Snowdrops!

The sun blazed out of a bright blue sky. I say blazed but actually there wasn’t a huge amount of heat in it ... but it was glorious nonetheless. Felicity and I headed for the park and joined the other preschoolers and grandparents on the seesaw and the swings. As we headed home, the path parallels the River Don and the detritus and mess left by recent flooding is strewn randomly around.

Through the mess, though, the snowdrops have emerged and now bob their delicate heads in the light breeze. The snowdrops don’t have strong stems nor helmeted heads; they are fragile and demure. Yet drawn by the season and the sun, they are up. 

If they had appeared too soon, the raging floodwaters would have destroyed the wee plants. But now, after the storm, they have appeared in all their glory.

As I pushed this precious baby through the spectacular scenery, I was well and truly in the moment. It doesn't get better than this...

Adverse Circumstances

If I’ve learned anything through the years of my life, it is that I don’t know nearly as much as I think I do. School years measure academic knowledge, and if you put in the study you come out thinking you are pretty smart.

Until you move out into the world, and on into life. Competing voices vie for your attention, promoting their values, lifestyles and dogma. Some don’t appeal, ever, but others you might entertain briefly, or for a lengthier space of time. Or even for the rest of your life.

Much of life is one foot in front of the other, day after day. Routine. But sometimes other things interfere which cause us to pause and consider. Often those other things are not nice in themselves.

I know someone at the moment who is struggling at work, not being given good clear instructions but then being criticised when things are not done as expected. She is facing this situation as an opportunity to grow, and refuses to walk away. 

I know there are thousands at the moment flooded out in England. Day after soggy day the rains  come down and the floods rise up until they engulf the gardens and invade the kitchens. And still the forecasters predict more wet weather. Is this a time for some of those thousands, if not all, to reconsider values and aims, goals and meanings? 

I have had some routine hospital appointments this morning, always sobering as you rub shoulders with the chronically, long-term sufferers. Will my back ache ever ease? Or is this a time for me to reassess priorities and drop deeper into God to draw on his resources more fully?

Little Samuel was sleeping in the Temple when he was awoken three times in one night by a voice calling his name. Finally he was given advice from Eli, the priest, ‘Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening’. 

Samuel took Eli’s advice, and God shared a couple of secrets with him. 

One can’t  measure life experience like one can measure academic knowledge. And we never reach the end of the textbook until we end the final chapter of our lives.

Today I want to be open to hearing God’s secrets, if he wants to share them with me. I want to be open to new growth opportunities. And I look forward to the time when I am eager for things without having been prompted to want them, through adverse circumstances.

Winter-weary world

Winds whistle and whip the cold drops of rain in all directions. This is what my cousin calls horizontal rain, and I’m sure it happens in places other than Scotland but certainly, it does happen here.

The news is full of reports of the beleaguered folk in the southwest of England, some of whom have been living in a moated village for a month now since the flooding first began. Prince Charles paid them a visit yesterday, arriving in a tractor and wearing welly boots. His visit no doubt encouraged some people and raised the morale, but after a couple of hours, he left again. 

This morning the winds down there have uprooted trees from the soggy ground, sending them crashing across power lines and knocking out the electricity supplies, adding yet another layer of misery to people who have had too much water. And their royal visitor has gone.

So often in the Bible weariness is equated with dry, parched desert conditions, but a daily regime of grey skies overhead and flood waters underfoot is another recipe for creating weariness in people. 

Times of refreshment which the Bible promises the Lord will send may not always look like a bubbling brook. In our case, they look like clear blue skies and a powerful sun bringing warmth to a winter-weary world.

It’s hopeless to depend on the weather for refreshment from life. The Bible promises that ‘times of refreshment will come from the presence of the Lord’. 

Wherever you are today, may you experience the presence of the Lord, and the refreshment that only Jesus can bring.