Among the Watering Places with Liz

"Nothing in God's Word impresses me more than the fact that God seeks men and women to whom He can say, "I am going to do certain things in you. I am going to prepare you for it, and I'm going to send you forth, and I'm going to expect you to work My works." God sends men out to do His work for Him and He expects them to do it. It is God's work, and it must be done in God's power - but it is man who must do it. Early in my Christian experience God showed me that, and the Holy Spirit laid it on my heart to try to find out how a poor sinner saved by grace was to work the works of God. The Lord is looking for men and women who will learn the secret of getting and using the equipment He has given - who know how to bring the Holy Ghost on the scene so that they can go forth and work the works of God. The world can be evangelized when God finds men and women like that. God is looking for workers who have cast their own burdens upon the Lord and have ta...

Another book I've been reading - but this one chewing it off in little pieces because the content is so personally challenging. Scott Bessenecker writes in The New Friars: The Emerging Movement Serving the World’s Poor (Downers Grove IL: IVP) not only about the grass roots modern movement, one that is not orchestrated by the institutional church , but reflects back on the examples of those saints from the monastic tradition - Franciss and Clare of Assisi, Patrick and Brigid or Ireland, the Moravians, etc. In the "Incarnational" chapter, the motivating force is the pursuit of Jesus' example in which he descended into humanity - to BE the Gospel! “But incarnation is not easy. For Faye, the glamour of a life of service among the poor, if there is such a thing, was short-lived. Her early journals betray a period of testing and complaining. Being constantly dirty, having legs peppered with bug bites, the heat, the difficulty of life without modern conveniences-all of t...

I was so delighted to read this: Charlotte Bronte once saw Queen Victoria when they happened both to be in Brussels. The author was already well known by then but the Queen passed her unknowing. CB wrote of HRH as "A little, stout, vivacious lady, very plainly dressed - not much dignity or pretension about her" ( Queen Victoria , Lytton Strachey, 107). I have long been dismayed by my own figure and demeanor and found this observation about a real queen most heartening!

"When you devalue yourself, you become overly absorbed in and with yourself, and don't have anything left over to give others." (Encounters, Australian Evangel, April 1986) I found that clip in an old book and it gave me pause for thought: How often in a day do you think negatively about yourself? When I asked myself that, I was surprised with the answer!! My little friend (sort-of niece) Gill has very positive ways of dealing with life. She has been working on a 'Happiness Project' in which she spends a whole month thinking about an aspect of her life - such as gratefulness - then she focuses on cultivating this in a variety of ways. Another is money, not just her attitude to it, but going through her finances and reorganising. The last one she spoke of dealing with was confidence . What a great idea! It is the opposite of self-absorbed navel-gazing, because the focus is outwards, not inwards. Way to go, Gillie!

The boy with the loaves and the fishes, Rebekah at the well and many others in Scripture 'did what they could.' This is all that God asks of any of us. If we bring what we have or do what we can as an act of worship to Him, it is our heart attitude that He sees and loves. The woman at Bethany who broke her alabaster flask of spikenard oil over the Lord Jesus' head was sharply criticised by others - but He said "She has done what she could" (Mark 14:3-9) How often we downgrade what we have to offer because it is small or because others may not understand our motives. But this lady still poured out her perfume and the widow still gave her mite, though neither act appeared to achieve anything much in themselves. By this I mean, the mite wasn't multiplied like the loaves and fishes and the lady with the spikenard was not elevated and rewarded as Rebekah was, but their attitudes are spoken of still as memorials to them. There are two things t...

Of course, I had a difficult pregnancy! Not only did I suffer with the dreaded high blood pressure from the very beginning, but there was also the added complication of learning to do housework for the first time. And let me tell you, learning to iron a shirt is a harrowing experience when you've already turned twenty-four! He virtually abandoned me in a strange land, the man I married did. Went and joined the Police, didn't he, then disappeared into the winds of the Welsh countryside on an Advanced Driving course, leaving me to cope with my difficult pregnancy and the washing up? He phoned me often though - I'll give him that - to see how I was coping. "It's the English summer," I told him. "I don't like it! The days are too long. The wretched birds wake up at 4 a.m. then sit in the lilac tree by my window bragging about it." (I had discovered In myself a deep-seated loathing of cuckoos. The beastly things sound exactly like their mechanical c...

We wept together, then we laughed together, my friend and me. As I left, she said "Elizabeth, you're a tonic!" Driving home with a lighter heart, I asked aloud "Lord, what's a tonic?" It was merely rhetorical. Of course I knew the answer - it's a nasty tasting liquid that's supposed to buck you up! Well, the answer came all the same and was not what I had expected. 'A tonic is the keynote, Elizabeth, the first note of a scale. If you strike the tonic, the songster can sing the whole melody in tune.' My heart soared. "Lord! You're lovely."

There was this boy. He came up to me one day after class in a Bible College where I had given a seminar talk and told me it had blessed him. He smiled at me and I was pleased. He said he had liked hearing me talk because the way I said things had been easy on his ears. He was English and young - maybe twenty. I'm middle-aged - yet he gave me something. It seems to me now that it was part of himself, for he made a lasting impression on me. I noticed how thin he was - the bones of his face so prominent. The following week, I looked out for him. I wanted to smile at him and respond to his friendliness. But I never spoke to him again. That week I found out he was dying. Hurt flooded my heart. It was like receiving news about a close friend. He went away soon after - away to die. His family in Britain wanted him home. The last time I saw him, he was laughing, cutting up a cake to share in farewell, trying to cheer up the people around him who were grieving for his sake. From the edge of...

"I felt that a minister should know God so well that when he came into someone's living room he could almost sit down quietly and open his soul in such a way that God's love in his life would create a real hunger for Reality in the souls of the other people there and lead them to God too." "...something came into my life that day which has never left. There wasn't any ringing of bells or flashing of lights or visions, but it was a deep intuitive realisation of what it is God wants from a [person], which I had never known before. And the peace which came with this understanding was not an experience in itself, but was rather a cessation of the conflict of a lifetime. I realised then that God does not want a [person's] money, nor does He primarily want their time, even the whole lifetime a young seminarian is ready to give Him. God, I realised, doesn't want your time. He wants your will ; and if you give Him your will, He'll begin to show you ...

Lord, what a change within us one short hour Spent in thy presence will prevail to make - What heavy burdens from our bosoms take, What parched grounds refresh, so with a shower! We kneel, and all around us seem to lower, We rise, and all the distant and the near Stand forth in sunny outlines, brave and clear; We kneel how weak, we rise how full to power! Why, therefore should we do ourselves this wrong, Or others - that we are not always strong; That we are ever overbourn with care; That we should ever weak or hearltes be, Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer, And joy, and strength, and courage, are with Thee?

'The secret of the will is simply this: that the Christian life must be lived in the will, not the emotions, that God regards the decisions and choices of a [person's] will as the decisions and choices of the [person themself] - no matter how [their] emotions may be. Moreover, when the principle is applied, the emotions must always capitulate to the will.' Catherine Marshall, Beyond Ourselves

A Location Church in South Africa 'The life of Jesus lived out in the life of His people - that is what perfect moral righteousness is. It is a life of integrity. It is a life governed by truth and honesty. It is a life committed to godliness. It is a life set free from selfish ambition and vested interests. It is a life liberated from the defilment of self-righteousness.' '...self-confidence and self-condemnation are both 'legal' deceptions of the flesh; obstructions which clog the fountain of God-life in us.' Ivor Hopkins, "Restore", June 1986

Daily Creed by John Grey Let me be a little kinder, Let me be a little blinder To the faults of those about me, Let me praise a little more. Let me be, when I am weary, Just a little bit more cheery; Let me serve a little better The God we would adore. Let me be a little meeker With the brother who is weaker; Let me strive a little harder To be all that I should be. Let me be more Understanding, And a little less demanding, Let me be the sort of friend That You have always been to me.

The story of a wonderful Christian man called Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, is told in the New Testament Book of Acts. Once Joseph had become a follower of 'The Way', his behaviour and attitude to life touched other believers at the very centre of their faith life. It seems he had a precious ability in the way he spoke about Jesus to make people forget their petty differences and troubles and those with big problems saw a ray of hope. The words Joseph spoke ministered 'grace' to the hearers - they were built up in their faith and spiritually refreshed. If you don't remember ever having read about Joseph before, that may be because his special talent for blessing others so impressed the Apostles that they gave him a nickname by which he was commonly called - Barnabas. It means 'Son of Encouragement' (Acts 4:36). Have you ever bemoaned the fact that you have no obvious ministry? Did it ever occur to you that you too, could be a 'Barnabas'? Barnaba...

This is Lily, a beautiful lady my sister Patsy and I met in Gulu, July 2008. She roasted us fresh groundnuts (known as gee-nuts in Uganda; they kept asking us 'Why do you call them pee-nuts?') Lily brought the nuts to the guest house where were stayed for two nights, for our breakfast - only to find we had already left for the day. She was very sharp and followed the tracks left in the muddy road by the 4x4 to the part of the village where we had gone. Yep! She found us! What a precious soul! Love must be cultivated and nurtured daily. It is nourished on tolerance and thoughtfulness, flourishing on common courtesies and mutual respect. Kindness is love in little things. And small things can make life grey or glorious, because life is largely made up of little things. Elizabeth Rowlands Charismatic Contact

Steaming green bananas for the children in the orphanage, Uganda, July 2008 'And Jehoshophat said to the King of Israel, "Please inquire for the word of the Lord today".' (1 Kgs 22:5) God speaks to us - to encourage, chasten or to teach - every day, if we are willing to listen. He has fresh bread for 'today', never the stale left-overs of yesterday. We can do more than simply acquire knowledge by understanding the message, and the Lord teaches in a gentle way - precept upon precept, line upon line, here a little, there a little. He is aware of our human frailties and unwillingness or perhaps sheer inability to take a diet of strong meat (see Isa 28: 9-10). As our Joshua leads us into our own 'Promised Land' in the spiritual sense, to possess our inheritance and to wage war against the enemy, He does so with the same careful planning revealed to Joshua son of Nun. The enemy was not driven out in one year, lest the land become desolate. 'Little by l...

Mpumalanga, South Africa, 2008 Look to this day, For it is the very life of life. In its brief course lies all the verities and realities of your existence. The glory of action, The bliss of growth, The splendour of beauty; For yesterday is but a dream And tomorrow is only a vision But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of Happiness, And every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this day.

Billboard I saw in Gulu, Uganda, 2008 "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." Matt. 6:28-29 Today is really all we have, but it is ours to use or abuse, to cherish or to waste, just as we choose. How we work with what is essentially the raw material of life will be governed by our attitudes and personal hang-ups. We may see a day as only a pebble in the ocean of a life-time, or we can look at it as though it were a rock in the foundation of, for example, a Sydney Opera House, a cathedral, even a family home or perhaps a lighthouse... It is easy to be overwhelmed by the thought of how fleeting each day is and often, how little is achieved. The trick is to see the small in its place as part of the large; the single stitch as part of the warp and woof of the finished article, each colour charefully chosen, blended, harmonised. It doesn't do to ...

Fabulous! Masterful writing. Brilliant linking of themes and subplots with all roads leading to 'Rome' - in this case, answering the question "Who is Bettina?" So clever, I could readily visualise each chapter as an episode in a TV mini series. This is Australian non-fiction at its best. The characters were well drawn and the author did not spare her mother, Bettina, quoting her as saying "I was always impossible." By the end of the book I felt some understanding of why she was like this, therefore also gained some sympathy for her. She was certainly loved by her husband and kids, which softened the edges of the portrait of her. Anyway, all horsey people are eccentric, but Bettina was also very, very interesting! As the daughter in the story, Phyllis must have found it difficult to keep a balance in the portrayal of herself, but I felt she managed well. She did so by contrasting her own love for order as opposed to Bettina's seemingly 'misman...

The primary meaning of the word 'soliloquy' (n) is the act of talking when alone or regardless of any hearers, especially in drama. ( Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary ) Mmmm! Does that make me a 'drama queen' or a 'soliloquist'? No matter. I first came across the word in my early twenties when I read The Confessions of St. Augustine . He described his writings as soliloquies and he wrote screeds! This either meant he was lonely - or - he was alone a lot because he was given to monopolising proceedings by voicing his opinion unceasingly. Sorry Augie. That finger of accusation might be turned on me one day, so I had best take care.