Ann Hutchison
-
Advent – A Season of Longing!
Photo courtesy of lil artsy from Pexels.com Hello, Ian here from sunny Sydney. It’s summertime here and we’ve had a lovely few weeks of great sunny weather. It’s incredible how quickly the year has passed as we’re now only 2.5 weeks away from Christmas. For many of us 2022 has been a tough year, perhaps…
-
How I Read My Bible
Hello, everyone and welcome to this short series on reading the Bible. I’m excited to learn as much as I can and have the honour of kicking us off with my own Bible-reading habits. I would suggest my Bible reading is a little eclectic. I read passages from the Bible every day in some form…
-
God Works in Mysterious Ways
Photo courtesy of Cottonbro and Pexels.com Having just read Ann’s Monday post on guilt I thought I’d share a post I’ve shared a couple of times over the last 10 years. As this month, it’s my 10-year anniversary of finding this community. It was September 2012. I had always wanted to attend the American Christian…
-
Who Are We Becoming?
Photo courtesy of Pexels.com and Anderson Guerra Hello, Ian here. Fiona and I planted a lemon tree two or three years ago. And this year, we discovered we had some fruit, tiny green lemons. The yellow comes later. Gradually they grew a bit more each day, week and month. And then the colour began to…
-
Shift our Focus: A More Simple Life
Photo courtesy of Pexels.com and Scott Webb Ian from wintry Sydney here. Happy 4th of July for all my American friends. Fiona and I were reflecting the other night how ‘play’ has changed so much for our children and grandchildren. Being born in the 1960s and growing up in the 1970s, we’d spend hours and…
-
Shift our Focus – Part 4: Don’t Walk Alone
Photo courtesy of Abel Tan Jun Yang at Pexels.com Hello dear friends. Ian, from a chilly Sydney here. First day of winter and the southern part of Australia has got caught in a cold snap that’s come up from Antarctica. Brrr … This is the final part in my little series on shifting our focus…
-
Shifting our Focus: Part 3 – Slow Down
Photos courtesy of Pexels.com/ron-lach Over the past couple of months I’ve been sharing some thoughts on how we shift our focus away from our busyness and ourselves to refocus on Jesus. In my first post, we shared about meditating on Scripture and the second one in Holy Week was about the power and wonder of…
-
Holy Week: Monday – Stillness
This is one of my favourite weeks of the year. Walking with Jesus to Easter, to be reminded once again of His sacrifice for us and the hope His life, death and resurrection give us. Daily Events Years ago, I read the four Gospels to follow along with the 8 days of Holy Week, starting…
-
How do we Shift our Focus?
Photo by Italo Melo from Pexels A month ago, I wrote this post about shifting focus onto Jesus. Why do we want to focus more on Jesus? Because in discovering how to continually draw close to God, we learn how to let go of control which helps us to worry less and to love more.…
-
Shift Your Focus
Photo by Ethan Sees from Pexels Happy New Year, my friends. I know it’s now February. Wow, where did January go? But this is my first post of 2022. I’m so looking forward to this year. Where is our Focus? A new year often brings new beginnings, new hopes, new challenges. Often it simply brings…
-
Be Present – some thoughts on Advent
Photo courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net I’ve always loved December. Living in Australia, it’s summer, the end of the school year so we always had our long summer break over December/January. It’s also my birthday month and … it’s Christmas. I still recall those days approaching Christmas when the presents used to begin to pile up under…
-
Taking Refuge in God
Image courtesy of Phil_Bird at FreeDigitalPhotos.net Hi all, Ian from Sydney, Australia here once again. I’m coming off a hectic month of caring for my parents. Both have been in hospital and as lockdown restrictions eased, we’ve been able to have minimal visitation access which has been great so one or two of us can…
-
Loving when it’s hard
Image courtesy of Tina Phillips at FreeDigitalPhotos.net Ann’s most recent post has lingered in my mind for a few days and I thought I’d reflect a little more on it. If that’s okay? Ian here from a sunny Sydney. We have those between a rock and a hard place moments don’t we? As I think I’ve…
-
In the Moment
Image courtesy of tiverylucky at FreeDigitalPhotos.net Hello dear friends, Ian from sunny locked down Sydney. If you’ve followed my recent posts at the beginning of each month there’s been this consistent theme of connecting with God in the ordinariness of our day. For years, I think I often sought God in the big moments, hoping…
-
Invite the Lord into the Ordinariness of Every Day!
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net Hello, everyone. Ian from Sydney here. Last month I wrote a post on the seeking to live in the unforced rhythms of grace by taking on the Lord’s easy yoke. Increasingly, I’m discovering how important it is especially amongst the everyday stresses and strains that we all experience.…
-
The easy yoke …
Image courtesy of hin255 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net Hello, dear friends. Ian from a very chilly Sydney. I’m hoping those of you in the northern hemisphere are having lovely vacation time in warmer climes. We just finished a marvellous series from Ann on slaying giants. I was particularly grabbed by Ann’s idea of taking hold of 5…
-
Born to Be Lovers
Image courtesy of SawBear at FreeDigitalPhotos.net Hi! Ian from wintry Down Under. Love! It tends to be something we compartmentalize, don’t we? It’s how we feel about our spouse and children, our parents and there’s this industry around romance, the books and movies. Strangely, or perhaps not so, it’s actually not talked about a lot.…
-
Celebrating 15 Years! – God works in mysterious ways!
Happy 15 years dear SUMites. Ian here from Sydney, Australia. I thought I’d share how I found this community that is very dear to me. Some of you may be familiar with my story but for all of you newbies you might find it interesting how a man from Down Under stumbled across this safe…
-
It’s Okay to Doubt
Image courtesy of FAVPNG and workablequantit26 Hi Sumites, Ian here. Another Easter has passed. Ann led us through Holy Week and I thought I’d share some thoughts on one of the stories we read post Jesus’ resurrection. Thomas and his doubts When Jesus first appeared to the group of disciples in the Upper Room on…
-
“How long, Lord?”
Image courtesy of Janpen04081986 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net Hello, dear SUMites, Ian from sunny Sydney. The world was turned on its head this time last year when the first people outside of China began to be diagnosed with this new virus strain which the medical community named COVID-19. The virus soon spread exponentially (a term that became…
-
A Blessing of Peace
Image courtesy of blackzheep at FreeDigitalPhotos.net Hello, my SUMite friends. Ian, from Down Under here. I trust everyone is holding up okay under the continued stress of the global pandemic. It has sure been an unsettling time for all of us and finding ‘peace’ can be especially difficult. One of the blessings of the Beatitudes…