Choices

Pheasants in the garden, nabbing the berries and last insects of autumn I guess. Flaming trees and glorious shades of berries. Yesterday’s torrential rain has segued into today’s grey skies, the sun playing peek-a-boo.

Soon heading off to LA, where the 14-day-forecast is for constant sunshine and high temperatures.

I love both, sunshine and warmth, autumnal and changeable.

Feeling so blessed to have change, to have choice. Praying for those caught in situations for which there seems to be no way out. Especially thinking of the Kurds in Syria.

May God make a way.

Make contact

I guess when you’ve been fasting for a month, it is all about the food. Food and friendship, laughter and chatter. 

Of course most of it was in Arabic; after the two or three words we know we are a bit stuck. But the smiles and the welcome and the hospitality of these refugee folks who have lost everything was lovely.

It was pouring rain yesterday when we arrived for the Eid celebration. The hall had been double booked so everyone was traipsing up the street to the town hall carrying their trays of special food, pushing buggies and holding umbrellas and dodging puddles. Nothing quite like a Scottish summer. It must be so different from Iraq and Syria. 

But there were no complaints, nothing but happy smiles, children playing with balloons, and the food, which was different and delicious. The motto of our church’s youth fellowship is ‘make contact, make friends, make disciples’. 

We have made contact, and will press on to make friends. It is a privilege.

Let it shine!

The theme of light and darkness is more frequently taken up during the Christmas period than in springtime, but I just love the light here in the northeast of Scotland at this time of year. Particularly the late afternoon light, as the sun begins to head west and sends long golden rays to bathe us in a warm glow. 

Days are stretching out, like a bear waking from hibernation; nights are shorter. 

Every day we are inundated with news of further horrors and brutalities committed near and far. 

Darkness would appear to prevail but no, don’t you believe it. The light has come into the world – Jesus – and the darkness will never overcome it. We need to pray with hope in our hearts and faith in our powerful God. We need to keep our eyes on him and trust in his unfailing love. We need to walk close to him, know him better day by day, and learn to rest and refresh and renew ourselves in him.

It is a battle which is raging right now – not just the physical fighting going on in Syria and Iraq and Ukraine but the spiritual struggle between light and darkness, good and evil. 

Jesus vanquished evil on the cross. What he did was not just for us as individuals to live happily ever after with him; it was so that his Kingdom can come, and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

May that be the prayer on your lips and in your heart today as we press on and press in to God, totally dependent on him and filled with hope and expectation for the future. Those who walk in the darkness are desperate to see the light that shines from Jesus through his believers. Let it shine.

Fat Adolescent Pheasants

Something caught my eye as I stood in the prayer alcove this morning. It was a fat little cock pheasant scurrying up the drive furtively glancing this way and that. Could his desire for the seeds and nuts spilled onto the ground from the bird feeders over-ride his fear of a predatory cat crouching in the bushes? 

Yes, it could, and close behind came the next wave of fat young pheasants ready for easy pickings at the bird feeders. They brought a big smile to my face. I daren’t go beyond that to thinking that we are just fattening these guys up for the pots of the shooters who raise them for that purpose.

Actually, this is a bit of hypocrisy, because I have a frozen pheasant sitting in my freezer waiting for the oven or pot. Not, I hasten to add, one that I fed from the bird feeder! This one was given to us, shot and cleaned and all the rest by someone else.

The bounty below the bird feeders tempts these adolescent pheasant chicks into a place of danger – from the cats who are generally inside during the day but occasionally have daytime excursions. I am thinking of those three young adolescent women who have somehow been tempted to join the Islamic forces in Syria and who have now disappeared into a black hole of circumstance beyond my desire to consider.

The predators will most certainly have pounced on them by now. 

Jesus told his followers to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. That is a tricky balance to strike. How do we maintain innocence while being shrewd to the ways of the world? 

Only through Jesus. Jesus’ challenges and advice to us are almost always beyond our own ability to achieve. The only way to ‘win’ through and live out the life he calls us to is in him. ‘Abide in me’ he advises. 

Abide. Listen. Read. Draw near. Don’t make quick decisions without praying, reading Scripture, talking with other Christians. Teach this to your children and your children’s children. This world is fraught with danger.

It is easy to slip into the fat teenage pheasant mode, and walk right into danger which is beyond our ability to escape.

Cloud Cover

Thick clouds continue to blanket the northeast of Scotland, plunging the temperatures below a seasonal norm.

But it is not a seamless blanket of gloom, thankfully. In fact, as I write it is as if a cotton wool covering is being torn apart in various places and the sunshine is penetrating, warming the air and encouraging growth and cheerfulness down here on the land.

I love the sky here, because it is always different, always changing. And the silver lining in the cloud cover is that when it breaks near the position of the sun in the sky, shafts of golden light beam down as if from heaven itself. To me it is the glory of God reminding me that he is there still, he is always there, whether or not I see him, whether or not I feel like he's active in my life or even with me at all. His promises never fail, that he is with me always right up until the end; his promises don't depend on my feeling him near, they depend on the faithfulness of his character. He keeps his promises.

Some countries in the world seem to be under a heavy blanket of unbelief. Violence is never far away in many countries, often predicated on religious intolerance and extremist views. This afternoon I'm thinking of Iraq and Syria, especially, and the Sudan and Nigeria, places where cruelty and despotism are never far away. I pray that God will break through that blanket of hatred and intolerance and shine his glory down on those beleaguered nations, that he will reach down and save those innocent people who are just trying to live their lives and who have very few choices.

Let your glory fall, Lord Jesus, and penetrate and dissolve the clouds of evil intent which cover so many nations.

Hope springs eternal

Having a dog to walk is such a blessing. She gets me out and moving even when I feel pressured by many things to do.

Dusty’s facial expression is often a snapshot of what hope looks like. When she sees me preparing to go out in the car, she sticks close and fixes me with a gaze with a transparent message of hope. When I sit to relax in an evening, she will often stand in front of me, again fixing me with a message of hope until she hears those magic, to her, words – ‘Pig’s ear?’

So this morning is glorious again and I took her round the ‘wet walk’ at Crathes, lingering longer at each of the watering holes to fling sticks which she retrieved as in days of old – leaping in with abandon. Oh, that I might still be so agile when I reach 7 x 12 years old.

The trees, grand and sedate, stretch up into a blue sky and I reflected as I walked about hope. Images of the news from Syria clog my mind, and I can’t make sense of that in relation to hope. But our Christian joy is that we have hope in Christ, and so my thoughts continued on the theme of hope.

I became aware of the web of tree roots which vein every path. Vulnerable to every passing hiking boot and urinating dog, the dirt round each erodes and exposes increasing amounts of root.

Sometimes we put our hope in things that are vulnerable to erosion. We put all our hope on a horse, perhaps (!), or in a person, or a job, or an examination. Dangerous to make ourselves so vulnerable.

The Bible teaches that hope in God does not disappoint. Again and again the psalmist charges the reader to ‘put your hope in God / in the Lord / in his unfailing love / in his word’. Isaiah writes that ‘those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.’ (40:31)

In the New Testament there are many references to hope as an anchor, in Christ, the hope of glory. 

So back to the tree roots, and my thoughts return to Psalm 1, which says that the man who is blessed by God is ‘like a tree, planted by streams of water.’ Its roots are deep, stretching down to the water source, away from the vulnerability of life’s storms and assaults. 

Even when I think of the horrors and atrocities around the world, crimes that make no sense and cause every caring person’s spirit to cry out and groan in protest, I know that the most effective and sensible thing for me to do, is to put my hope in the Lord. Be it soon or be it later, He will avenge.

And in the meantime, my responsibility is to go on hoping in him, and doing all that I can do as his hands and feet and bank account to help others, as long as I draw breath.

So thanks, Dusty, for your hopeful look this morning. It’s taken me on a journey.