Imitators of Those

“And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”

Hebrews 6:11-12

Author: Dónal

  • Our Feet Shall Tread This Place Again

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    Dónal
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    Recently Dee and I have been watching some David Attenborough documentaries. The last set that we watched were focussed on migration. Sharks that travel to a remote Hawaiian Islands to attack fledgling albatross chicks attempting their first flight, salmon turning bright red, and braving Alaskan bears, to reach their spawning grounds, lay their eggs and…

  • Chickens, Elephants, and the Illusion of Freedom

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    Dónal
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    Recently I was visiting a poor rickshaw driver’s family in their home. Our teammates have befriended this rickshaw driver, and treated him well, witnessing to him in word and deed. They live in a field behind a large mosque, with a handful of other small one-room dwellings. Their entire living space is about 7ft by…

  • The Problem With Aeroplanes

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    Dónal
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    I love aeroplanes. Ever since I was a child, picking out my first Revell model kit with my Grandpa (a Messerschmitt BF109G), reading Biggles books, watching war movies and watching the helicopters fly overhead, I loved them. My goal as a teenager was to join the Irish Air Corps, but when I encountered Christ at…

  • The Blessedness of Kind Mother-in-laws

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    Dónal
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    Mother-in-laws (MILs) can be the recipients of some bad stereotyping in the West. I’ll say it clearly at the start for the record: My Mother-in-law is great! And for a lot of people in the Western world, the stereotype doesn’t have as much bearing as perhaps it did at some point in time. Recently, we’ve…

  • Fat and Forgetful

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    Dónal
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    Yesterday a friend back home in Ireland shared with me about the heaviness of heart that accompanies opportunities to share the Gospel. He described how friends, neighbours and co-workers could sit, happy to attend a Christian event, and yet remain completely unmoved by the Gospel call. He wondered if it was fair to compare the…

  • 3 Months In

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    Dónal
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    Yesterday marked the 3-month mark in our new land. On any given day, 3 months is just a few days, or a quarter of a year. While it has always felt incredibly, blessedly, normal to be here, occasionally it hits home that now we live here. After all the years of praying, dreaming, planning, praying,…

  • The Bridling of Death

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    Dónal
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    Why are we, in the West, so uncomfortable with death? Last year Dee and I took a short break in Portugal. It was outside of tourist season, so it was easy to relax. In this Atlantic coastal area, there was plenty to do and see. One day we hiked along the cliffs, as the sun…

  • The Master of the Nets

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    Dónal
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    On a lakeshore in Northern Israel stood two men; two experts in their respective fields. One, a fisherman who could mend a net with his eyes shut, who could stand in his vessel on choppy waters without losing balance, who knew the feeding times of the many shoals hidden beneath the surface, whose calloused hands…

  • Bearing Our Father’s Name

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    I remember my first visit to South Asia. Travelling around the various cities of the country, we visited church after church, house after house, conference after conference for a solid twelve days. Throughout those dusty days and humid evenings, I was introduced to many of my brothers and sisters whom I had never met. Some…

  • A Call for the Long, Hard & Slow Work

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    Dónal
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    I recently attended a conference for workers in our area of the world. There was some really wonderful teaching, encouraging reports, and thought-provoking break-out sessions. Overall, it was a blessing. However, one session in particular gave me a new way of framing my own story; and not in a positive way. In the early 1970s…

  • Moses’ First Christmas

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    Did Moses look on that first Christmas night? A man who knew what it was to live in the tension of the come-yet-stay-away God, he wandered the wilderness, beckoned by God from the bush, yet immediately warned, “do not come near“. He learned early to hide his face, afraid to look at the God he…

  • The Extraordinarily Ordinary Spirit

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    Dónal
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    I place a high value on the ordinary means of grace. The ordinary means of grace are those things that God has given as regular, often non-spectacular, rhythmic events that form and shape our spiritual lives. They are the slow dripping of water to erode a rock, the steady flywheel of an engine that keeps…