Day 80: Looking back on the weekend

I absolutely LOVE how beautiful, and warm, and yummy, and warm, it was here today. And the fact that as I drove home from work the sun was still high enough in the sky for me to be able to chase it further out in to the country and take the above photo. Love. Love. Love. It's incredible how we can forget what a warm bright evening feels like after the winter months! It's probably the warmest day we'll have all year though...it's apparently meant to 'sleet' on Friday. Woop!

Right, I still have a lot of sleep to do to fully recover from this weekend, so I'm gonna try be quick in going over what a fantastic weekend I had. It would be wrong of me to just graze past it (since blogging over the weekend was unsuccessful...) without a proper mention! I absolutely loved the whole weekend. This year is probably the most comfortable I've ever been just wandering around, and chatting away to people. And what a wonderful group of people they were. It's so encouraging seeing new faces each year, and familiar faces coming back again for more banter.

Our main speaker was Kenny Macleod, a minister in Carloway, which is on the Isle of Lewis, on the west coast, for those of you who don't have a clue (and shame on you for that!). I hadn't heard him preach on many occasions, but after this weekend I look forward to the next time I get to attend one of his sermons! I loved how personal his talks felt, like he was talking to each of us individually, instead of just at a group of people. Our topic for the weekend was the life of Joseph (the guy with the technicoloured dream coat), which is an excellent example of how life can be going in a direction that appears to have no positive outcome, and is incredibly hard to handle, but further down the path we realise it was all necessary for great things to happen! We need to remember to trust in the Lord, and remember that He'll never put us in a situation that we can't pull through. He's always there. He knows the plan. There is hope. We just have to trust, and let Him guide us through. And remember that things will happen in His time.

And then when things to start looking up for Joseph, life doesn't actually get easier...he has to resist temptation, and use the great power that God has given him, to His glory. So...life's not always easy, in good or bad times! But we know that the Lord's there to strengthen us, and we must ask for his help! Ask him to teach us, continually. We never get to a point where we stop learning.

Okay, I'm saying a lot...and cutting in to my sleep time! But I'm loving looking back over the past weekend! As well as the main talks, we had a variety of seminars to choose from at 3 points throughout the weekend. I attended God's Promises, Suffering, and Guidance. And what I've taken away from each of those seminars, in a nutshell (not literally), is that God is with us(always!), we don't always have the answer with regards to someones suffering, and it's ok to admit that if asked a question, but ultimately we have to remember that God is perfectly good, and he is sovereign! And that we shouldn't spend too much time worrying about what is the right direction to go in life, we will make mistakes, but these decisions are not universe changing...and God is with us...always, he knows what's going to happen, and he's ready to help us through it!

I have no idea how you guys are feeling after reading this, but I'm feeling pretty darn amazing after writing it. I hope I've done at least a half decent job at putting across the incredible things that we've been reassured with this weekend. It truly was a fantastic time.

And on a different note...when I got home from work this afternoon and walked in to the living room I saw this scene...

...it brought a smile to my face, as I pictured the most likely situation which would have occured yesterday afternoon...my 7 and a half month old nephew, sitting on the floor, sticking the frogs face in his mouth, while he waved a spatula...or vice versa. Either way, there no doubt would have been a lot of drool.