Amy Boucher Pye

Tag: Kingdom Life Now

  • Finding Myself in Britain (The Kingdom Life Now)

    Finding Myself in Britain cover copy (1)I didn’t know that the fairy tale would be so hard. After all, my dreams had come true – I had finally found my prince, a man who loved the Lord and loved me. The courtship and engagement whirled past in a rush of plans and excitement. I knew I’d have to quit my job and leave America to join him in his native Britain, where he was studying to become a minister, but I figured, how hard would that be?

    Turns out, harder than I could have guessed. After the flight and drive from Heathrow, with me recovering from the flattening case of flu I caught while on honeymoon, we made it to our tiny student accommodation in Cambridge (called “The White House,” no less). I excitedly unpacked my bulky desktop computer, wanting to connect with people back in the States (this was before the ubiquity of smartphones or even wireless internet). But after I pressed the power button, I heard a whoosh. In an instant, my Macintosh died, the victim of different power supplies and me not switching a button at the back between 110 and 220 voltage. I collapsed into floods of tears.

    Losing my computer started off me on a tough transition into my life in the UK. I was with the man I loved, living in a charming part of England with the boats floating down the River Cam, evensong at King’s College under the famous fan-vaulting ceiling, and a daily market with the fruit-and-veg sellers calling me “love.” But I felt rocked at the center of my being.

    Read the rest over at The Kingdom Life Now magazine…

  • The Bible: God’s Word for Life, Love, and Change

    Photo: Savio Sebastian, flickr
    Photo: Savio Sebastian, flickr

    Today I have an article on Sacred Reading over at the Kingdom Life Now magazine. Here’s a taste.

    Recently I led an exercise of meditative reading of the Bible. Four times I read the passage of Isaiah 43:1-8 with instructions to the women with a different emphasis in engaging with the text each time. About a month later, I was humbled to hear from one woman about how God spoke to her through the exercise. She said how she and her husband had been to Brunei in Southeast Asia a couple of weeks before the conference in Somerset, England, to visit their daughter and family (including three young grandchildren), who have lived there for the last seven years. While there, she learned that her son-in-law decided to apply for teaching jobs in Belgium, Singapore, and Oman. With Belgium being far closer to home, she and her husband were hoping this would be their final destination. She said,

    When you read Isaiah to us the only sentences that I heard were verses 5 and 6, where it says, “I will bring your children from the East and your daughters from far-off lands.” How relevant to me were those words and I held onto them as a promise to me from God – that He was telling me that my son-in-law would get the job and my family would come close. I was so convinced that I told others what God was saying. So imagine the great joy when we heard on that he had been offered the job in Belgium and they were to start in September! No more 17 hour flight to see them! God truly had gathered my children from the East and my daughter from a far-off land.

    She said that although before my talk she had never heard of lectio divina – a Latin phrase for the act of sacred reading – but now she had come across it several times.

    Change Agent

    This ancient practice of a slow, contemplative praying of the Scriptures moves what can be a merely rational process deep into one’s heart, for as we chew over a piece of Scripture, it sinks into our being. We begin to slow down, receive, and make a personal response. Continue reading.