Flagging

The sun pours out of a clear blue sky and once again, over-enthusiasm got the better of Don and me. Don planted out the beautiful salmon-pink impatiens we bought a couple of weeks ago, only to find them shrivelled and dead in the morning. An overnight frost took them away, like it did some of the marigolds I hopefully planted a few weeks ago.

We are over-eager to enter into the freedom of summertime joys. To see the colour return. To smell the fragrances of plenty. To watch the busy bees, the frolicking butterflies, and the hungry birds. To bask in the warm sunshine.

Now our hopes are dashed. Well, our hopes for profusions of yellows and pinks.

I am so ready for this pandemic to disappear. I thought I was bobbing along fine, but last night I couldn’t sleep. It’s like a bereavement, this being denied contact with family and friends. A deep grief, knowing these days bring changes which don’t reverse, especially in children. We can’t recapture those moments of first steps, of first words, of hilarious giggles and warm hugs, of crawling around the floor pushing trains or cars or building lego, of discovering a world of wonder and beauty with inquisitive grandkids. There will be more moments in the future, I know, but these moments, at these stages of development, will be gone.

But we can’t make the same mistake we made with our marigolds and our impatiens. We don’t want to invite disaster by re-engaging too soon. We have to reign in our impulses.

I found comfort in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18. ‘Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles (!!) are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.’

If you’re flagging like I am, I pray for you, too, that today God will help us fix our eyes on Jesus, so that ‘the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace’.

Smell the Slurry

It’s a gorgeous day here today. Sun blazing out of a clear blue sky, very little wind, though the temperature is pretty close to freezing. A fine winter’s day.

One joy of living in the country is the smell of fresh air captured on sheets and clothing which has dried in the open, so I quickly stripped a bed and did a couple of loads of washing to hang out. One load was already out there when the farmer arrived in his tractor, towing the orange slurry spreader.

In minutes the fresh smells of early spring were obliterated by the rank stink of cow slurry being flung across the field surrounding our house. 

Don dashed out to pull in the wash, which now hangs inside – who wants to smell like a barn?

Paul writes to the Corinthian church that Christians are the pleasing aroma of Christ to God and to believers, but to those who don’t believe, we are the stench of death. Maybe that’s why some atheists are so aggressively vitriolic against Christians. To them, we stink.

Physically, I’d rather smell like Chanel No 5 or even a pleasant shower gel than cow dung! But if I’m marinating in God’s presence and his Word daily, maybe my spiritual smell is determined more by the perception of the sniffer than the aroma of my spirit.