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.
Morning Musings

How Sweet is Honey?

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Bee 1Honey is a wonderful healer in more ways than one. The venom of the bee can be mixed into honey and when a certain amount is taken each day, it can relieve the pain of arthritis. Honey is a natural sweetener, and yet with the sting added, it is a healer as well.

This reminds me of the experiences of life. Sometimes we have wonderful times with friends, family or on holiday and then shortly afterwards, there will be the sting of some disappointment. But if we allow it to, the sting can be a great teaching lesson that we can learn from, and then the healing will come later. Without it, all sweetness has no lasting effect, and will leave us with very little depth to our character. Without the bitter sweet experiences of life, our character will never be developed into what it is capable of being.

Without these times, we aren’t able to comfort others who might encounter similar things in their lives. Just as the honey with venom takes a while to work, so time will heal the sad times we may be going through right now.

Morning Musings

Curiosity Killed the Cat!

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4. Curiosity killed the cat, the old saying goes.  I grew up in a small country community where everyone knew everyone else’s business, and what they couldn’t find out, they made it up instead! So I always like to find out the whys and wheres when something unusual is seen.

This time, we had made our usual summer trek north to our holiday area, and what should we see as we came around the bend in the road near the big local river, but a house sitting on the edge of the river bank among the mangrove trees. Not only one house, but behind it was a second house! There was no real road  in to these houses, and they looked as though they had been dumped there from the river itself.

1.    Visiting friends a couple of days later, I saw a newspaper clipping about these two houses which solved the problem of how they had got there. They had been shipped on a barge from the big city over  two hundred miles south, and a description of the voyage north was given beside the picture. Their final destination was a few miles further up the river where they were going to be transported by truck the final few miles. So that solved the puzzle of the houses sitting in the mangroves on the edge of the river!

It seems strange to me, that something like this makes the news, when really it is no-one else’s business but the people who bought them, while the more important things of life that concern every single person are completely ignored. It’s obvious that these houses will be eventually lived in somewhere, but no-one is really concerned with where their soul is going to live for eternity. We make all sorts of preparations for a big trip we may be going to take overseas, but pay very little attention to the most lasting trip of all which every person is going to take eventually. Surely this is the most important thing to be curious about, and the most important trip to prepare for!

Random Devotional Thoughts

What Do You See?

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        images 2The other day we were driving along a beach frontage….the day was beautiful and the colours of the sea were brilliant and superb. Just as the road was about to leave the shore I noticed three teenage girls sitting on the edge of the stream that came out at the end of the beach. Their backs were facing that superb view and their eyes were glued to the smart phones they were each holding.

    My mind went to the story in Pilgrim’s Progress about the man confined in a room playing around in the rubbish at his feet while an angel was hovering above him holding a crown. Alas, he never looked up to see the glories above him, but just kept on with the worthless stuff around his feet. There were those three girls with their backs to the beautiful view that God had created, and not enjoying all that the beach offered in the way of swimming and playing in the surf, or even just walking along the beach scuffing their feet in the sand, but with their eyes glued to what world offers.

It does us well to take stock of ourselves, especially during this first month of the year when so many make New Year resolutions, and resolve to see the things that God wants us to enjoy.

Random Devotional Thoughts

What Are Your Seven Wonders?

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downloadThe following story came through in my mail box the other day…..maybe it has been around for a while, but it really made me think….what would my seven wonders be? I don’t think anyone could better what the girl in this story came up with. Read it and see what your choices would be…..

A teacher once asked his class to write down the seven wonders of the world. After some thought, they came up with these answers….

  1. Taj Mahal; 2. Egypt’s Great Pyramids; 3. Grand Canyon; 4. Panama Canal; 5. Empire State Building; 6. St. Peters in Rome; 7. China’s Great Wall.

As the teacher was picking the papers up he noticed that one girl was still writing and asked why she wasn’t finished yet. She replied that there were so many, she was having trouble choosing the top seven. He picked up her paper, and read out the top seven she had written …

” 1. To See; 2. To Hear; 3. To Touch; 4. To Taste; 5. To Smell; 6. To Laugh; 7. To Love.”

The room was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. The things we overlook as too simple and ordinary to mention, and take for granted every day, are truly wondrous!

The most precious things in life cannot be built by hand or bought by man…..all are blessings and gifts from God, our Creator! Let’s give Him thanks for each of them!

Morning Musings

A Joyous Christmas!

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    ANGEL1    And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord (Luke 2:10-11).

None of the characters in the Christmas story were important or famous people from other people’s point of view…in fact, they just seemed very ordinary. Elisabeth and her husband Zechariah the priest, were two older people with no children. At the other end of the spectrum was Mary, engaged to Joseph the local carpenter, young and looking forwards to what life had in store for her. Both these couples had had a visit from the angel Gabriel telling them that they would each have a miraculous child born to them. Elisabeth was too old, and Mary was not yet married, but they both accepted this news as from the Lord Himself with Whom nothing was impossible. Once Mary had ascertained how this miracle would take place for her, she humbly said, “Let it be so as the Lord has said”.

Elisabeth was already six months pregnant by the time the angel visited Mary, and after talking with him, she immediately went to visit her older cousin. We wonder what these two pregnant ladies would have said to each other! We are told some of their conversation….it was not their condition or their symptoms they spoke about. It was the babies that they were carrying. In fact, Elisabeth the older lady, deferred to Mary the younger girl, recognising the importance of the child that Mary was carrying. She referred to her as “the mother of my Lord” and said how her baby had leaped in her womb at Mary’s greeting.

Mary immediately burst into a song of praise….this was not a song of someone else’s, this was a spontaneous series of quotations from the book of Psalms that she knew off by heart, and that glorified God for what He was about to do with and through these as-yet unborn sons that she and Elisabeth  were carrying. God’s plan of salvation for mankind was about to be unfolded, and these children were to be the means of bringing great joy to the world.

 

Grandma's Stories

The Broken Vase

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VASE        Bobby   was sitting in his KidZone class listening intently to what his leader, Mr. Brooks, was saying.

“You know kids, we sometimes wonder why bad things happen in our lives”, he was saying, “It’s a bit like this. Would you like to come up here Sam, and help me show everyone what I’m talking about?”

Sam went forward, and Mr. Brooks held up a china vase. “You see this vase”, he said, “This is like us. It’s a perfectly good vase, in fact it is Mum’s vase, and she puts her flowers in it. Now, I want you to hammer this Sam, and see what happens. I’ll put it inside this bag so bits won’t fly everywhere”, and he put it into a plastic bag.

Sam picked up the hammer, and hit the bag firmly. Everyone heard the clatter as the vase broke inside it.

Mr. Brooks took it out of the bag and held it up. It was a sorry sight, broken right in half.

“Now, do you think it can be fixed at all?” he asked. Bobby put his hand up.

“Yes, Bobby”, Mr. Brooks said.

“It could be glued back together with super glue”, Bobby said..

“That’s right, it could be”, Mr. Brooks said. “But there is an even better way to do it. People in Japan have discovered a way to mend broken china with gold. It’s called ‘kitsugi’, and instead of the mended vase being tried to make look like nothing has happened, the cracks are all filled with gold and it looks like this….” and he held up another vase the same with beautiful gold lines where the cracks had been.

“Oh”, said Hayley from the back of the class, “That is so pretty!”

“You know,” said Mr. Brooks, “That’s the same with us. When we’ve made mistakes and messed things up, we try to cover up our mistakes by mending them with superglue and pretending it never happened. It looks OK, but people will still remember the wrong things you have done, like a broken vase that has been fixed. But if we take our mistakes to God and confess them to Him as a sin, He will make us be even better than if we had just tried to cover it up ourselves. The Bible says He will not only forgive us our sin, but that He will make it as though it never happened at all, just as if He has mended us with gold seams. We can learn from our mistakes then and tell others to not do the same silly things”.

“I guess I’ll have to remember that”, Bobby said as he picked his things up and stood up, “I often do silly things and make mistakes. I don’t want to go around looking as though I’ve tried to fix them up myself!”

Morning Musings

Tolerance of Others’ Rights

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Brief time at Home     I’ve been thinking about this for a while, especially since our boat was stolen from our front yard one night while we slept. We had bought this boat only ten days before, and had it parked beside the house with a chain securely fastening (we thought) the wheel of the trailer.

When we looked out the window  one morning, the yard was empty. It took a while to register, and then we wailed, “The boat isn’t there!”

There was all the fuss of contacting the police and the insurance company and all that goes with these things. The police eventually tracked it down some weeks later minus the motor, but it got me thinking.

Surely we had the right to safely park our boat on our own property and see it still there every morning! But then the man who stole it felt he had the right to take it and sell it to give him some extra money. Fortunately for us (unfortunately for him) the law of the land said our “right” over-rode his “right”.

We hear so much about being tolerant these days. Should we have been tolerant of his “right” to our property? Perhaps we should be tolerant of some things, but we can never be tolerant of blatant wrong. We cannot be tolerant of those who harm others, either physically or mentally. How far do we take these “rights”?

People are entitled to their opinions…whose opinion is more “right” than others? My adult grandson, when losing in a discussion, immediately hides behind “Well, that’s just your opinion Gran”!

I’m still thinking this one out, and came to this conclusion…unless there is an unchanging standard of what is right and wrong, there will never be an answer. For me, that standard is God’s Word, the Bible from which stems all the laws of decency and reasonableness. What is your standard?

 

 

Morning Musings

Summer 2015-16

Ship MaileNovember 29th…

Next week will herald the beginning of the Southern Hemisphere’s summer. Summer in New Zealand is the season of sun, sand and fun on the water. But our weather in these islands of New Zealand tend to be very changeable and variable. Especially in the northern part of the country. The land is long and narrow and sandwiched between two large oceans….the Pacific Ocean on the east, and the Tasman Sea on the west. This is said to be one of the roughest and most treacherous seas in the world.

Most people living in Northland have some association with the sea, if not commercially, then recreationally. When the weather is good everyone who has a boat takes to the water, and on good days, little boats dot the wide open bays as far as one can see.

My great-grandfather’s family came from an area in England that was inland and as far as we know, had never had any association with the sea. When they emigrated to New Zealand in 1861, they had a four month ocean voyage ahead of them, and then a short coastal trip from Auckland to the Bay of Islands. From then on, their lives were inextricably tied up in the sea. All travel was done by sea; all their goods were transported by coastal scows; one son became a sea captain of sailing ships, another son turned to boat building. The sea was their very life blood, and their descendents have this love of the sea in their veins.

But like a lot of things, while the sea can be a good servant if used wisely, it can be a bad master when carelessly taken for granted. Treat it carefully and it will repay you a hundred-fold, but ignore the signs and one may even pay for it with one’s life!