Faith: Praise Always

When bad things happen, I think we can be very quick to question God and wonder where He was during those terrible moments and why and how could he let these things happen?

Over the years I have said this about my life and the world, and I have also heard other people say it as well:

Why Lord?

Why me?

Why them?

What did I do to deserve this?

Why could you the innocent suffer?

I am not the only one to have uttered these questions in times of despair, they were also asked by people in the Bible as well – just look at the Psalms, David questions God a lot and wonders why God has abandoned him and not helping him in his times of need.

“O Lord, why do you stand so far away?

Why do you hide when I’m in trouble?”

Psalm 10 v 1

“O Lord, how long will you forget me?

Forever?

How long will you look the other way?”

Psalm 13 v 1

David wasn’t the only one who questioned God, the people of Israel doubted and questioned God when he was rescuing them from the Egyptians and Slavery (Exodus 13-14)

Abraham also doubted and questioned God, as did Jonah, as did many others in both the Old and the New Testament.  Doubts, questions about God, His existence and His power. After Jesus died and rose again from the dead, Thomas doubted that the resurrection actually happened, he did not have faith in Jesus - John 20 v 24-27

We can be very quick to doubt God, to question Him in the bad times. But when things do go right for us, do we actually take the time to praise God and thank Him.  Do we thank God when he answers our prayers? Or just get annoyed when some of our prayers go unanswered or answered differently from the way we want them to be.

We are quick to judge and slow to praise and give thanks.  But we do need to do this, we need to praise God in the good times and in the bad times.

We will never know why things happen and that will be a mystery all the time – we do not need to know the answers to everything, we just need to believe, trust, praise and have faith in God. Though I know this can be hard as we are only human!

When the Israelite's were delivered from the Egyptians and slavery, they sang a song of praise (Exodus 15).  Mary praised God in song (Luke 7) after  the  Angel Gabriel visited her and told she would give birth to the Son of God.  And in the middle of his questions and belief that God had forsaken him, David also praised God with his Psalms.

“I will praise the Lord at all times

I will constantly speak his praises”

(Psalm 34 v 1)

“I will praise you as long as I live,

Lifting up my hands to you in power”

Psalm 63 v 4

David thanks God

“I will exalt you Lord, for you rescued me

You refused to let my enemies triumph over me

O Lord my God I cried for your help,

And you restored my health”

Psalm 30 v 1 & 2

I know I need to be more thankful to God and praise him and be less quick to judge and doubt.  It is good to be thankful during the bad times as well as the good times. As it says in James 1 vs 2 – 3 “Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.  For your know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow”

In the testing times, stop and think about what God has done for you in the past and also for others – He delivered the Israelite's from slavery in Exodus and by His death on the cross He delivered us all from sin.

Life: Comparisons

One thing I have noticed about people and it is very true of myself is that we never seem to be happy with what we have got, we always seem to compare ourselves to others.

As a child we compare ourselves to our friends - thinking they have it better than us – better toys, better and later bedtimes, better holidays etc.

As a teenager we compare grades with our friends, or compare how we look compared to others, especially the popular girls!  - we think people are smarter than us, better looking than us, have better clothes than us, live in bigger houses than us etc

We compare ourselves to models or TV actresses/actors, seeing them as skinnier than us and more beautiful - and this comparison is not good and can be harmful especially as it can lead to eating disorders etc

No comparison we make as a child or as a teenager is healthy – but they never stop there, comparisons continue as we continue our life journey.  At university/college we continue the comparisons, again comparing grades, clothes, lifestyle, our backgrounds e.g where we come from which leads to oh my city is better than yours, or if you were me leading to poor Irish jokes and silly questions about growing up in Northern Ireland.

Moving onto adult life, you would think we would get better at this and be mature and not compare ourselves to others, but I think it gets worse. We compare:

• Our weight against others
• What we wear
• What jobs we have
• The houses we live in
• Our bank balances

And if you have kids, then we compare our kids – my kids are much better behaved than yours etc etc.

Comparisons are not healthy but we do it every day. I do. I sit and compare myself to others, thinking that girl is much more beautiful than me, she is happier than me because he has a husband, she has more to give than me, she has more money than me etc etc. It’s not healthy and can lead to depressing thoughts.  It’s not healthy because we are also denying ourselves to be the person we were created to be – because my constantly comparing ourselves to others it is showing that we are not happy or content with who we are or what we have got. And we should be.

As a Christian the worst thing we can do is compare ourselves to others in terms of our faith and our relationship with God e.g saying things like she prays better than me, or their views of the Bible aren’t the same as what I believe, or my church is better than her church. Again it is unhealthy to do this and it is wrong as no one is better than anyone else – we are all made equal in Christ and we were all made to be different as well – if we were all the same the world would be a very boring place! We have all been designed to be unique and our individual journeys have been carved out to suit who we are.

When you compare yourself to another person, you always lose, and at the same time the other person loses too. Each of us has been created by the hands of a Holy God, we are all fearfully and wonderfully made and our stories and the twists and turns of our lives, the things that are hard for us, and the things that come naturally to us, are as unique to us as our own fingerprints are.

As Shauna Niequist says in her book Bittersweet “One way to ensure a miserable life is to constantly measure your own life by the lives of others”.  It eats us up and stops us from living life the way we have been created to – it takes away our joy.  Be like Cindy Lou Who in Dr Seuss’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and do not let the Grinch steal your joy instead sing Cindy Lou sing!

So the moral of this blog, is do not compare yourself to others, or compare others to yourself either.  We need to be content in who we are, what we have and what God has given us. Yes I am telling myself this everyday too!!

Life: Life long learning

I was reading a book recently called Bittersweet by Shauna Niequist, where she listed the things in her life that she was taught by her mother or just simply learned by watching her and listening to her.  And how she was thankful for everything she learned.  After reading this I was inspired to think back on the things I have learned or gained from both of my parents over the past 34 years of life with them. So here goes my list:

• I learned and gained the love of reading
• I learned the love of photography and gained the ability to use a camera and how to take a good photo 
• I learned how to cook and gained some good recipes and tips
• I learned how to open my home to others and show hospitality to others
• I learned the importance of being a Christian and having a relationship with Jesus
• I learned the importance of community
• I learned about the world and gained a love of travelling and exploring new countries and different cultures
• I learned about the importance of mission
• I gained my love of South America from their involvement with EUSA/Latin Link.
• I gained my love of Toucans
• I learned the importance of keeping a clean house
• I learned about never giving up and holding on to what you have got
• I learned that I should always put a smile on my face
• I gained the habit of always putting the kettle on when I come home, even if I have just left a coffee shop!!
• I learned about how to love someone during both the joyful times but especially in the difficult times

There are probably more things in my life that I love or know how to do because of my parents, but for now that list is a start and I give credit and thanks to my parents for making me who I am today.

Sometimes parents think that their children don’t want to learn from their parents, and I can confirm that sometimes I didn’t show any interest but what I have learned is that even if you don’t want to, you do end up picking things from your parents just by being with them and living with them. Things kind of just seep into you by osmosis!  - It’s the nurturing part of life!

You learn a lot of things and become the person you are mostly due to who brought you up, where you were brought up and how. For example I am a Christian, and this is mainly due to the fact that I was brought up in a Christian family, taken to church and learned from an early age of Jesus and his love for me.

It may have taken me tile I was 17 to accept Jesus and who he was but I may never have had the chance of knowing that if it wasn’t for my parents. So again thanks to my parents  - it’s not easy bringing up children  - but you haven’t done too bad – you taught me a lot even I didn’t take everything on board – I learnt the important parts of life.

Movie Review - Akeelah and the Bee

I was feeling very tired a couple of Saturday nights ago and just wanted to watch a movie that would make me feel good – a feel good movie – so I checked out Netflix to see what it had to offer me and came across a movie called Akeelah and the Bee.  This movie was released in 2006 but I had never heard of it before, it must not have reached the cinema screens of the UK.

I wasn’t really sure what the movie was about, thought it may be about a Bee – you know the ones which buzz around and make honey! Well I was wrong. Akeelah and the Bee tells the story of an 11 year old girl called Akeelah Anderson (Keke Palmer) living in South Los Angeles, U.S.A.

Akeelah lives with her mother, her two older brothers, her sister and her niece – the daughter of her sister Kiona. Their dad died when Akeelah was six.

Akeelah attends Crenshaw Middle School, a predominantly black school where she skips classes with her friends as she doesn’t feel school is of any importance.  However Akeelah does excel at one thing – spelling – she is a fantastic speller and her teacher and principal suggest she signs up for the Crenshaw Spelling Bee which she ends up winning even if she was a reluctant participant at the start. A visiting professor Dr Joshua Larabee (Laurence Fishburn) sees potential in Akeelah and asks her to spell harder words - she correctly spells all but one of these words. On misspelling the word, girls in the school make fun of her and she runs out of the hall embarrassed and determined never to take part in a spelling bee again.

Dr Larabee tells her that the reason the girls made fun of her was because of jealousy – there were jealous that Akeelah excelled at something. However she is still put off by going any further down the road of competition and entering the National Spelling Bee. But in the end after persuasion by her principal and Dr Larabee, Akeelah decided to enter the competition.  Akeelah is coached for his by Dr Larabee who once was a Spelling Bee contestant many years ago.

On the day of the District Spelling Bee Akeelah misspells a word and is out of the competition, but in the end manages to qualify to the next round because another contestant was caught cheating as his mother was mouthing the correct spellings to him.

At the competition Akeelah is befriended by another contestant, Javier.  They strike up a friendship and he helps her through the competition process, encouraging her and reassuring her.  He even invites her to his birthday party which she attends.

Dylan, another of the competitors is also at the party and he has a dislike for Akeelah because she has come from nowhere - I think he saw her as a threat because of how far she had come in her first time of entering the competition.   Dylan has never won the National Spelling Bee but came second two years in a row. His dad is very strict on him and when Dylan gets beaten at scrabble by Akeelah, his dad is furious and shouts at him for being beaten by a ‘silly little black girl’.

Akeelah overhears this and it upsets her for two reasons - a) because she was so easily dismissed by this man and b) because he was pressuring his son so much.  Her mood gets worse she arrives home after the part because her Mum is angry at her and bans her from going to the National Bee because she was behind in her schoolwork and the school is making her do summer school to make up her grades.

Akeelah is mad at this as she wants to enter the Bee now despite her previous misgivings.  She goes behind her Mum’s back and continues to get coached for the Bee by Dr Larabee.  They attend the state Spelling Bee and in the middle of it Akeelah’s mum comes in and drags Akeelah off the stafe, shouting at her for lying and being disobedient to her mother and for putting some stupid Spelling Bee before her school work and her grades.

However unknown to her mother, Akeelah’s principal has signed off on Akeelah getting the extra coaching and tells her mother that this extracurricular activity is going towards credit for Akeelah’s schoolwork.  This information and Dr Larabee’s praise of Akeelah as the mother giving consent to Akeelah entering the Bee. So Akeelah goes back to the stage and manages to come third which advances her to the Scripps National Spelling Bee. 

Having witnessed Akeelah spelling really difficult words, her mum becomes proud of her and begins supporting her in the quest to become the Spelling Bee Champion of the United States.

After this Dr Larabee decides not to coach Akeelah anymore and through her disappointment, her Mum tells her it is OK as she has 50,000 coaches – meaning she has her family, her friends, her neighbours, her school friends etc. – she has many people to use to help her revise and Akeelah does just this.

Akeelah becomes a hero in her home town and has the support of all her school, her friends, her family and her neighbourhood.  When the Spelling Bee final is happening, the whole town can be seen gathered around their televisions watching and rooting for Akeelah.

I won’t tell you what happens next as I don’t want to spoil the ending for you.

I enjoyed this movie because it was very interesting seeing how the Spelling Bee captures the hearts and the attention of everyone in America – the Spelling Bee is a massive thing in America and it is great to see kids excelling at spelling. I think we need a Great British Spelling Bee.  Would motivate kids to learn.

Akeelah and the Bee is a movie about friendship, love, competition, pain, hope, fear of failure, loss, sacrifice, family and aspiration. I am sure you could find more themes within the movie.

It is a great story about a little girl who is lost but finds herself in her ability and talent of spelling.  Akeelah didn’t believe in herself but with encouragement from people around her Akeelah learnt the ability to believe in herself, which is something every little girl or boy needs to do.