Cold and wet

Looks like we have a rather wet weekend coming up here.

Perfect baking weather. I just made a pumpkin fruit cake but forgot to take a photo of it before I cut it up and ate a piece. Disappointing. It looked very good because for once, I'd remembered to put foil on it while it was baking to stop it from overbrowning on the top.

It's not such good news for healthy eating habits though. It's the sort of weather that always makes me crave sweet stodgy food and enormous roast dinners.

It's also perfect weather for putting together a solar system diorama that's due in next week at school. We cheated and bought a kit from Lincraft so it just needs to be painted and put together. This weather is also great for putting speeches onto palm cards for the public speaking competition at school.

I'm really looking forward to the day when homework can be completed with a great deal less parental assistance than it currently requires.

One to one Bible reading

I caught up with my wonderful friend this morning to read our Bibles together. We decided we'd choose something simple to kick off with, so we've started with Psalms. We read Psalm 2 today.

We followed a question framework from the above book (you can get a copy of it here). And had a great time reading and praying together. Well, we prayed at the beginning and forgot to pray at the end. Something to remember for next time we meet up.

It's so good to make time to read the Bible properly. Lately I've been trying to be more disciplined with having personal Bible reading time. I'm trying to do this in the mornings when I'm not tired and before the day has a chance to run off the rails as it so often does by the time evening rush hour rolls around. I'm also encouraging Rosie to sit up next to me on the bed and read her Beginner's Bible while I'm reading mine. It's pretty cute. Often when she sees me sitting there reading (even if I'm not reading my Bible), she'll say "Quiet time now?" and toddle off to get her Bible as well. It doesn't always work and I often get interruptions while she's there, but hopefully she's getting the idea that putting aside time to read the Bible is an important thing to do.

But reading the Bible with someone else is amazing. I was privileged to share another person's point of view and ideas about a passage. And to pray with someone (other than my husband) one to one. And I was reminded again of God's goodness to us.

"Blessed are all who take refuge in him" (Psalm 2:12).

Exams all marked

Hooray. Now life can continue.

I might bake something to celebrate. Merle's cookbook is still going strong here.

I have a couple of other food shots still waiting to be downloaded from my camera too. I did a bit of food styling before I took them so the food looks pretty impressive.

Random sources of amusement for the day....

From here.

From here

Enjoy!

Coolest piano ever?

A friend just posted this picture on Facebook. Now I want to find out where it was taken...

On leaving graciously...thoughts from those left behind

Over the past twelve months, we've had some people leave our church. People who were part of our congregation for many years and quite involved in things. They left not because they were moving out of the area (the main reason we've changed churches previously), but because they're now going to another church down the road.

I always feel a bit sad when this happens. In some ways, it feels like a family member has disowned us. They've decided they don't want to hang out with us any more, they'd rather spend time with a different bunch of people.

I've noticed over the years that there are a couple of ways that people tend to leave when they are moving on to another church. One is the very public dummy spit about what's wrong with the current church. In one case I'm aware of, a guy who was rostered on to pray got up and mid-prayer had a bit of a meltdown about how the church was grieving him and he couldn't stay any longer. Not ideal. A little bit awkward for those of us sitting in the congregation who really had no idea how to react to this. Do you keep your eyes closed or do you open them and look around to see what others are doing?

The other form of departure I've encountered is the quiet disappearance. People just stop coming, you think they must be on holidays or something, and then you realise you haven't seen them around for a long time. Eventually someone makes a comment about them having moved to some other church, or the penny drops in some indirect way. In this particular instance, I saw that their photo wasn't in our new church directory which came out last week. And then I asked a friend of mine about them and discovered she'd sent them an email saying she'd been missing them at church. She'd received the response that they were away at the coast for the weekend. Nothing more than that. We haven't seen them since they disappeared. Well, except on Facebook. More on that later.

I'd like to suggest a better way to leave. Be upfront about it. Not in the public dummy spit kind of way. And not necessarily even with everyone in the church, but I think for those people who've known you for a while it's kind to offer some sort of calm and reasonable explanation. It prevents those confused feelings on the part of those you are leaving behind about why you've gone. The most important person to provide this explanation to is the pastor of your church, and he can decide whether the reasons should be shared about it or not. Even then, I think some kind of brief comment up the front about the people no longer attending can be helpful. It provides closure and removes the uncertainty (and hopefully decreases the gossip) about what's happened.

People change over time. I get that. Sometimes people find their needs may be best met in some other church family or denomination. A new season in their Christian lives and growth may be what's required in some instances. But for those left behind, it can really hurt if no explanation is provided about what's happened. In one case, a family left our church and their kids were quite good friends with our boys. Luckily our guys don't tend to ask too many questions, but if they did ask where they'd gone, I wouldn't be sure what to answer.

Just one thing that you probably shouldn't do if you are the person leaving and moving on to another church. Avoid taking to social media (Facebook, twitter, blogs or anywhere else) to say how fantastic your new church is and that the people, the message, the singing or whatever are absolutely wonderful compared with those "other Christians" who do things differently. It's all too painfully obvious who you are talking about.*

*and yes, I do realise that this could be a case of the pot calling the kettle black here. I'm trying to work out whether to say something and if yes, then how or what. Happy to take suggestions....

Watching Eurovision Song Contest while marking exams

Sorry that's more of a Facebook status than a blog post, people.

I already know who won Eurovision. I accidentally listened to a news update earlier. Trying to put it out of my mind.

Some of the exams I've marked so far have been as strange as some of the Eurovision songs. But I've done all the failures and near-failures now. The ones I have left are mostly good ones. Although they can be harder to mark. If a paper is absolutely terrible, it's easy to just mark zero over and over again. With some of the ones I have left, I might have to think a bit harder.