“God is Good – All the Time. All the Time – God is Good!”

This is a well-used saying in our family, and it means a lot to us.

This week, Fiona and I spent Tuesday evening, Wednesday and Thursday at the Penny Brohn Cancer Care Centre in Bristol. We were at a residential  course on ‘Living Well with the Effects of Cancer’ and very good it was too. Sure, it was a bit New Agey, but we did get lots out of it that will be useful for us. The centre is set in 4 acres of beautiful, peaceful grounds and there is also this path laid with engraved paving slabs with scriptures, sayings, well-wishes, memorials and what have you. All very lovely. Here’s Fiona on one of the swing-seats in the grounds:

Apart from the learning experience, our prayer was also that God would use us to bless the other classmates on the course, and somehow for us to be Jesus to them in their need.

Well, God did use us to bless them in so many ways, and we were blessed by them too. Such lovely brave people and we were privileged to share some of God with them. I love how God speaks to people at a level they can cope with, and using us to do that in the ways that suit us as personalities. So if you’re impulsive, God may well use you in impulsive ways. If you’re not, He may want you to think about what you say and even if you are going to say anything!

Anyway I just wanted to share a particularly special moment on the Thursday afternoon. We’d just been taught how to do a ‘mindful walk’, that is, a slow walk around the grounds where you look, hear, feel, smell, really take in the things that are going on around you. Actually it really worked for me…. Towards the end of the walk I began to pray a little about the way things are going. Ok it’s going slightly off-task but there were only a couple of minutes left… Soon, the course tutor came out and sounded her ‘gong’ to indicate the end of the exercise. I’d just spotted Fiona at the end of her walk, and began to stroll over to her so we could walk back in to the classroom together. I’d stopped, without thinking about it, on the laid path, and just happened to look down at my feet.

Right there next to my toes was this paving slab:

God is good
All the Time

Wow.

Of course I beckoned Fiona over to look, and she loved it, but soon after that I was unsurprisingly hit by Holy Spirit giggles and could not go back into the classroom. Explaining that to the course Tutor and then relating the story to my classmates was a real privilege. God touched our lives with that paving slab in that moment. And as the Tutor said, what a confirmation!

Praise God!

Even now I have Holy Spirit giggling fits when I remember this. How encouraging is that?