Wait!
When I decided to restart my blog, I resolved not to be driven by the need to meet a deadline, albeit set by me! It was not to be the case that a blog post would have to be written every Monday, but instead, the posts would be generated only when the Holy Spirit gave me something to say.
Nevertheless, I found myself in the past week, coming up with numerous ideas for a post but no clear reason for any of them. Then today it dawned on me that the Holy Spirit was teaching me a valuable lesson, namely that I must learn to WAIT. And waiting doesn’t come naturally to me. Once an idea comes into my head, I want to get on with plans and actions, but if I am to be totally honest with myself, often, a period of waiting and deliberating might have been a good idea, before I launched myself into some scheme or other which petered out into nothing!
It says in Isaiah 40 verse 31
“ They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not grow weary; they shall walk and not faint.”
When enthusiasm for a project gets us setting our own deadlines and objectives, it is good to take a step back and wait for God to show what he thinks of our plans. It may be that the project is in His will for us, but the timing may be wrong. Perhaps He is making us wait because we are not yet ready in knowledge or resources.
I find the words from Isaiah very reassuring because God is telling me that the waiting will be worth it. I will be refreshed and my energy restored so that when the time is right, I will have the physical, mental and spiritual strength required to carry out His will.
Sometimes, we need to BE rather than to DO, and that meets with God’s approval.
Two dresses
Within the last month I’ve bought two new summer dresses for very different family occasions.
The first dress is predominately pink, the favourite colour of our beloved daughter-in-law whose funeral was just three weeks ago. We were asked to wear bright colours which is why I bought a dress in her favourite colour. The sun shone and the huge crowd attending the crematorium, many of whom had to remain outside, were indeed festooned in every colour of the rainbow, many with a pink accessory as well. It was a celebration of a life well lived, because she was a vibrant, beautiful and talented woman, who grabbed life with both hands and gave everything she undertook, her very best endeavours, not least her five year battle with cancer.
And the second dress is blue and pink with a touch of neon orange. It sounds garish but is really very silky and sophisticated and it is for a wedding, where I will acquire another daughter-in-law. She too is vibrant, beautiful and talented and will be a stunning bride, just as my other daughter-in-law was six short years ago.
It seems strange to have two momentous family occasions so close in time but with such an enormous gulf between them in emotional terms. And yet, these events are part of the tapestry of life for most of us, although usually they don’t crop up so close together, so I will still have a sense of loss hanging over me as I celebrate with the bride and groom.
In one of my favourite worship songs, it says,
“Blessed be Your name, when the sun’s shining down on me,
When the world’s all as it should be, Blessed be Your name.”
Blessed be Your name on the road marked with suffering
When there’s pain in the offering, blessed be Your name.
You give and take away
Blessed be Your name.”
That is one of the great challenges of the Christian life, that we should accept God gives but also takes away. He doesn’t do it to cause us pain or punish us, but does it because He sees the big picture. There is great peace in knowing that, as St Paul writes in 2nd Corinthians 13:12
“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.”
Prayer
Loving Father God, Thank you for Your presence with us in all the stages and events of our lives. Thank You for supporting us in sorrow and grief and also for bringing us times of joy. You not only walk beside us in the difficult times, but carry us when we are too exhausted to continue and bring us to an oasis of Your perfect peace. Grant that we might bless Your holy name in all situations and trust You in the bad times as well as the good. Amen.
New Creations NI
‘If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation’
2 Corinthians 5:17
This verse is the inspiration for our new website. When we let Jesus into our lives, we become new in outlook, behaviour, values, relationships with others and in every way, we not just restored or refreshed, but made NEW!
Those of us selling on the New Creations NI website have experienced becoming new creations in Jesus and also, as artists and artisan crafters we bring to you our artistic creations and the profit each of us makes will go towards supporting a range of Christian ventures.
Some of use will be giving to our local church and others to specific projects and missions.
We are all based in N. Ireland and everything we sell is handmade. Some of the pieces we sell are general items like jewellery or fashion accessories, while some are overtly Christian such as home decor items with Bible verses.
We hope you like the website and would love your feedback as we develop. You will also find us on Facebook as New Creations NI.
New ventures!
Well, it’s been quite a while since I wrote a blog post but now is a good time to share some exciting news. As many of you know, I’m winding up Grandma’s Spoons as a brand. I will still make sterling silver cutlery jewellery, but only on request. I feel led to concentrate on Sea Secrets, which is the sterling silver and sea glass jewellery I make to support Open Doors U.K. and Ireland in their work with the world’s 340 million Christians.
I have a good friend, Linda, who also supports Open Doors by making amazing jewellery from recycled leather and so, it seems like a good idea to get together possibly with other local Christian artisans, to develop a website and on-line shop. At the moment, I am in the process of revamping the Grandma’s Spoons website so that it will become the website of ‘NEW CREATIONS, handcrafted Christian gifts.’ The name comes from those wonderful words in 2 Corinthians Ch.5 v.17 which says that ‘ If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation.’ All the artists involved in the site will be able to attest to the truth of this statement in their own lives.
So please watch out on Facebook and Instagram for the launch of the new website. It may take a few months to be fully operational but in the meantime, as you start your Christmas shopping, please consider buying something from Sea Secrets as 100% of the profits will go to Open Doors, and if you would like a look at Linda’s leather jewellery, you will find it on Facebook by the name, Genesis 3.
Thank you all for your support for Grandma’s Spoons. Remember, it will still be possible to have a piece of jewellery made from sterling silver cutlery, but only if you ask me. I’m happy to source pieces from particular years, or to make jewellery from your own sterling silver cutlery items. Just get in touch through the Grandma’s Spoons Facebook page which will still be active, or email me on info@grandmasspoons.com
Sunday’s coming!
And so, because it was the day of preparation for the Jewish Passover and since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there. John 19 v 42
Today, in my daily reading, the writer quoted a Japanese proverb which says,
“We can never see the sunrise by looking towards the west.”
It reminded me that earlier in the week, my husband sent a photo of Fairhead, which I took on Palm Sunday 2020, to the Spanish girlfriend of our son Joel, who hopes to visit Ireland for the first time in the summer, saying “ Beautiful sunset over Fairhead”.
The problem was, the photo was taken at sunrise and not sunset and if he had stopped to think that Fairhead lies east of Ballycastle, he would have realised that!
Sometimes in life, we are looking in the wrong direction and cannot see where God wants to direct our gaze. We look inwards at our problems and worries when God wants us to look to Him. We look at the world with all its distractions, when God wants us to focus on His Son who died for our sins.
Today, on Good Friday, it is important to look to Jesus on the cross, suffering for our sins, but God wants us to walk in the hope and joy that the resurrected Christ brings to us on Easter Sunday.
Sea Secrets
if you regularly look at my website, you will see that I’ve added a new range of jewellery called Sea Secrets, made from sea glass I find on the beach. You may have noticed that all the profits from this range of jewellery are donated to Open Doors, U.K. and Ireland, who support persecuted Christians across the world. This blog post is to tell you a little more about the story behind Sea Secrets.
I have always appreciated that as a Christian in a first world country, I have privileges that are denied many other brothers and sisters in Christ and over the years, I became involved with Christian Solidarity Worldwide as their contact for the church I attended in Glasgow, and as many people do, I donated to the work of various groups and wrote to MPs and signed petitions.
I’ve also been inspired by hearing, sometimes first hand, the testimony of Christians who have suffered brutality and yet forgive their tormentors. Clive, my husband, and I have been long time supporters of Open Doors but I have recently come to feel that donating money was rather like salving my conscience and I wanted to make a deeper commitment. Donating money wasn’t enough. I wanted a connection and I asked God to show me what I could do. I felt particularly challenged by 1 John 3:18 “My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth”.
Since I had already set up Grandma’s Spoons as an online business, I wondered how I could develop something related to that which would be dedicated entirely to supporting the work of Open Doors. I had already made a few jewellery items under the Grandma’s Spoons brand, using silver forks set with sea glass from Ballycastle’s beach and they sold, much to my surprise.
So I though I would come up with a design which I could reproduce in bulk and where all the profits would go to supporting persecuted Christians. And so began Sea Secrets jewellery.
It’s no surprise to me that my hobby is jewellery making. I’ve always loved shiny bejewelled things from an early age. As a child I loved the children’s hymn,
“When He cometh, when he cometh, to make up his jewels, All His jewels, precious jewels, His loved and His own, Like the stars of the morning, His bright crown adoring, They shall shine in their beauty, bright gems for his crown.”
Many persecuted Christians bear the outward scars of the horrors perpetrated against them, but their love for Jesus shines out of them. They are jewels in the King’s crown.
A perfect piece of sea glass has had all the jagged edges ground down by the buffeting and scouring of sand and waves, and the brash shine of the original glass has been softened to semi opaqueness by salt corrosion. No two pieces of sea glass are exactly the same. Here is a metaphor for persecuted Christians. The horrors they have endured may have been designed to grind them into nothingness, but instead the beauty of Christ is perfected in their faithful witness, and like the glass, no two of them will have exactly the same story or experience.
I’ve often wondered how I would fare if put under torture to make me renounce Jesus. Christians have always been persecuted somewhere in the world throughout history since the early church. I am in awe of all those who elect to serve as missionaries, often under cover, to support Christians in dangerous countries. They are the secret Christians and thinking of that I came up with the name Sea Secrets, the gems formed secretly in the depths of the sea wrapped in a net of silver wire, reminiscent of the nets being mended by Peter, Andrew, James and John, when Jesus called them to follow him.
I don’t see Sea Secrets as a short term fundraising project, but more a business which can grow and develop and be sustainable in its own right. The idea goes beyond selling this range of jewellery on my website. I have a vision for it to become a wholesale enterprise so that church groups can buy a minimum ten pieces for a wholesale price, which will still give a good profit to Open Doors, but then that group can add their own mark up and sell the jewellery to raise funds for any project of their own.
If you know of any church groups who may be interested in taking some Sea Secrets jewellery for their own fundraising projects, please pass on my contact details.
info@grandmasspoons.com
And don’t forget to have a browse in the Sea Secrets shop!
The lost sheep.
Luke 15 v 3-7
You may have seen pictures on Facebook of Baarack an Australian sheep who had been in the wild for five years and was weighed down with an incredible 77 lbs of fleece. He looked like a moving boulder because his wool was caked with dirt and mud and twigs and insects were embedded in it. The shearer could not get through the fleece with his normal shears but had to use special tools because the wool was so solid.
Baarack’s story made me think of the parable of the lost sheep in the gospel of Luke. Jesus tells his listeners that a good shepherd will leave the rest of the flock to go after the sheep that is lost. But why was the sheep lost? The grass may have looked sweeter further away from where the rest of the flock were grazing, or the straying sheep may have felt like exploring, but leaving the shepherd’s care was a dangerous move.
When we wander from God’s care, at first we barely notice the weight that sin is laying on us but it grows like Baarack’s fleece until it is an intolerable burden which threatens our very existence.
Baarack was near death when he was discovered. The wool was covering his eyes so he couldn’t see properly and he hadn’t fed properly for years.
If we carry our woes and sins for years, we too become weak and blind but the Good Shepherd never stops searching for us and when He finds us, He will bring us to safety and remove all the dirt and weight of sin, just like Baarack’s fleece.
A new creation
“ Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life has gone; a new life has begun.” 2 Corinthians ch 5 v 17.
Today, I decided to remake a fork pendant. Originally, I had shaped the fork tines, (or prongs), into a sort of Celtic knot, but I was never totally happy with the result. I decided that instead, I would use the tines to set a lovely piece of dichroic glass which a friend makes for me. But the first task was to untangle the Celtic knot and that required annealing the fork.
Annealing is the process of heating and cooling the silver so that it can be worked. I’ve often thought that the process of annealing silver is rather like the process God needs to use on us to help us become malleable so that He can mould us into a new shape…a new being. The submission to God’s will requires us to loose our rigidity and stubbornness rather as I require the silver to bend to the shape I desire it to be.
This fork proved to be very resistant to changing shape, and I ended up annealing it three times before I managed to unpick the knot.
Some of us are very resistant to God’s call, and He has to bring us to the place of submission many times before we relinquish our stubborn will and let Him make us a new creation in Christ.
The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."
1st Samuel Ch 16 v 7
I though today that I would share something of my faith journey with you and in doing so would also draw from my experiences of making silver cutlery into jewellery.
As you know, I use sterling silver, but the silver content is not the only thing which matters when I choose a piece to make into jewellery. Another important consideration is the way the original piece was made.
I have discovered the hard way that some extremely beautiful and intricate pieces of silver, whilst being sterling, are not strong enough to go through the procedures of heating and bending and hammering which I use to make the jewellery. That is because they were made by the process of casting, where molten silver is poured into a mould. If you look at a set of cast spoons, they will all be exactly the same as they’ve been made in the same mould. But when I work with them, they are much more likely to fracture and break than silver which has been forged, heated and hammered and worked into shape. The forged pieces are rarely as intricate as the cast ones but are much stronger and withstand all the processes I subject them to.
I was raised in a Christian home and taught about God from as soon as I could understand. My parents, grandparents and countless relatives were all members of the Salvation Army and when I was a teenager, I followed into full membership, wearing the uniform and taking part in services. I looked the part of a Christian and a good Salvationist, but once I left home in Ireland and went to university in Scotland, my faith was tested, and found wanting. I looked the part, but it was just a front. The uniform identified me as supposedly a follower of Jesus Christ, but my lifestyle didn’t and within a few years I had given up on God.
Thankfully, He has not given up on me and although it took another thirty years, He kept pursuing me, until I responded out of my own longing for Him. This time my experience was quite different and even brought personal difficulties in significant relationships. But just as the forged piece of silver is made strong by pressure, so it has been with my faith.
I do hope you see the link to the verse from Samuel at the top of this post. I looked like a Christian when I was in my teens and early twenties but once my faith was under pressure, I crumbled. But God doesn’t give up and since I gave my life to Jesus in my early fifties, every pressure and difficulty has made my faith stronger and my love for Him greater.
I do hope this helps someone who may be going through a testing time at the moment as regards their faith or lack of it. Remember if you want to respond in any way, you can email me at the email address below.