Today was a day of great tasks and plans. YFC are good to me in giving me half a day a week to study for SEITE. Today the plan was to get a large part of my placement report from Harvest written up so that I could start on the other assignment which is looking at the role of the Holy Spirit in the creation of Christian communities.

As I was making a coffee at about 8.30am I felt my back muscles start to contract across the middle of my back and within minutes I was unable lying on the floor in agony and unable to move. This has to go down as the most painful experience in my life to date – even more so than being run over in Bristol!

There is something very humbling about having to call to your 14 year old son as you can’t reach the painkillers which are centimetres out of your reach. I don’t know what would have happened if Tom had not been home today due to teacher training that’s an interesting thought!

I was forced to lay on the floor for just over an hour until the drugs started to relax the muscles and then was able to get back to my feet although only able to walk carefully around the house. Sometimes sitting is good, and sometimes moving is good, or lying or whatever!

My humanity, or the frailty of my humanity, caused my plans to change today. I have achieved a fraction of what I should have achieved and I am feeling a bit peeved over how I am going to fit stuff in now. Some people have said that this could be God calling me to slow down, others that this may be a form of spiritual attack – maybe its some or all of them, I’m unsure.

Today. though, yet again I find myself thinking how weak and useless I am without the power of God in my life. It’s easy to think I do my work and that I am good at what I do – whereas in reality I am nothing without God or the gifts he has given me to use for the Kingdom.

Today I have reflected upon that fact quite painfully and amidst the tears of pain today I was forced to cry out to God in a concrete way that I have not called out to God in a very long time. This was a cry out of my pain and panic of a need for God’s action now in substantive way rather than some theoretical hope which is where a lot of my prayer seems to have gone recently.

I am currently praying for the pain to ease and healing to occur – particularly before we set up for Living Hope after the meditation around the cross on Good Friday. Please feel free to join with that prayer!