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Alive! Death could not keep Him, the grave had no power, hell was defeated!

After the sombre meditations of Thursday and Friday, the main event and the reason for it all came to fruition on the third day.

Today is the real birthday for all Christians, the day that Christ came to Earth for – to free us all from sins grasp and to give us an open road to our Father in Heaven.

I *love* Easter – with a passion. Something in my spirit, in my soul and in my body just leaps for joy at this time of year. I know that I have a future, there is a great eternity for me all because of Jesus breaking the stranglehold of sin and the grave.

The story is not yet over – we don’t know when the final chapter will take place – but the fact is that there is only our pride and our own minds that can get in the way of us knowing Gods Love.

I rediscovered it 3 years ago, and there’s not a day goes by where I don’t rejoice in that fact.

My prayer is that if you haven’t discovered this joy, that you will come to know it.

JOY!
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More than one man can take

It was 24 hours that would make a day in the life of Jack Bauer seem like a cuddly fuzzy teddy bear.

It started with a dinner party with the closest friends a man could have, followed by a sing-song and a walk in a garden, then some deep soul-searching. This was then rounded off with the cruellest of betrayals along with the desertion of friends and even being denied by the closest of them all, a farcical pretence of justice, a beating to within an inch of his life, humiliation, one of the most tortuous deaths known to man, rejection by a father and a descent to hell that no man can begin to comprehend.And that was just the first 24 hours – the story wasn’t over there. Continue reading “More than one man can take”

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To all the pioneers–??????? (that’s thank you if you didn’t know!)

Forget politics, budgets, priorities, ethics, religion, race – put them all to one side for now and just think for a moment. Fifty years ago today the human race took flight and left the earths atmosphere for 108 minutes.

Major Yuri Gagarin from the USSR climbed aboard Vostok 1 and left Baikonur Cosmodrome Site No.1  in what is now Kazakhstan and headed out to become the first human to go into space.

It’s remarkable, humbling, amazing, outstanding and mind-blowing. The human spirit for adventure, for exploration, for pioneering never ceases to amaze me (and yes, I know there are cynics who will say that this was just about the US and the USSR trying to outdo each other) – we’ve seen it throughout all of history, let’s face it we wouldn’t be where we are today without pioneers. We see it all the time with people pushing boundaries and trying to do more, be more, find more, go further and understand more.

The Russians made it into space first, the USA made it to the moon and then the motivation and the drive to take us forward got lost. The US lost interest in moon landings and started to see how much it was costing, the Russians had lost the ultimate race and had money concerns of their own along with the struggle to match the western world for weaponry in the cold war.

Continue reading “To all the pioneers–??????? (that’s thank you if you didn’t know!)”

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Conflict, Comfort Zones and Fractured Heroes

“I need to get out of my comfort zone” or even worse “They need to get out of their comfort zones” – those phrases have always, sometimes irrationally, wound me up. The first as I’ve always found myself thinking “well do it then”, the second as it has always appeared judgemental and holier-than-thou and yet the past year or so I have found myself increasingly challenging myself with the uncomfortable. Making myself ask questions that can give me headaches.

There’s always need for caution though. I don’t want to walk the path that is lined with fluffy thought clouds and warm fuzzys, but I think there can also be a real danger in challenging yourself too much. Overthinking can lead to less faith, more logic (not necessarily more truth though!) and would probably turn me into a completely paranoid conspiracy nut who wouldn’t believe in anything – in fact I’d probably end up questioning it was raining whilst being stood outside getting soaked!

So why am I sharing these somewhat jumbled thoughts?

Continue reading “Conflict, Comfort Zones and Fractured Heroes”

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There are times…

I’m British, or English to be more precise, and even though I can’t always explain it I feel proud to be who I am and proud to be what I am. In fact I probably can’t rationalise or vocalise my sense of patriotic pride for most of the time.

I struggle with seeing how we can sometimes be amongst the worse kind of fans at sporting events, especially football. I find it hard to swallow the selfish attitudes of some areas of our society from the rich and their duck-castles to the benefits hogs who don’t get off their backsides and get jobs but instead take, take, take all the time – and both always want more and are reluctant to risk what they see as theirs by right and/or privilege.

But there are also times when I know just why I love this country, why I love being an Englishman, why I am so proud of being British.

Continue reading “There are times…”