What does my being a Christian tell you about me?
Christianity.
It means so many things to so many different people.
It means extremists murdering those who believe something else.
It means boring Sunday services, in dusty churches that haven’t seen change in hundreds of years. It means ritual, habit, or maybe happy-clappy and a bit embarrassing. It means something you put on your passport or school application forms. It means corrupt priests who abuse children. It means someone telling you how to live your life when actually, you’d like to play football on a Sunday morning, or even just stay in bed after getting blind drunk on the Saturday night before. It means something you did as a kid, but not any more as you have grown up and stopped believing in fairy tales now.
At best, it probably looks a bit foolish, at worst, controlling or corrupt.
All of which means that I must be a bit strange if this Jesus person has such an impact on my life.
And very few people mention it to me, in the same way that we don’t refer to each other’s disabilities or hideous birth marks… it just wouldn’t be polite, would it?
So I’m going to take this opportunity to tell you why.
Quite simply, God changes my life.
I’m not saying God changed my life once and now I just carry on with new habits, or new friends and I’ve kind of stuck to it.
I mean that day by day, if I am close to Him, I see the world differently. It’s like seeing things with greater clarity, more colour, more vibrancy.
More joy. Quite genuinely, my heart is full of joy.
Don’t get me wrong, I still feel pain, stuff still goes wrong and I still experience grief and disaster.
But in the bad times I have a loving comforter to help me through.
And the rest of the time, when I am close to Him, every day is pregnant with anticipation for the purpose he has worked out just for me. When I am not close to him, life returns to grey… with it’s fears, lack of purpose, earthly concerns.
And emptiness.
So, the closer I get to him, the closer I want to get, because I’ve learnt the difference now, and, honestly… this feeling when Christ is in my life…
There’s nothing like it.
The Blog of Penny Lyon 
Beautiful testimony, beautiful photograph. His light shines through you, lovely lady 🙂
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Wow Penny. You always had a way with words. Sitting in a hotel in Denmark and your name came up. So nice to see you. We now live in Devon. Isnt your
Mama in Devon? Would LOVE to hear from you.
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Judy! I think of you so often, and am really pleased to get your message. We’d love to see you. Are you all well?
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Lovely to hear from you. Yes we are all well although Christian has a lot of pain – result of an open heart op 7 years ago! I am 7 years clear of breast cancer so that’s great. We live in Moretonhampstead – 12 miles from Exeter, Newton Abbot and Okehampton. Am still in touch with Shirley and Nigel. Nigel is poorly. They had the horror of their beloved son Adrian and his second wife (Chinese) being shot in Paris (where they lived) on the street by a madman. Such a tragedy but Nigel and Shirley decided they had to get on with their loves and they have. We went to a funeral in Little Chalfont a few months ago and popped in to see them. Are you three well, do hope so. Let me know if you make it down this way. We moved 5 years ago, bought an old schoolhouse, moved in for a year, moved out for 7 months while the inside was gutted and now have a fab place.
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