Commit

Commit to the Lord whatever you do and he will establish your plans. A brilliant mathematician was interviewed on the radio this morning, and she said that she spends an hour every day working on her mathematical research. If she misses a day, she loses track of what was in her mind, of what she was thinking, so she is committed to at least one hour every day. She loves sitting in a busy coffee shop or bar, where ‘life’ swirls round her as people socialise, and she sits alone with a blank sheet of paper, thinking hard – so hard her brain hurts – and the ideas come and she writes. 

Committed. 

A blank piece of paper reminds me of writing, and I hear the challenge. How committed am I? I certainly don’t sit every day for an hour and make sure I put something down on a piece of paper/computer. I don’t sit with the Lord for an hour every day either. 

Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. That brilliant mathematician is making a difference in the mathematical world, which probably is making a difference in the ‘real’ world, too. She is delighted, and committed, to her calling.

I want to make a difference. This world needs all of our voices crying out for justice, for mercy, living in faith in the living God, in Jesus, who is the exact representation of the glory of the Father. How committed am I? 

I hear the challenge.

A time for everything

Quality of the Light

Walking west yesterday afternoon, we were treated to a vibrant canopy of colour. Streaks of reds, pinks, purples, greys, and blues ribboned the sky as the sun set. Yes, it was only mid-afternoon – this time of year our days are remarkably short. The light is always dampened down, as if it were only the first click of a three-way light bulb. 

But do I always want the bulb on full-strength? Isn’t it sometimes quite atmospheric and mellow to have the lamp on at the first or second stage? 

I know that many people find the diminished hours of daylight and the weakened strength of the sun a physical problem which leads to seasonal mood-swings. There are lamps which mimic a strong sun and which can restore a correct level of serotonin into a brain thus affected by the lesser light strength. 

For me though, although I dearly love summer heat and never get enough of it here in Scotland, there is something right about having a rhythm to the seasons, a change to the length of days and the appearance of the landscape and even the sky. 

The challenge in life is to seek out the good in whatever situation one is in. One hears so many complaints, so many moans about everything – the weather of course here in Scotland, and the politics and the economy or taxes or whatever – and it is refreshing to make an effort to concentrate on the good rather than the bad. 

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven. God has made everything beautiful in its time. 

He has also set eternity in the hearts of men.

Empty Canvas?

A few months ago I went to a couple of interactive lectures about physics and the universe, and my poor brain strained to assimilate even a fraction of the knowledge being conveyed with such enthusiasm and excitement. 

Last night I went to the first of a couple of talks on art history and the interrelatedness of art with the church and God. I thought – if I thought about it at all – that it would be pretty and informative but not that it would be a challenge, too. 

The artist, Peter, fizzed with enthusiasm for his subject but more than that – his enthusiasm was grounded in a huge amount of knowledge. He’s not ‘just’ an artist – he’s a thinker, who seeks to find ideas in the artwork he studies and tries to find his way forward into the ‘discussion’ which has, and is, going on. 

It’s a discussion of profound ideas. Who we really are. How we express our identity.  I never before saw any meaning whatsoever in paint scattered and splattered on a canvas, but now, even if I don’t particularly appreciate it as art, I understand that there is some thought behind it.

No wonder there is such an intertwining of art and spirituality. Art, as Peter explained it, is attempting to express visually what the spirit is all about. What life is all about.

It’s easy to skate along the surface of ‘being’. To appreciate art because of its aesthetic merits – the colours blend with the decor of the room, or the portrait captures the essence of someone’s spirit, or the lines and textures are pleasing to the eye.

But again and again last night, Peter talked about the ‘discussion’ in which artists are engaged. 

It’s a discussion which I’ve largely missed for decades. And it’s time, I think, that I started to listen, and perhaps enter in somehow.

Rabbits

Rabbits

Month with an R in it. My mother-in-law, apparently, always said ‘Rabbits’ on the first day of a month with an R in it. Strange, the customs we pick up and carry on. She was born and raised in Shanghai, so does that mean it was a Chinese custom, or a family tradition or just a joke between sisters?

Tomorrow will be Groundhog Day, made famous by the rather irritating film of the same name. How these odd customs ever got started is a mystery.

Some days feel like Groundhog Day the movie, though. Sometimes when a task is particularly tedious you feel like you’re continually reworking the same ground. 

Maybe there’s an element of truth in the concept of Groundhog Day the movie, in that life is an opportunity to grow. Wiser perhaps. More like God, hopefully. Less selfish and sinful, less stressed out and anxious. Less driven. More willing to stop and smell the roses, listen to a child laugh, a bird sing.

And because God is so merciful and gracious, we get more than one chance. If we’ve blown it, we just need to pick ourselves up, brush ourselves off, and rededicate ourselves to going forward again. 

And with God’s help, little by little perhaps, we will be changed.

Takes the tedium out of the Groundhog Day concept. There’s a challenge there. To go for it, right til the final breath.

That’s what I’m aiming to do.

Rabbits.

Whispers through the Trees

There’s a promise in the Bible that when we seek God with all our hearts, we will find him. 

I’ve always thought of it as a kind of reward. Like God is looking at me and thinking – ‘nope, not quite enough Michele. Keep seeking me.’ Or, ‘almost – a little more effort there and then I’ll let you have a peek at me. I’ll let you hear my voice.’

But today I was walking Dusty round Scolty – the hill next to Banchory. The day was a crisp, cold autumn one, and I paused to take a picture of some of the fall foliage. It looked like some of the trees were in flames, highlighted against the drab browns and greens of others. 

And it was like he was speaking through it. Not in words. But I understood that I was looking at a picture of the church, where some individuals are on fire for God, full of the Spirit and in love with Jesus, where others are just quietly fading away, unfed faith withering and dying, or just hanging on with a resignation to accept the status quo, to keep going as we’ve always done.

It dawned on me that I’ve been misunderstanding what I’ve read. That it isn’t that God will one day say, ‘Right, Michele, you’ve managed to seek me enough so I’ll open your ears to hear my voice.’ No. It’s that the more time I spend in His presence, the more fluent I’ll become in the language of love he uses to speak through anything and everything. He's always speaking but I'm not always attuned to hear.

I think I’ve got the concept. And maybe, like learning any language, it’ll take me some time to learn it. Even to be brave enough to believe I’ve understood and can speak back and be understood. And even longer to become fluent in it. 

But it’s a challenge I want to rise to.