advent26

 Yesterday I told you about the teenager who is now living with us - 27 years after i opened my home to the first teen.   Today is about something that happened shortly after he moved in. Social Work loves a meeting.  And a report. 😁  So over the past few months Ive sat round a few tables and zoomed into several conference calls and listened to various professionals talking about me and my teenage lodger.   One social worker wrote a report about the placement and how it was going and said this.  ' Caroline is an exceptional person' I was surprised and delighted by this - pleased that someone was recognising the extra miles I was going for the young person in my care.  But the word ' exceptional'  lodged in my brain and kept making me smile for days and weeks after the meeting.  And it made me think - the fact is I am exceptional.  But the reason Im exceptional - out of the ordinary, unusual, notable - is because Jesus lives in...

 Those of you who have known me for decades might remember that back in the dark ages, before I got married I was living in Edinburgh in a house I had bought when I started my first job.  Before I became a Christian I had had a notion that I might want to provide homes for homeless people.  By the time Id been saved a while, had been working a while and had acquired a social work qualification the plan to house the homeless had become a teenager with a baby who moved into my house.  Cara was 16.  Katelin was 6 months old.  God had provided all I needed (including my best buddy Emma who bravely embarked on this venture with me) and He most definitely blessed the arrangement.  Cara was able to attend college, taking the baby with her every day to be looked after by the college creche.  I worked part time and looked after the two of them the rest of the time.  It went really well and the social work department who had placed Cara with us was kee...

 There are a few defining moments in our Christian lives - moments of 'before that experience' and ' after that experience' - revelations or reckonings or happenings which forever transform us and our understanding of who we are and who God is.   Two of those moments in my life have happened whilst sitting in my car at traffic lights. About 15 years ago I was driving home from work, stopped at a set of lights and without so much as a 'by your leave' God said ' Caz, where are you?'    It wasn't an audible voice but it was a thought which broke in with such utter clarity that it might as well have been.   Of course we know that with God all such questions are entirely rhetorical, but nonetheless I answered ( I cant remember if I actually spoke out loud )  'I'm right here Lord'  and as soon as I had said/thought that, an image came to mind of a huge pile of papers and I knew that somewhere the paper with my name on it was right at the bottom...