Walls

This weekend conference in Northern Ireland is such a blessing and I feel so privileged to be enabled to be here and share with these wonderful Irish ladies and experience their generous hospitality including copious amounts of tea and cake!  

On Friday afternoon we (Anne and I) were driven from the airport in Belfast to our conference centre in Newcastle, and as there was some spare time our kind host took us for a little drive into the Mountains of Mourne. There were lots of stone walls made of some huge boulders and we discovered that most of them are made by hand. Amazing that anyone could lift them let alone fashion them into a wall! 

On the first evening our speaker introduced her theme ‘Inside Out’ and spoke about the story of the woman at the well meeting Jesus from John chapter 4. She talked about boundaries and described how the woman in the story put up barriers to others and to Jesus in her words and actions but how Jesus crossed the boundaries to reach out to her.  She went on to suggest that all of us sometimes put up walls to create boundaries to try to protect ourselves from others and about how some of those barriers can be unhealthy and unhelpful in building close relationships.  We were reminded that Jesus isn't put off by the walls we try to build and no matter what we've been through in our lives, still loves us and wants to reach out to us if we will let him.  

View from the conference centre

Karen, our speaker for the weekend

View from the back of the car in the Mountains of Mourne