Inspiration from Petra Pierre - Robertson

  Snakes and Ladders 97!   Just one more move IF I get a 3! Lord, give me a 3 a nd I'm done!    I will even take 2!   Just get me past that snake! Please do not give me 1!   Snakes Why was the snake positioned on the last leg of the journey, just before the finish line?   The journey had begun so nicely.   You were up the ladder from your first move!  Then, as soon as you started to make good progress,  the snakes just appear, all over the board, to mess things up. You had been through so much; you battled and survived; accomplished, despite the odds, in 2020.   Now, when home is just in sight, up looms a snake! Start with a ladder     End with  a snake Snakes symbolise enemies. It was a serpent (later called a snake) who beguiled Eve .   As a result of his fatal trickery, paradise was lost, toil, hardship and death stepped in and enmity was placed between humankind and snakes.     And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; H

This week's blog is based on my reflection on two pieces of writing that came at me yesterday and today: A Facebook memory and my morning devotional. Yesterday, (Dec 6, 2020), Facebook reminded me of a post I shared 5 years ago (2015) from Pinterest:   When nails grow long we cut nails, not fingers. Similarly, when misunderstandings grow up, cut your ego, not your relationship.   Ironically, my devotional reading this morning (December 7, 2020), entitled “Divisiveness” from ‘Covered with His Righteousness’ by L. Eloy Wade O. (p. 349 IAD 2010), built on that memory.   I confess, yes, I keep all my devotionals from yesteryears! According to Wade, evil spreads division and separation. Evil causes humans to separate themselves from God then from each other. This was witnessed after war when the following countries split into two: Vietnam, Africa, China, Germany, Berlin, Czechoslovakia and Korea.  He went on to shrewdly outline ongoing divisions in humanity between rich and poor, black

…I have finished my course…2 Tim 4:7 The Course   I went to bed at 3am.   I knew better. I should have done better. I had a hill to climb the following morning.   Even though it was a short enough walk, my lack of preparation and breaking of the rules would make the journey more arduous than it actually was.   I doubted I would make it to the top.  As we began the ascent, my hiking partner, earbuds in ear, chipped up the hill some distance ahead of me. Hiking partner making good progress! Music Hastily I reached for my phone; music was a good booster.   It drives movement. “If I didn't hear this song I won't make it up the hill 160/beats per minute ,”   another member of the team had   said. It hit me.   If music could do this to a tired body dragging up an arduous hill, think what music can do to the broken spirit, facing what seems to be insurmountable, uphill trials! How much more can songs of praise get you up your hilly terrain?   So put the praise on!   Pump the m

"Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;" 2 Corinthians 4:9 Compost and Ackee Tree We called it compost.  As far as I was concerned it was a sophisticated name for 'rubbish heap' because that is what it looked like. A mound of dirt on which was cast discarded biodegradable substances: skins of fruits like oranges, lime, grapefruit, watermelon, banana, pommecythere, coconut husk, leaves from the trees in the backyard and the like. They were cast there to biodegrade; a classy word for rotten. The intention was to eventually hire a tractor to remove the ‘unsightly’, albeit eruditely classified mound, so the wall may be repaired and painted, thus making the backyard more aesthetically pleasing. Rubbish Heap (oops I mean Compost) One day, while I was engaging in an uncharacteristic and first time task of raking leaves in the back yard, (a form of exercise to beat the immobility that COVID-19 and quarantine had inflicted), as I proceeded to the 

“So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. ”  Jeremiah 18:3&4 I started mixing the dough with a spoon. I didn’t want my hands to get messy.   Some use a bread maker to avoid the mess.   But in the absence of a bread maker, there comes a point when you have to place your hand in the sticky ‘mess’. Hand in the sticky mess! As I reluctantly set aside the spoon, placed my hands in the dough, and curled my fingers around the gooey lump in preparation for kneading, the startling analogy struck: as my hands are in the sticky mess, so the Potter’s hands are in the clay .   He moulds us with his hands. He is in our mess moulding, kneading, fashioning and remaking. Fingers curl around gooey mess STICKY SITUATION? Whoever is reading this, regardless of your sticky situation, He has got you.   He has got your si