Hello from Canterbury….again!!

Today we decided to take a trip to the seaside and are headed for Margate. Rayne did a cool video of our Canterbury trip if anyone wants to view….

https://youtu.be/eXZucQHHM6Q

All that aside, this morning I was highly amused when a senior priest called me a “natural leader”.

“You must be joking I told him, I love being on my own, have almost no patience at times with people and find showing people what to do wearisome and burdensome”.


Then I looked up on Google what a natural leader was and sure enough I recognized myself in some of it. I guess I’ve never really seen myself in that light before and for me leadership or seeing what needs to be done in certain situations seems to be so obvious and evident that I find it hard to take any credit for it.

To be perfectly honest what often baffles me the most isn’t so much what I see or perceive but what others don’t. It was like that when I studied mathematics, it’s like that with spirituality…to me certain things are obvious while to others they are not ….maybe I’m a natural afterall!


Yet leadership comes with many burdens which certainly don’t make me feel like a natural.

A leader must make decisions that will affect others. A leader sees and understands complexities of situations that others don’t and while firmly grounded in the present is always seeing ahead.

This can be lonely. It reminds me a bit of my university days when some of my classmates would come to me when it came to figuring out tricky and difficult maths problems and yet at times I used to ask myself “Who do I ask?”

I think God was helping me back then too because I noticed that if I looked at a maths problem that I couldn’t solve just before bed then when I’d wake up in the morning the answer would be obvious!! This study technique saved me hours of time in the library. I can only put it down to my guardian angel and can see that God was indeed blessing my life in funny ways long before I was consciously aware.


That said, leadership requires immense patience and I would definitely say that this is my major flaw!!

Incessantly repeating myself and motivating others can be tiresome and especially so when one is just naturally motivated. It seems to me that it’s easier in ways to teach things that you are naturally not that good at!

Conscience of your own weakness and difficulties in grasping things will inevitably help you to teach others and to be patient

However for things that we are naturally good at it can be more difficult because we can think that everyone else should be good at them too and understand in the same way and at the same speed.

Fortunately God put things like music and art in the world to show me that my gifts lie in neither of these field and gave me a real appreciation for the gifts of others.


Perhaps over the years I’ve simply got good at what I’m good at and not wasted time on what I’m not because I do believe that ‘success’ in life comes from correct focus and knowledge of oneself. Knowing what you are good at, knowing your limits and not wasting time on things that are simply not for you.

Helping others to identify these things and adjust their lives accordingly is a type of leadership or mentoring that I enjoy but I’m not sure how good at it I am!! I’m still praying for more patience.

Anyway, all of that aside I think that the best way to lead is by example and to ‘walk the talk’ and whatever about my shortcomings in the area of patience I do believe that I ‘practice what I preach’ and that my life shows people of the reality of God, of His presence, His power, His healing, His humour and His challenges!

So anyway, thanks for reading, thanks for your prayers and I do hope that my life journey and witness blesses and inspires some of you to be the best you can be and to place all your hope and trust in Jesus, the leader of leaders!!

Michael