100 ABSTRACTS - NUMBER 72 AND MONO MONDAY

Having had a couple of days off from doing my 100 Abstracts Challenge, I decided that I needed to get back on it today - especially since I have now hit the £200 mark for my sponsorship - up to £230 with Gift Aid - so HUGE thanks to all those who have sponsored me so far.  I am really grateful and I’m sure that the girls in North Malawi who are helped by the Mamie Martin Fund to complete their secondary school education will also be very grateful.  

I decided that I would try and do another “Two for One” today and take part in the Mono Monday challenge too.  For this shot, I know the challenge is “Take Off”, so in order to take out one of the promises from my old Promise Box, I had to “take off” the lid!  Of course, there was a little fartnarkling with my iColorama app and this was the result.  I have put in a shot of the box with the promise underneath it as an extra but you can see the shape of the box even in my abstract version. 

I can’t remember who gave me this Promise Box, but it’s obviously quite old because all the verses are from the King James version of the Bible.  I wanted to find out more about how Promise Boxes came into being and found this:

"During the Crimean War (1853-56) groups of soldiers’ wives in England regularly met together for mutual prayer and comfort. They found that sharing and encouraging one another strengthened them in difficult days. One useful way the women found was to think about the promises of their faith, which they found in the Bible. They exchanged Bible verses with one another and talked together about the strength and comfort they derived from the verses.

From this Promise Boxes began to be developed. These were boxes containing many verses from scripture, each individually rolled and placed tightly in a box. Using a pair of tweezers a verse would be drawn at random from the box and reflected upon or discussed, and used in prayer."

The promise that I pulled out today was quite apposite considering that as a Church we have been praying for a family whose young daughter, Addy, has Batten Disease and is quite poorly at the moment - it said “I will be with thee: I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.” Joshua 1:5 - what a great promise for them at this difficult time.

I’m sure that the girls and young ladies who are supported by the Mamie Martin Fund are grateful for the promises made to them; many of them are probably Christians, attending schools run by the Church in Malawi and they often mention their faith when telling their stories.

“The empowered woman 
     is powerful beyond measure 
          and beautiful beyond description.”
Steve Maraboli

https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/MaureenIles