‘What does that mean for me tomorrow?’ That’s what a very pragmatic friend of mine used to ask at the end of every church service. He wanted a ‘take-away’, something that would inspire, encourage or challenge him to behave differently in his everyday life. I always remember that when I’m preaching.    Not that it’s all up to me: rooted in prayer, a sermon is hopefully a way for God to speak to his people. But in the same way as the Bible is not just a list of rules we need to know, a sermon needs to be more than head knowledge. It should touch our hearts and prom ..read more

  Writing with Others by Rebecca Seaton Although writing can seem a solitary occupation, we should remember Proverbs 27:17 “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” There are many times I’ve benefited from the insight of others and I hope I have given positive input too.   Writing groups are one of the best ways of honing our craft. This month I shared some work with my group and even as I read it aloud I spotted things that didn’t sound right. I can do this at home but there is something about a critical and supportive audience that is quite different. Magazines ar ..read more

 “Will you come again?”  Today, perhaps even as you read this, I will be visiting a nursery school.  I’ve visited once before, to read them my book, Also Made.  And they invited me back.  Trouble is, I don’t have any other picture books.  I replied saying that I’d be happy to come and read to the children again, but that I’d have to read someone else's work.  That was fine with them, which is why – perhaps even now – I am reading to the children.    They were happy for me to read someone else’s work.  Are we happy to write some ..read more

No one told me about a magical milestone you can encounter when writing a book. At some point along your quest, you will have written so many pages that you can ask your document nicely if it would be possible to see Everything So Far. I find the easiest way to do this is to click View and then Zoom and then Many Pages, because I use Word. No doubt other options are available. A grid of pages suddenly appears on your screen like some treasure map of an American city. Each block is a tiny thumbnail view of one page, with cute paragraphs and miniscule sentences. Any graphics are also displayed i ..read more

  There’s a random hay bale in the field outside my house. It’s too old to use as hay. It got damp and mouldy a long time ago. So why is it there?  Well, my husband dragged it there with the tractor and pinned a target to it for the kids to practice archery on. The target had to come down when it rained, but the hay bale is still there, waiting for the next session.  When there’s daylight, it’s already pretty hard shooting the target, especially with a compound bow designed for adults not children (they’ve each been promised a suitable bow for their birthdays – like it, or no ..read more

  What are your sources of inspiration? Having spent the last month down under, you would have thought I would have returned brimming with ideas and enthusiasm to write. Sadly, not so. Neither the friends we stayed with nor the tourist attractions stirred any sparkle. Well over 30000 miles of travel did evoke a sense of God’s care for me, like the time in Hong Kong, trying to order a meal through a non-English-speaking waiter. British rule is now just a blip on a fading horizon. Well anyway, a young woman hurried over and explained the menu to us in English, pickled cucumber in spiced v ..read more

  I like making plans. Maybe it’s having a lively imagination, so I can just imagine what the day might look like, or what would make the perfect holiday for a husband, four kids and a dog... Of course, I hold those plans loosely, at least at those moments when I think of the Letter from James in the Bible, but once plans are scuppered, it’s amazing to find how firm they had grown to be. My plan to write the third Elabi book in just a few months has been dragged out into almost two years. The end is in sight, but the excited (not-shared-with-anyone)plan of having it published the first ..read more

 'We always misunderstood ourselves and rarely understood others.' Oscar Wilde That quote could have been written for me, and perhaps for some of the blog readers here today. I suddenly feel the need to tell my story.  I was born a very long time ago, right at the end of World War 2. My father was in the Signals Corps and was one of the message-senders using morse code in Dover on D Day. After the war ended in Europe, he was sent out to the Far East to fight there. Years later I realised how much he had been damaged by his experiences - a childhood with a violent father, and as a ..read more

What do you do when you’ve run out of ideas, hit the wall and arrive at the unwelcome barricade we know as writer’s block? I’ve heard all manner of approaches to this: go for a walk, take a bath, do a jigsaw puzzle, make a cake, run away and join the circus, take up plumbing instead and enjoy a steady income at last etc.  In other words, do any number of things which are definitely not writing in order to allow your subconscious to chunter along on it’s merry way for a while until some inspiration leaks out into your consciousness again.  At that point you can shout, ‘Halleluj ..read more

  I love jewellery! In particular, rings. There’s a part of me that wants to give myself the freedom to wear more than one on each hand, but I know my mother would not approve! I hear her now - "less is more, Christina." Looking at a couple of particular rings that I have which I am especially grateful to own, it struck me that the gems which make jewellery so beautiful are usually hidden underground, have been subject to pressure and/or heat, are difficult to extract, and need careful, precise work on them to bring out their best. That very process is a joint venture between The Creator ..read more