Shiny new car feeling

I recently crashed my car, into a silly little wooden post in a car park. And I've lived with the dent and the associated shame (yes, careless driver shame) for about 5 months. But finally this week I decided to have it 'dealt with'.... professionally. My little silver motor arrived back in near perfect condition. In fact, it had additional dents ironed out, so it's much better than prior to the actual traumatic event.

High fives all round.

But I had to pay someone to fix it. On my own, I would have made it worse. I did try to fix my grandmother's broken keyboard once - with fimo. I was actually responsible for breaking it - i dropped it the day before Christmas.... and I don't think she ever noticed that there was some squidgy black substance around the end of the casing.

Restoration is a bit of a theme in the Bible. Nehemiah weeps over his city, that the walls have been destroyed and is so moved to do something about it. Restored walls - that beautiful picture of being built up again. And relationships, and people, constantly we read about hurt and anger and suffering and brokenness. And it's this mess that God steps into and restores. God, our creator and designer, is also our restorer.

Last week a few of us got together and prayed for an end to violence against women across the world. Restored is a new alliance in the UK which seeks to bring a biblical perspective of, and to equip the church to respond to gender based violence. And the church do need to address this issue, to talk about it, because violence, whether it's physical, or pyschological, of financial, or verbal or sexual... is not how God intended his world to be. It happens behind closed doors and we might not even know it's happening. It might even happening in our churches and perhaps we'd prefer not to talk about it. But I think it is time for the church to do something. Exactly because our God cares deeply for restored relationships, because he knows about the brokenness and the hurt and the suffering in our beaten up world.

So we prayed, and actually, it was hard. Really really emotionally difficult to read the stories of women and young girls in the DRC who have been gang raped and left for dead, physically abused to the point where they know longer feel they are a woman was just heartbreaking. In this immense and brutal darkness, there are a few glimmers of hope, or reconstructive surgery, of healing both spiritual and physical. Read The Times online for the story of Panzi hospital.

I mentioned Restored in an earlier blog, their official launch is on 26th June - if you want to find out more you might be interested in their launch event. The Bringing Hope conference, organised by Faith and Freedom is in Colchester on 26 June.

I'd encourage you to go along if you're interested in knowing what the church can do about this issue. Or if you've been affected, then please do seek support. Contact the National Domestic Violence helpline. Restoring relationships is not a one-sided thing: restoration requires both victim and perpetrator to learn to live in a pattern that doesn't repeat these actions and break out of the cycle.

We all need someone to help us with our mess, our brokenness. We just can't do it on our own. As a church, we need to start talking about these things and to support those experiencing emotional, or physical harm. And as we do this, we start to bring restoration to our families, to our church, to our towns and cities. God speaks in Jeremiah 31: I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving kindness. I will build you up again and you will be rebuilt.

How awesome that we can be part of bringing a little bit of heaven to earth, with God's help.

A weekful of firsts

I've just been reflecting on my lovely commute to work that this week, there's been a very cool theme going on. So it's still spring and it's still a wee bit cold, but this week, in recognition of the consequtive days that the sun has had his hat on, I've worn my flip flops for the first time. On Saturday I went for a bike & run around Richmond park (first time for combined training). And Sunday was the first time I visited my friend, Miss Green-fingers' allotment. Which doesn't look like an allotment at all. It actually looks like Charlie Dimmock's very tidy back garden.
Lush.






...A while back, another friend, Miss Scandinavia and myself were having a good oul natter about life and music and things we love and justice and the world and shoes... probably. And out of this we both realised that we wanted somewhere to be able to share our thoughts, to develop them and hopefully come to a place of deeper understanding of how faith and life inter-connect . And so there've been many more conversations since that day, research and soul-seeking and general musings... all the while a little flicker of a light bulb burning in the recesses of our minds. And so, one day, when lunching with some lovely friends and one experienced blogger, my comfort blanket of proscrastination was whipped from me and the Reverential Cooke started this blog for me. Sometimes a little gentle persuasion is all we need...

And so...

Ladies & gentille men, I'm pleased to introduce Maid Marian of Sweden & Denmark. This is her fine blog. http://www.firstwomanstanding.blogspot.com/

She's got it going on.

I think it's a great thing when you get to be part of seeing something happen for the first time. It starts off as an idea. You share that idea with a few people, preferably your chicken soup friends, the ones who are gonna help you dream BIG. And then finally the idea is refined, tried out, tested and improved. I was hanging out with my good friend this week. And her husband has been starting to write some worship songs. Now, I'm not the most musical person but I do know what I like. And this I liked. And it's so exciting to see something in progress, at this tender stage.

It's at this point that we need to encourage. We need to feed into the process, to enhance what's good, to take what works and make it better. And gently decide what to leave to one side. In the musical world, there is a word for this. You may not be familiar with this term. I wasn't. But my friend was able to pinpoint the exact thing that this worship song needed.


'It needs some hinkydink'.


She's so right. Sometimes we all need a bit of hinkydink. And there's enough hinkydink to go around for everyone. I'm really looking forward to singing that song someday, the fully hyped hinkydinked version. It's gonna be good.

My last and final first of this week, is also an exciting one. A new Christian alliance has been launched to highlight the need to end violence against women. Gender based violence, which is often used as a weapon of war around the world is an outrage. This also incorporates abuse that is verbal, emotional, and physical. In the UK, 2 women a week die due to violence caused by their partner or ex-partner. In Russia, that statistic is 1 woman per day. Go to the Ukraine, and it's one woman every 35 minutes.

There are some non-church based organisations already out there doing brilliant stuff to raise awareness of the issue. But it's something we need to start talking about in churches. We need to pray into this, we need to make sure we're doing something about it. And this is a call for both men and women to take a stand and to speak out for and end to these horrendous acts.

The new alliance is beautifully named Restored. That's a theme of the bible. Restoration.

The website isn't quite ready for all 3 of you, so I'll post the link when it's ready to go.
In the meantime you might want to think about how how you could get involved with changing attitudes toward violence against women. Or have a look at this little video.

Take action join the UN campaign action to say no to violence against women.

Thanks for reading today. Bless you.