Speak Jesus

All winter long, the dead stalks and flower heads have draped themselves across the flower beds and I’ve not even noticed them. I continued to nurse my back and shoulder and feared further damage if I did much of anything.

The incentive to throw caution to the wind came last weekend when we were needed to prepare the walls and woodwork in one son’s new flat. They’ve been under pressure. They needed a hand. I didn’t hesitate but stretched and bent, pushed and pulled, climbed up and down ladders and knelt on bended knee for four days.

Delighted then to find that neither back nor shoulder felt any the worse after the efforts. Perhaps the Pilates is paying off. 

So today, as most of the UK is buried to its knees in the white stuff, the northeast corner of Scotland has green fields and clear skies and the sun was out. So despite the temp being below freezing, I spent an hour making a start on clearing some of the autumn debris. 

I hadn’t noticed it, as I said. Or rather, I’d noticed it but it hadn’t bothered me because I felt helpless to do anything about it.

I suspect that’s a convenient excuse for spiritual laziness in me. That although I notice my spiritual antennae are dulled because of an overgrowth of dead attitudes, I ignore the mess because I just don’t feel up to it. I ask my heavenly father to help me to hear, help me to listen, when in fact I need to make a bit of effort myself. 

I need to immerse myself more in His Word so that I recognise his voice when he speaks. I need to spend quiet time just sitting and listening, meditating, so that when he does speak I am listening. 

I am struggling to learn Russian at the moment. A new alphabet, never mind a new vocabulary and words with awkward sounds. Poco a poco my dad used to advise. My goal is to spend some time each day studying so that it begins to become familiar and I can recognise the words and actually make the sounds.

My sheep know my voice, Jesus said. His followers recognise his voice. They did then; they do now. And then they speak his language. That’s my goal for 2015. To speak Russian. And to speak Jesus.

Half a Rainbow

Awoke to a sunny but blustery day, a hint of the summer which is fast fading mixed with the unmistakable announcement that autumn is round the corner.

Down the bottom of the field outside of the living room window, half a rainbow sprouted from the ground. I love rainbows. One of the best things about Scottish weather is the frequency of rainbows.

Inevitably the song is in my head. Somewhere over the Rainbow. The words betray such a poignant longing for a better place, beyond reach, out of sight, hoped for desperately.

I thought of my wee anxieties and they pale into insignificance next to the terrifying situations in much of the Middle East right now. How the displaced, bereaved, wounded and frightened people there must long for ‘somewhere over the rainbow’ as they run for safety and often find nothing but barrenness and emptiness, no shelter, no food, no water. 

Jesus told his friends, that in this world there would be trouble, but not to lose heart because he has overcome the world. Encouraging words to hold on to in times of trouble, but I’m thinking that people in these Middle Eastern catastrophes may well be unable to hold on to any words, even if they do know them. What they really need is the Word to hold on to them. 

When we have times of illness or loss, there can be a numbness that prevents us from remaining faithful even to daily reading and prayer habits. In those times, it is the church gathering round whose prayers uphold the sufferer. 

May we, the church universal, be gathered round those suffering appalling pain and loss and do the praying for them. There is a place, over the rainbow so to speak, and Jesus has gone there before us to prepare it. May the people in dire need today have their hearts comforted by the peace which passes all understanding, so that they may rest and be cared for by the God of the poor.

Give them a full rainbow today, Lord, to remind them of your faithfulness.

Stain Remover

So, the day after the wedding, family and friends gathered at the parents-of-the-groom’s home for a wonderful buffet. I’m not one for meat pies but I have to say the Melton Mowbray pie was fantastic. 

However, this is not about delicious pies, champagne or strawberries. It’s about red wine, and how for the third time in my life, someone taller than me has spilled a sprinkling of red wine across my shoulders. 

Not to worry, I reassured my hostess. I’ve got some red wine stain remover at home, and it always works. 

I hadn’t reckoned with a two day delay until I got home. Nor had I reckoned with a very nice white bolero sweater which could only be washed in cold water. I used my trusty spray and threw the sweater into the cold wash, only to be disappointed to discover four conspicuous dark stains still there after the cycle. 

I used the Vanish bar. Then the Fels Naphtha bar, a fifty-year-old remedy from the Midwest which my mother still swears by, and indeed, until now it has always done the trick on the hardest stains.

Nada. By now I was afraid that I would rub the fine knit into an ugly ball, so I let it drop back into the cold water and soak while I walked Dusty. 

It is still soaking, twelve hours later, but I do believe it is fading a bit. 

So the moral – besides always ensuring nobody with red wine is trying to push past behind you – is that even the most stubborn stains may eventually come out with enough soaking. 

My soul is pretty badly stained. Don’t know about yours. But I think that if the stains are ever going to come out, I need to soak in the Spirit, soak in the Word, soak in Prayer. 

Jesus says that he will make my sins whiter than snow. Now that’s the main stain I want removed. 

But I would be grateful, too, if when I wake up in the morning, the wine stain on my shoulders has disappeared.