Streatham

After the harrowing experience yesterday I slept in and then decided to stay in today :D Catch up on some journaling and write the blog post Croydon!

In my quiet time I am reading Jesus Calling by Sarah Young. Today's reading was about staying focused on Him in the day-to-day/moment-by-moment. The realization that He is enveloping me with peace and love. I have a quote from Ben Talmadge of Grace Church in the front of my Bible, it reads: "Never think you are unloved, for you are loved with a love that is backed by a power you can't understand!" Thank you, Jesus for loving me.

When Kate and Phillip got home from their respective jobs we had a lovely meal. Stir fry and noodles! Absolutely delic(ous)!

Well tonight was amAzing! I had the opportunity to visit a local cell group in Streatham made up of believer's from three different churches!

Kate drove me to Streatham - so much better than trying to figure out the bus or Tube ;) We had a fabulous time. I have a short seven minute DVD that I share and then my testimony/work in Haiti and then questions. What never fails to amaze me is that each time I share God impresses something different on my heart to bring out. And how each group is then blessed by it, like in Wales when I shared about not fitting in during high school and the flutist came up afterwards and said how helpful that was to her because she is 'not from around here' - she is English and had moved to Wales.

But I am just as amazed at how this is very often then turned around and brings a blessing back to me. For example tonight when I shared about failing Maternity I also spoke of having placed this burden on myself. A burden of having to be a 'good example' for my younger siblings. I have always looked up to my older brother, who is 'perfect' at just about everything and anything! and because I was the oldest daughter I felt I needed to be 'perfect' too. (Yes, I know nobody (save Christ) is perfect - probably not the right choice of words and one I don't often use to be honest.) But when the Pastor (who's home we were in) was praying over me he said this: "Thank you, LORD, for Elida sharing tonight. She mentioned that she felt a need to be perfect. Help her LORD to see that she cannot impress You, because You already think she is brilliant." Wow. I sit here and the tears form and run down my face as I think on this. I can not impress Him - no matter how hard I try. And yet, He loves me with a love I cannot understand. The love (as I wrote in my journal this morning) of Calvary.

He has brought me so far - how could I ever doubt this love? I know how - as Ann Voskamp brings out in One Thousand Gifts:

"If Satan can keep my eyes from the Word, my eyesight is too poor to read light - to fill with light. Bad eyes fill with darkness so heavy the soul aches because empty is never truly empty; empty is only a full, deepening darkness."

She brings out the idea that just as our physical eyes sometimes need glasses to see things clearly our souls eyes must look through the lens of His Word.

"To read His message in moments, I'll need to read His passion on the page;

wear the lens of the Word, to read His writing in the world.

Only the Word is the answer to rightly reading the world,

because The Word has nail-scarred hands that cup our face close,

wipe away the tears running down,

has eyes to look deep into our brimming ache, and whisper,

"I know. I know."

The passion on the page is a Person,

and the lens I wear of the Word is not abstract idea

but the eyes of the God-Man

who came and knows the pain."