Neil's blog

I’m aware of so many breaking & broken people in our community & world. We see it in the face of tragic loss, innocence lost at an early age, image & self esteem shattered by fractured families & unhelpful ‘perfect’ bodies in glossy magazines, long term unemployment eroding dignity, addictions enslaving, Alzheimer’s & dementia fragmenting & wiping out memories in people, etc. But, the Lord Jesus, who allowed His body & being to be blown up for our sake, is the same Lord Jesus who was put back together again by His loving Father, & is in the business of putting us humans back together again. And, as He puts us back together again, as His Body (The Family of God), He calls us to be a part of His piecing (peacing) together of a whole people, loved & saved by Grace.

I think of Colin who recently came through the Teen Challenge Bus to join the others in rehab’, seeking with God’s help, to be freed from the prison which was his flat for many years. I think of Sue, who is getting the chance to talk about & face up to stuff from her past, which was wrecking her young life. I think of Matt’, whose wife Bab’s has had to go into a nursing home due to dementia. There are so many opportunities to help bring peace to people’s pieces, to be made whole in the love of Christ.

This morning (on the web) I came across The Amazing Grace Project, in Baltimore, Maryland, where Amy, a resident artist, has helped young people make a mosaic of the cross, in the process helping them to be pieced together in God’s Love. With the song, ‘All the broken pieces’ by Matthew West, it inspired me to encourage us all to get on with God’s ‘Peace Making’ wherever we are, helping people to know they are loved in the way we treat them & introducing them to the One Who loves them like no other. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5sCRcK_ztw

Then I came across ‘Held’, written & sung by Natalie Grant, who, though brought up in a secure & loving family, suffered from bulimia, due to the images a boy friend, & the world around her, suggested she needed to be like. Her song speaks of raw tragedy, but also of the way God wants to hold us close & help us through.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOufqWodFNo

Colossians 1:17 “Christ is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”