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.
