I want to see

 

I reached up to draw back the living room curtains. The one on the right slid open easily. The one on the left caught on the supporting hook. It would not slide without being lifted up first. As I couldn’t reach, I left it closed, diminishing the early morning light in the room.

My perception of life, of events, of God, is not always – maybe even just rarely – clear. My ideas can become caught on an assumption, a vague value, a misconception which impairs my view and limits my understanding. I may think I see clearly, but if the curtain is not fully open, I don’t.

Lord, tear open any curtains which obscure, which distort, which conceal truth today. May I not fall prey to embracing half-seen ‘truths’ but instead may I sit in your presence, you, Jesus, who are the way, the truth and the life. Open my eyes, Lord: I want to see.

The Promised Land

 

A perfect winter’s day. The sun is as strong as it gets in January, beaming out of a blue sky sprinkled with a few wispy white clouds. Ice makes the road treacherous, but maybe it’s that frigidity at ground level that causes a mist to rise low and, earlier, thick. I couldn’t see through the mist, but beyond it, rising above it, stood the familiar hills to our south, Scolty, Clachnaben and others.

Sometimes, life lands us in a thick mist through which we cannot see, but we can still glimpse the promise of what lies beyond. We can focus on what we can see beyond. As I took a careful, short morning walk, though, that mist thickened, obscuring the hills beyond. Sometimes, life’s fogs curtain everything off, and it’s our faith which keeps us putting one foot in front of the other. Our faith, and the reassurance that we are not walking alone, but have our divine companion, Jesus, always with us.

Now, an hour later, the mist is thinning and I can see landscape of fields and trees leading up to those hills. It is a relief and a joy when life’s fogs thin and disappear and we can, once again, walk with confidence as we see exactly where we are going.

However thick the mist you are navigating today, may your inner eye focus on the promise of the Kingdom. The road may be rough and you may feel you are driving blind, but God guides your every step when you surrender the controls to him.

Martin Luther King day. A day when a man of God, a man of courage and colour, who led his nation towards the promised land, is honoured. I read this morning of the extraordinariness of his life, and how, the day before he was shot and killed, he said these words in a speech: ‘I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.’

May we all walk through the mist, as courageous and confident as this inspirational leader was. May we walk with integrity and faith knowing God leads us to the Promised Land.

 

They don't know what they're doing

 

Thinking this morning about the astonishing grace of Jesus who, as a Roman soldier knelt beside his broken body stretched onto that cross, hammering in the iron nails, prayed, ‘Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.’

I look at our world with dismay and anger but am challenged by my Saviour’s lavish love. In extreme pain I can only vaguely imagine, and with love in his heart I can only aspire to, he saw the enemy’s face up close. The soldier was following orders, doing what he had to do for his own sake. Maybe he was sweating doing it. Maybe he was recoiling with every hammer blow, or maybe he had grown blasé to the pain of others. Maybe he didn’t really care.

Jesus saw his heart, and whatever he saw, he loved him still.

Prayer is powerful. Prayer for one’s enemies, while under attack by them, is most powerful. By the time Jesus had died, one of the soldiers, at least, had recognised that ‘truly this was the Son of God’. Jesus’ prayer in extremis was answered.

‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting love.’ John 3:16

Father, help me to abide in Jesus as I pray today. Especially as I pray for those I see as enemies. Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.

Go fly a Kite!

 

In the cool recess of the garage on a warm southern California spring day, my Dad coached me in the construction of a kite. Every spring, Emerson elementary school had a kite-flying competition with prizes for all sorts of categories: biggest, prettiest, highest flyer, etc. I was eager to enter, hoping to win.

We started with tying two bits of balsa wood together in the form of a cross. The cross was foundational. We stretched tissue paper over the form, decorated it, and then Mom appeared with some old rags. I thought they would ruin it, make it ugly. But without a tail, Dad explained, the kite would be uncontrollable. The rag tail would give it weight and balance and prevent it pitching wildly in the wind. Finally, we tied the ball of string to the cross, and I was ready to fly.

I didn’t win. But I had fun, working with my Dad. A warm memory.

I noticed that cross in my prayer window this morning, and I thought about myself. I am like the tissue paper (except that I have choice!). I choose to stretch out on that cross: ‘I have been crucified with Christ’. And as I align myself with Him, so the wind of the Spirit catches my life and lifts me higher and higher above the darkness and despair.

I confess that I’d quite like to lose that rag tail. It’s twisted together from the yuck of life: the duties and responsibilities, the set-backs and challenges, the difficult situations and people. But without the check of those things, perhaps my stability would be lost and I would pitch and dive alarmingly. Those things that I find most tedious and concerning are the things that keep me depending on Jesus.

Just over the weekend, a new situation developed with Mom’s care which could have sent me into a steep dive. Instead, as I clung to that cross, cried out to God to help (remember Isaiah 41?), he sent a dear cousin to come alongside me and make some calls. The situation was a raggy tail but the solution was a fresh blow of the wind of the Spirit which has sent me sailing high this Monday morning.

It’s a bit too windy here today, but one day soon I think I might just go fly a kite.

 

The way of the Cross

 

I loved it when I saw it a few months ago in one of those rarest of shops – a Christian bookstore. Mhairi took note and there I found it, under the tree on Christmas morning with my name on it.

As I sat in the prayer window gazing at it this morning, I enjoyed the light penetrating the narrow outline of the cross. For the joy set before him, Jesus endured the cross.

I had awakened to a situation concerning Mom’s care, and immediately gone downhill with the on-going nature of it, where I have to make decisions from time to time about things which I know very little about. Not earth-shattering, but challenging because of the great distance between us. Deep sighs had escaped me when I’d read the email, but now, gazing at this reminder of the cross, and having been boosted by a Scripture in my daily reading, I am ok.

We are all called to take up our crosses. For the joy set before us. The way is narrow, Jesus cautioned, but on the other side is the vast expanse of light, pure and good and everlasting.

‘So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.’ Isaiah 41:10.

He’s reminded me of a couple of folk I can reach out to for advice. I see His hand in this, yet again, as I have to depend on Him and Him alone. So grateful for his blessings. New every morning. Great is his faithfulness.

 

Frozen Hearts

 

Yet more of the white stuff overnight. I emerge tentatively from the back door, eager to re-fill the bird feeders for the desperate wee creatures seeking sustenance, but I am cautious. Cautious with reason, for the temperature lingers at -8C and where the snow slushed in yesterday’s sunlight, today it is frozen in the morning’s overcast clouds.

I am grateful that we made a foray to the grocery store yesterday. Today, with Don nursing a bad cold and cough, and with the snow so hard-packed, I would not have been able to shovel a path or help dig out the car’s tires if they lost traction.

Yesterday’s snow could be lifted and shifted so that people and cars could move fairly freely. What was left in situ yesterday, however, today is frozen solid in place, and it would take effort and strength to dig it out.

Critical thoughts and attitudes, towards situations or individuals, if left in our hearts and minds, can soon harden into icy monuments of judgment and grudge which become increasingly harder to shift. Soft hearts can harden. Keep short accounts with God, I have often heard, and also with one another.

Jesus declares that he has come to set the captive free. Often we become captive to our own hard hearts and judgmental thinking. It is challenging to be quick to forgive, but God never asks us to do anything without giving us the strength and ability to do it. And he asks us to be quick to forgive, before temperatures can drop and freeze our grudges into place. As we forgive, so we will be forgiven.

There are public figures who I find challenging. There are probably private individuals, too, who push my buttons. Lord, I can’t clear my frozen interior by myself. I don’t want to find my heart increasingly hard, frozen in judgmental attitudes and self-righteous condemnation. Come, Lord Jesus. Set this captive free.

Forgive me, today, as I forgive those who offend me, Lord Jesus. And then, Lord, I will be free indeed.

Tiny dots of red

 

Our neighbourly farmer Matt came along in the afternoon and ploughed the driveway, shifting the drifts and leaving an even surface. So grateful to him. We were able to get out to replenish the milk this morning.

Overnight, though, there was more snow, and we awoke to another day of winter wonderland beauty. The trees stand glistening in the sunshine against a backdrop of blue sky, slowly beginning to slide some drips and drops from the twigs and branches. But it’s freezing still out there, so by and large, even in midafternoon, the white-lined, otherwise-bare trees, still carry their weight of snow.

In this monochrome wilderness stands the rather stunted crab-apple tree. It’s a tree I’ve never liked. I wasted time trying to make crab-apple jelly once. Never again. So the apples still cling to the tree, and last week I nearly lopped them all off in an effort to sculpt a more pleasing shape.

I’m so glad I didn’t do it. Yesterday, we watched as three or four pigeons fought for those beautiful little red fruits. The weak twigs swayed under the weight of the big birds, voraciously devouring what they could.

Nothing is wasted in the economy of God. Even the fruits I dismiss as worthless come into their own at just the right time. Their startling dots of red bring a glorious relief to the otherwise black-and-white winter world.

Thinking spiritually, it’s easy to conclude that others’ fruits are more beautiful, more useful, more Godly even, than our own. I know I can do that. But as I watch the pigeons gratefully pecking at the crab-apples, I remember the words of The Teacher: He has made everything beautiful in its time.

I’m looking forward to some of my crab-apples coming into their own. Maybe this is the year. Maybe this is the time. Maybe not. What I do know is that God rejoices in every offering we make him, however humble it may be.