In which I just keep Trusting the Lord | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

On Not Wasting a Desert Experience

Anita Mathias — Sun, 13 Sep 2020 14:44:20 +0000

So, after Paul the Apostle’s lightning bolt encounter with the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus, he went into the desert, he tells us… And there, he received revelation, visions, and had divine encounters. There he pondered on the simple teachings of Jesus in the context of the logic and story of the Old […]

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Deep peace in times of political turmoil

Anita Mathias — Mon, 16 Sep 2019 23:07:55 +0000

The Deep Peace of Wild Places (Iceland, August, 2019) I consciously (though sometimes unsuccessfully) try not to invest emotional energy in politics, just as I try to invest no emotional energy in sports, including the Olympics or the World Cup. Why waste energy on things whose outcome I am unable to influence? (Of course, an […]

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Burn-Out Vanishes When We Rediscover Purpose

Anita Mathias — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 22:25:52 +0000

When I blogged regularly, which I did for six years, I felt more alive, more alert, more attentive to my life, and what God was doing in it. In Frederick Buechner’s phrase, I listened to my life. I have taken a six month blogging break, and the peril of blogging breaks (or writing breaks: […]

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On Cancer, Declining Chemotherapy, Healing, and Future Plans

Anita Mathias — Mon, 03 Aug 2015 09:58:55 +0000

So hi there, I am back…back to regular blogging, back to health– physically, emotionally, spiritually and creatively. So, news of my world: I had surgery for colon cancer on November 25th, 2014, which now feels very long ago—like a bad, surreal dream. I was offered chemotherapy, which would increase my odds of being alive in […]

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When You Think it’s All Over, And That End is a New Beginning

Anita Mathias — Mon, 04 May 2015 13:26:29 +0000

So John, beautiful, sensitive evangelist, is exiled to Patmos, a Roman penal colony, by the Emperor Diocletian. It’s all over for him. He who had been one of the three with Jesus at every climactic moment of his ministry; who had leaned on Jesus at the Last Supper feeling the physical and verbal beat of […]

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In which the Afflicted are Comforted in Ways We Cannot Guess (In Memory of Kayla Mueller)

Anita Mathias — Sun, 15 Feb 2015 23:04:40 +0000

Kayla Mueller, an idealistic young American aid worker, was captured by the brutal soldiers of ISIS in 2013. She died 2 years later, images of her bruised face and white-shrouded body released to her parents. Her fate would echo most people’s categories of the worst thing in the world, as in Orwell’s 1984. There are […]

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In which God Creates Beauty from My Mistakes

Anita Mathias — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 18:54:14 +0000

In this season of hibernation, I think… and my remembrance of things past is not unaccompanied by regret. Mists of sadness rise. I will not enter them for they might drag me into a quagmire. No, I will not re-read past chapters. Today’s chapter is being written—Jesus dictating, me writing. Or sometimes, me writing fast, impulsively, […]

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Walking on the Waters, Looking at Jesus, in the Shadow of the Big C (who Must not be Named)

Anita Mathias — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 20:01:30 +0000

I had a cancer scare two and a half years ago. Fear gripped my heart when I realised the doctor suspected endometrial cancer. Fears of chemotherapy–and, perhaps worse, death. My youngest daughter was just 12. I was by no means ready to die. And I lay down, and “saw” a vision. Christ walking towards me […]

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The Secret of Accessing God’s Power in our Daily Lives

Anita Mathias — Fri, 30 May 2014 11:53:14 +0000

The phoenix, which rose out of the ashes of his old body, is a symbol of Christ in traditional iconography. It could also be a symbol of the power of prayer. Numerous times in my life, when I have been stuck, prayer–-intense, deep, desperate prayer–-has changed my circumstances. Has reversed the plot. It is, in […]

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God Breathes Stars–and Honour on His Beloved

Anita Mathias — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 18:10:05 +0000

“God breathed, and all the stars were born.” “By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth.” NIV Psalm 33:6. “And he breathed on them, and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” John 20:22. The Lord breathes on us. At his breath, we are cloaked in gold dust, […]

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