Its been a long time

Sorry its been a while since i posted anything, there has been a lot going on over these last few months. The early part of this year was pretty tough as we lost one of our best friends to Cancer, she had been battling with it for a while and in the end she passed away peacefully one night, although we thought this time would come we had hoped to have a little longer before she left us. Its never easy to lose someone you love and care for and watching those who loved her the most has been hard.

Also this year my cousins wife has been diagnosed with cancer as well and she is in the throws of treatment, which is dreadful to watch. In the last few years i have watched many people fight this dreadful disease and it really is remarkable how people cope with such devastating news.

If i'm honest one of the reasons i struggled in the early days i was in pastoral work was because of the amount of illness i saw, it just seemed to impact me in ways i never thought possible.

So what else has been going on? Well, Karen and i have just returned from visiting friends in the States, if you want to see what we got up to then have a look at our travel bloghttp://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Wandering-Wylies/Trips/8454 We had a great time and certainly come back relaxed.

Over these last few months as well as dealing with all these various issues i have also been thinking through various issues in relation to my own faith. I have to say that i don't find bible study, prayer to be easy... apart from to say that its easier NOT to do it! I realise that a 'relationship' with God is vital if my faith is to have meaning and purpose and so i have been trying (not to purposefully) to recognise God in the everyday things of life... the good and the bad. When you do this, i think it alters our perception of who God is and what God does, you begin to see Gods fingerprint or handy-work in the strangest places.

I suppose though my attention falls on to issues of the church, and i hope to ponder some of these questions over the next few blogs, so watch this space!