All posts by Gwenyth

I live on the outskirts of Whangarei, the northernmost city in New Zealand. I enjoy many things, ( writing amongst them), have been married to Keith for sixty-one years, have three married daughters, nine grandchildren and seventeen great- grandchildren who are scattered in various countries. No cats and no dogs as they would cramp our life-style.. We are obviously retired, but were farming further north before moving to the town over thirty-five years ago. We attend one of the local churches across the same side of town that we live.
Daily Devotionals

The Story of Queen Esther, Part Two

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     Vashti  Deposed.

Esther 1:13-22

     We read here that the king was greatly upset by Vashti’s refusal to come to the party, and so were all his princes. They all felt that it would create a precedent where all the women in the land would go into a revolt against their husbands!                                             

They felt that if Vashti were not made an example of, that she would become a role model for all the women of the day to follow,  in disobeying  their husbands.

How much we see this today among wives who want to do their own thing, even in many cases to making their own way in life without their husbands! The things that are written in the New Testament  (and remember that these things were not authored by sour old men as some people say, but by the Living God) truly make for a happy home. When all else fails, turn to the Maker’s Handbook!

God says many things that cut right across the popular thoughts of today. Things like “women fitting in with  their husbands plans”….(Ephesians 5:22 Living Bible), that is, not taking the lead out of his hands. How much do we wives respect and praise our husbands up? Nothing makes a man feel better than to know  he is looked up to by his family (Ephesians 5:33b). Not only that, but children will follow this example as well.

One of the things that God takes notice of and appreciates more than anything else in a woman is a quiet and gentle spirit that comes from deep inside her. This is classed as being “precious” to God. Probably because God knows it doesn’t come naturally to we women!! We have to work on it and God appreciates the effort we make in this direction!  (1 Peter 3:1-4)

Vashti paid the price for her  revolt  (for whatever reason, valid or not), and was banished from being queen. Unless we treat our husbands like a king, we won’t be treated as a queen!

God’s ways  are right and lead to life,                                                                           None more so than for a wife,                                                                                      To keep our spirit calm and meek,                                                                                  Is God’s desire for us to seek!

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Daily Devotionals

The Story of Queen Esther, Part One

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Esther 1:1-12….       We are going to be following the steps of a godly girl in a heathen country, and see how she fared in facing evil head on and in doing so , was able to deliver her people…

God’s people had left Him out of their lives and had turned to follow heathen ways. Because of this, God allowed them to be taken captive to this strange land with another language and different customs. But there among the people of the king’s court, were those who had come from the land of Israel as captives, and who had risen to positions of authority.  A man called Daniel was one of these, and we  see how God intervened in his life as he lived in this place. God does not allow His plans for His people to be thwarted and He only allows evil to go so far.

         Our story starts, not with the character of the one we are going to study, but with a vastly different type of woman!   

The scene is set  in the opulence of an Eastern king’s court.     The splendours and splurgings of King Ahasuerus are graphically described in this chapter. The beauty of his palace and the richness  and length of  his feast is beyond our imagination.  He  called together all his officials and princes and put on a tremendous banquet for them. After that was over, he then put on another feast which was supplied with wine in abundance.

At the same time, Queen Vashti put on a feast for the  women of the court. After a whole week of feasting and drinking had gone on, the king decided to call for the queen to come and show her beauty to the men of the court. There are several ways that we can look at Vashti’s reaction to this royal command…..she may have arrogantly refused the king’s command or it may have been from the modesty of not appearing before a drunken crowd of men. Whatever it was, she refused the king’s command and paid for it dearly.

Vashti the queen refused to bring,                                                                          Her homage to her lord and king;                                                                          Whate’er her reason, we do not know,                                                                  The king then said she had to go!

Random Devotional Thoughts

Thoughts from PROVERBS  ONE….(v.1-6)

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PROVERBS  ONE….(v.1-6)

Verses 1-6                                          James 1:5

             Solomon was the wisest man who  ever lived. His wisdom was a special gift from God, bestowed on him at his request. But knowledge alone was not enough….. it had to go along with  knowing God and obedience  to Him.

So we see that Solomon’s great desire was to pass onto his sons the wisdom that God had given to him. But the wisdom that he had would do no-one any good unless they were willing to receive it, to know it, and to perceive it…. in other words, take it and use it!

God’s wisdom gives prudence to the simple….. do you feel as though you don’t have enough brains to understand God’s truths? Have you ever asked Him to give you the wisdom you lack? James says that we don’t have because we don’t ask! These things don’t just fall into our laps with no effort on our part….. there is no such thing as instant spirituality!

Salvation is instant, but God’s WISDOM only comes with a conscious effort on our part…. asking and seeking, and then obeying and doing it. The first steps in being wise are to listen and seek to increase one’s knowledge in the things of God.

If you take one step towards your  God.                                                                   He will take more than you’ve ever trod                                                               Read His Word,  obey its way,                                                                                    And walk in it from day to day.

Grandma's Stories, Stories for Teens

Wonderful Glass!

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Glass is wonderful stuff! 

“Oh, yuk!” Bobby exclaimed as he pulled a glass jar out of the fish pond.

“What ever are you doing with that?” Mum asked.

“Ooh, it’s yukky!” Betty said as she came in on the act.

“You’d better go and clean it out and wash it,” Mum said, “And make sure you do it properly with plenty of water and detergent” she called after him as he trudged off with it.

Later on she went inside and said, “How well did you get that jar clean, Bobby?”

He pointed to a sparkling jar on the bench. “Look how nice and clean it is now!” he said proudly.

“You’ve made a really good job of that Bobby”, she said, “I couldn’t have done better myself!”

“Do you know what that reminds me of?” Uncle Jeff asked from the depths of his armchair where he was sitting, “It just shows that no matter how dirty we let our lives get with being mean and nasty, God can still clean us up if we ask Him to. But we have to really mean it for Him to do it.”

“It didn’t get really shiny until Bobby used the detergent”, Betty said.

“No, that’s just like us trying to clean our own selves up,” Uncle Jeff said, “It doesn’t last and we never get to being sparkly and shiny. It’s as though the Lord Jesus uses the detergent of His Word on us and then we are just like brand new again.”

“Doesn’t the Bible say something about it being like washed by the Word?” Sarah asked as she came in and heard what they were saying.

“Yes, it does. And just as that glass will get dirty again, it will need to be washed again and again, but the actual glass is still shiny underneath it all. We just have to ask God to clean us up each time we do or say something that is wrong,” agreed Uncle Jeff.

“Yes, that’s right,” Mum said, “Glass is a wonderful thing and it is lovely to see it so shiny and clean again. Thanks Bobby!”

 

 

 

Random Devotional Thoughts
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   The  mandarins on our trees are just about finished, and I was peeling one of the last  the other morning. It was firm and round with a beautiful sheen to it, and  looked to be a perfect specimen. But as the skin was being peeled back. I could see a small black patch deep inside the fruit. This was going to spoil the whole thing, as each segment had a tinge of the black on it. The mandarin was unfit to eat, and I had to throw it out.

How often we are like this mandarin! We put on  good clothes to go to church and sit there listening to the sermon, but inside we may be day dreaming miles away, or perhaps we have some resentment against someone else and are secretly seething about it. Afterwards, our friends greet us by saying, “How are you?” and we reply by saying with  bright smile, “Fine, thanks!”

Everything appears to be great, but we know deep down that it isn’t. We aren’t fine at all. We are like that mandarin, and that patch of resentment inside taints every part of our life. We dodge that person when we see them in the street; we can’t say anything nice about them and perhaps start a whispering campaign about them.

For that mandarin to become edible, a lot of it had to be cut away. It hurts us when the bad stuff gets cut out, but until it does, we are useless to God and man. Jesus Christ could see right inside the hearts and minds of the priests of His day, and He told them they were hypocrites, saying one thing and doing another. Don’t let’s be like this; remember that He can see right inside us too.

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Grandma's Stories, Stories for Teens

Why do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

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  People often ask this question….it just seems that life isn’t fair!! We do the best we can and then things go wrong for us!

The Bible tells us about a man like this, a good man who did the best he could and then he lost everything. It also gives us a picture of why this happened which will help us to see things differently when things go wrong or us too.

If we turn to the Bible and look at Job chapter one, verse one, we read….”there was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was perfect and upright, one who feared (respected and reverenced) God and who hated evil.”

So we see that Job always did his best and as we read down the chapter, we see the things that he did for himself and for his family. Let’s turn it into a story……

One day, God’s team of angels came to report to Him. God noticed a shiny, glistening, sneaky looking one among them who  didn’t usually come, and recognised him instantly.

“Where have you come from, Satan?” He asked.

“I’ve been walking up and down all over the place,” Satan replied shiftily.

“Have you seen any person as good as My servant Job is?”, God asked, “No-one else is as good in the whole world as he is….he loves Me and hates everything evil! He makes me an offering every day, not only for himself but also for his family.”

“Ho”, sneered Satan looking at God, ” No wonder he is so good! You look after him on every side, and have given him all he’s got! I bet if you took it all away from him it’d be a different story! He would curse You to Your face if that happened!!”

God knew His man, and He knew He could trust Job to do the right thing.

“OK,” He said to Satan, “We’ll see. I’m allowing you to take away everything that he has. I know he will stand firm for Me.”

Satan chuckled gleefully. ” I’ll make him sorry for following God’s ways. I can beat him!”

So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.                                  The next day, Job got up early as he usually did, and made the morning sacrifice for himself and his wife. Then he made another sacrifice to cover each of his children. As he did this, he prayed for each of them, as he did every day. “Lord”, he said, “Please help the boys to stand firm for you; help them to resist temptations, and always be helpful  to their mother and sisters. I pray for the girls, Lord that they will not be vain with how they look, but that they will try their best to be beautiful with their minds and their speech.”

Job knew that his eldest son was putting on a party that day for his brothers and sisters, and he hoped that everything would go well for them all. While he was sitting there after breakfast thinking about them, he saw one of his servants rushing up the path. He could tell something was wrong.

“What’s the matter?” he called out as the man got close enough to hear.

“We were out in the field ploughing with the bullocks and the donkeys were there beside them when a marauding tribe from over the hill came and rounded them up, killing all the herdsmen, and I’m the only one who got away!”

With that, he fell down on the ground panting with the run, and fright at what he had seen.

The man had hardly finished telling Job this when another servant came panting up. “Oh!,” he said, “There was a massive lightning storm over the paddock where the sheep were, and they have all been struck dead as well as the other servants there. I’m the only one who managed to get away to tell you!”

A third servant came panting in from another direction and said, “The Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yes, and killed the servants with swords; and I only am escaped alone to tell you.”

Job hardly had time to take all this in when another servant came rushing in from the direction of the oldest boy’s house.

“Oh, oh,” he wailed when he saw Job, “Your sons and your daughters were eating their meal and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house when there was a terrific gust of wind rushing in from the desert like a tornado, and the roof was lifted off and the whole thing collapsed on everyone else in the house, and they are all dead! I’m the only one to  escape and tell you!”

Job had been sitting down all this time, and now he stood up and tore his long robe off his shoulders. He went inside and shaved the hair all off his head to show how upset he was.

His wife and servants wondered how he would cope with all this bad news and the disasters that had happened. But he didn’t curse or swear, or even complain. It didn’t even enter his head to ask God why this had all happened.

Instead, he got down on his knees and prayed in front of everyone left in his house, and said, ” I was born naked with nothing, and I will go back to God the same way, with nothing. The LORD gave me these things, and the LORD has taken them away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”

In all these disasters Job didn’t sin or complain and blame God foolishly. I wonder how we would act if this happened to us?

 

 

Grandma's Stories, Stories for Littlies

Feeding the Birds

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 Bobby was watching while Mum put some bread in the bird feeder. He always loved watching how the little birds tried to take their bit of bread while the bigger ones were scrapping among themselves. There were the bigger mynahs that strutted around on the lawn, trying to grab some of the crumbs that fell from the sparrows’ beaks. They looked important as the puffed their chests out and strutted along. Then there were the small silver eyes that hopped here and there, quickly grabbing a piece of bread while the other birds were fighting amongst themselves. He laughed as he watched a cheeky sparrow chasing the other birds and then quickly hopping back to his spot by the feeder. Meantime, some of the other birds were spending all their time chasing the others away.

“Look Mum,” he called out to his mother as she came inside again, “Some of those birds are so greedy! They spend all their time chasing the others away and then miss out themselves!”

“That’s right Bobby,” Mum said, “What does that remind you of?”

“Well”, he said slowly, “I s’pose it shows that when we are too mean to share our things, we are the ones who miss out in the long run!”

“That’s exactly it”, Mum said, “Do you remember when Sarah wouldn’t let you others play with her new skates when she first got them? She was so busy hanging onto them, that she ended up having a really miserable day. If she had only shared them with everyone, you would all have soon found out that they only fitted her feet properly, and it was no use wanting to play with them. But she didn’t let you, and so you all still wanted to play with them. It was all for nothing!”

“Ye-e-es, I remember,” Bobby said, “Even Betty wanted to play with them and they were miles too big for her to put on.”

He started watching the birds again. “Look Mum!” he cried out, “There’s a different one there, it’s got a bit of red on its head!”

“That’s a chaffinch” Mum said, “You don’t see many of them around the place. See how pretty it is. They are all so beautiful, it’s amazing how God has made them all different and they stay that way. A sparrow always baby sparrows and a blackbird always has baby blackbirds. Everything that God makes is perfect and they all do as he says.”

“Yes, Mum,” Bobby said thoughtfully, “I guess that’s how God wants us to all be too isn’t it. “

    Betty ran down the path just then and the birds all scattered. “Mum, Mum,” she cried as she came inside puffing, “I just saw  a great big bird up on the power lines. It had a white chest and dark green on its back, and it didn’t take any notice of me when I came under it!”

“That’s a wood pigeon,” Mum said, “There aren’t many left around here now, and they are very special birds that God has given us to enjoy. Make sure you don’t frighten them. See the little birds here that are eating out of the bird feeder!”

Betty turned around and looked out the window. Sure enough, the little sparrows and silver eyes were back again.

“They are cute, but that big one was just something!” she said as she went to the frig to get a drink.

Daily Devotionals

Devotional Thoughts from Proverbs

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PROVERBS  ONE…. (v.20-33)

Verses 1:20-33                                    John 3:36       

This is a serious warning indeed! The wisdom of God calls out to every person to “TAKE HEED!” “LISTEN!”  “ACT NOW!”

What could be more plain than the warning above? Those who respond to it are wise; those who don’t are foolish, scorners and simpletons! God has done everything in His power to save people from their sins…..all they have to do is to tell Him they accept His invitation or else suffer the consequences. Those who don’t believe the Son of God, will not see life, but God’s wrath (anger) will stay with them for ever, so our verse from John says. Just as a child who disobeys and gets burned in touching a hot stove, so the soul who disobeys God will suffer the fires of God’s wrath for ever.

God says, “I called you and you wouldn’t listen…..you’ve ignored me continually and despised My Word while there was time, and why should I hear you now?” Why indeed? The principle of cause and effect works just the same for a believer as for a non-believer in enjoying the peace of God…..if a believer obeys God’s word, he will reap the fruit of the Spirit ( love, joy, peace etc.); if he sows to the flesh, he will reap the consequences of  that life style (which includes lack of peace and joy)

The soul who ignores His God’s sweet call,

Will reap results of man’s hard fall;

 To respond will bring God’s great rewards,

Of love and peace which He  affords.