• cut pieces of cardboard to a certain size
• then wind the ribbons round the square or rectangular pieces of card
• and place them upright in a drawer

Plus I didn't have a free drawer to do that.

(Probably could have used a box but as I said - too lazy!)

Several years ago I had seen these black and white boxes which were designed specifically for storing ribbon.

I love black & white and I love boxes and I decided I could buy a few of these and they would stack on top of each other and not take up too much space in the Craft Armoire


Well that is true enough they were easy to stack together not taking up too much room but after a few times lifting the boxes out and in to use the ribbon I had discovered there was a slight problem with them and it became an annoying problem

The wider, firmer ribbons were okay.

But...

The narrow ribbons and the wide flimsy ribbons would not stay in place.

They partly unwrap and slide back out of the slit along the long side of the box so that each time the box has to be opened and some of the ribbons slotted through again.

This is a bigger problem in another box with more of the narrower ribbons and also in the box in which I tried to keep some coloured string & cord.

So that was why I was looking for some other way to store my ribbon, however I was reluctant to have to pay very much after having already paid for these boxes.

But none of the ideas I saw were going to work for me.



Then just last week I had an idea ....

Even though many pictures I had seen showed that crafters were putting pins in their ribbons to stop the unwrapping when their spools were on shelves or on rods, I also did not want to be pinning and unpinning ribbon all the time

But ...

I could stick the ribbon instead!

Yes one of my favourite crafting things is double sided tape.

So

First I took the ribbon out of the box

Then out with the double sided tape and cut a piece the same length as the slit along the box and stick it on just below the slit

and peel off the tape

return the ribbons and press each one down against the tape.

The ribbons are held there nicely against the box and will not roll back into the box again or unwrap themselves.

Now each time I want some ribbon I can

• pull the ribbon away from the tape, 
• measure a length,
• cut the ribbon and
• press it down against the tape again.

Here is another box with the tape applied and you can see it holds the string as well.

Now I don't need to take up any more space than I already had with the boxes.

Simple Solution Found 

      

and it was basically at no extra cost and only a little bit of time involved.

FUNWORK  not  HOUSEWORK for this task definitely as this was such an easy solution.

That's not our house! - A Dose of Encouragement

Yes I know, wouldn't you think that your husband would drive you home to your own house after a long day out?

He would know your own house wouldn't he?

Well there was one day ......

Yes while we were still living in Belgium we would quite often need to use the GPS system in our car because we would be in unfamiliar locations throughout the country.

Even though we lived in a village not too far outside Brussels we were never driving in Brussels often enough to feel confident about finding our way all around it.  I could easily drive in to the Gare du Midi and pick someone up from the Eurostar and drive them back to our house okay but mostly we got the tram and metro in and out from Brussels.

So on the times that we did drive into Brussels we would mostly use the GPS to get us out of Brussels again especially because it could handle the one way street system better than we could.


So on this one day .......

We had driven (using the GPS) over to somewhere further east of Tervuren and were definitely on unfamiliar roads so coming home we decided we were tired and should just follow the directions of the GPS again instead of having to keep carefully looking at signposts when it was starting to get dark.

Fred set the GPS for home and off we went.

Somehow the journey seemed longer to get home than it had on the way out but we reckoned it was just because we were tired and looking forward to getting home and a relaxing cuppa.

Then suddenly I thought I recognised the road we were on but it was not a road near our home, it was near Kraainem which is closer to Brussels than Tervuren is.

So I thought I must have been mistaken.

Then again a little later I thought another part looked like another area but to get there would have meant we had gone north past Tervuren and I couldn't figure out how that would have happened.
No way would anyone or any GPS be silly enough to take us home to Tervuren a roundabout way to end up coming in to Tervuren from the west instead of the east.

It just didn't make sense.

And then the GPS told us we had arrived!

But I did recognize the house.

It was my friend Anne's house,  not our house.

Yes we had landed at Anne's House which was between our house and Brussels.

Screen shot of google maps

Well Fred couldn't understand how we ended up at Anne's house and not at home.

So I ask "didn't you set home on the GPS?"

He says "yeah, of course"

But I say "well if you did set home it wouldn't have gone to Anne's"

He says "well I hit for the latest place that had been used from the saved list"

So a minute later I said "a couple of weeks ago I had to use it to take Anne home from somewhere else and so Anne's house would be the last thing used from the saved list"

He says "I just assumed that home would have been the last place we used"

Thank goodness that last place used had only been 15 mins from our home; it would have been worse if we had ended up somewhere much further away.

That GPS was very useful to us when it was delivering the right information 

and taking us in the right direction so we put our trust in it, 

but when we were not careful enough to check what we were doing with it each time 

then the wrong information caused us to go 

in the wrong direction 

and end up in the wrong place.

Maybe I am just a very cautious person but I do be concerned about all the people in the limelight, on the internet, on facebook etc. that proclaim to be teachers, preachers, coaches, and leaders in the Christian community and yet what proof do we have that they are worthy of our trust and our following.

Just because someone says or writes something that sounds or looks ok can we trust it or them?

We need to be vigilant.  

If we start to listen or read more of their "wisdom" it may end up 

to be simply that, 

the wisdom of themselves 

and not the wisdom of God.

We need to be like the Bereans

We can follow blindly and end up on a route that sometimes looks familiar but ends up in a place 

that God does not intend us to be, 

a place that does not centre round His True Word, 

a place that is not in the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

But we don't need to fear that we will end up in the wrong destination if we take heed to how the Bereans behaved because then we will

Be careful 
not to jump in to trusting anyone without asking God for wisdom to know just who is worthy of our trust because we need to be sure that person is really a true disciple of God.

Be sensitive 

to a nudge from the Holy Spirit, or from a word or phrase that is used or from the fact that the Bible is not mentioned or correctly quoted and just take the time to consider "whether those things were so".

Be quick to check 

regularly in the Bible as we see or hear from others because we should want to know by comparison to God's Word "whether those things were so".

Be slow to pass on

to others what someone is writing or speaking about, even as to recommending books because we are to be true disciples and not be guilty of leading others astray too.

The Bible is the true guideline for us.

The Bible leads us to Jesus and God, it does not lead us astray; 

so it is the true guideline for us.

The Mystery of the Blue Train - Book Review

I am trying to read through the novels of Agatha Christie in the order in which they were written and write a review on each one.

  

The Mystery of The Blue Train.

1928

A Poirot Mystery.


Shelfari Description


Le Train Bleu is an elegant, leisurely means of travel, and one certainly free of intrigue.

Poirot boards Le Train Bleu, bound for the French Riviera. So does Katherine Grey, who is having her first winter out of England, after having inherited a huge sum in a most romantic manner.

While on board she meets Ruth Kettering, an American heiress bailing out from a marriage to meet her lover. The next morning, though, Ruth is found dead in her compartment, a victim of strangulation and bludgeoned almost beyond recognition. The theft of her priceless rubies, and rumors of a strange man loitering near her compartment, send Poirot on a quest to find her murderer.

My Thoughts

This is the 9th book by Agatha Christie and the 6th for her sleuth Hercule Poirot.

I must say there is a large Red Herring here in this story for avid murder mystery readers but I do not believe in plot spoilers so you will have to read the book for yourself to see what it is.


This story involves characters you think you will not like but you then may be surprised that you do like them. There are also characters that we think we will like but may not.

I did of course miss "my friend" Hastings as the confidant of Poirot in this one but Poirot did have someone to help in a different way.

I enjoyed the book, having my attention drawn to different possibilities and always the constant "but why" in my mind regarding part of the form of the murder.

The train as a venue for this murder does open up certain possibilities more unique to this story which may not be obvious at the start of our sleuth's investigation. Still remembering that Miss Christie may have Poirot as the revealer of the solution at the end of these novels but she herself does indeed slip in all the clues throughout.

 Here is a link to a list of her novels on Shelfari
Books by Agatha Christie

Pondering the Psalms - Psalm 20

Each Sunday I am going to choose a Psalm and write down some brief thoughts on  it.


Today I'm looking at Psalm 20 


I first looked at this Psalm in some depth in 2001 for a devotional time at a CEF committee meeting and then I was drawn back to it in 2004 for a devotional at a Ladies prayer meeting and yet again this week it was this Psalm I felt I wanted to go to.

Looking at this in the order of the verses:

V. 1-3
May God answer you, protect you, send you help, support you, remember your offerings, have favour on your sacrifices.

V. 4-5
May God grant your heart's desire, fulfill your plans and your petitions.

V. 6
The Psalmist knows that God will help, answer, bring salvation.

V. 7-8
Because of all this
We trust in God
We rise and stand and are not fallen down

V. 9
The Psalmist cries out to God in confidence.

This Psalm is like David proclaiming a Blessing on us and we should accept it like that.

What more could we look for  (v4)

The answer to all of our prayers  (v5)



There is something else that stands out in verses 1 & 7

The name of the Lord is so important.
The name of the Lord defends us and we must remember the name of the Lord
That is where our trust must be.

We can trust in the Name of the Lord

We can trust in the Name of the Lord.

What else does this Psalm teach us to do?

We should be like David and speak blessings on each other.
To Bless someone means to wish them every happiness by invoking divine favour upon them.

We should also Bless God.

What does it mean to Bless God?

It means we are to extol Him as Holy.

To me the focus of this Psalm is acknowledging 

the greatness of God's blessing 
to us and through us

and 

the trust we can have in His Name.

Nothing is greater than the Blessing of God