New Nest

A pale blue sky is scattered with individual white clouds, like a Monet painting. The flowering cherry tree is full and heavy with blossom. There is no wind this morning, just the lightest of breezes.

We watch a robin fold himself into the birdhouse opposite the kitchen window. The birdhouse nestles amongst a holly bush, planted there by a bird or the wind. He’s out again. Then she emerges and darts off. They are busy arranging their nest for the new life they expect any day.

Walking through this week with Jesus. Walking towards the cross. Death, not life. But Jesus didn’t hesitate to embrace the cross, because of the ‘joy set before him’. His focus was not on the death and struggle but on the life and glory beyond.

He had been busy for three years, preparing the nest for those who would believe and love him.

In these dark days of lock-down and endless news coverage of pestilence and death, when fear of becoming one of the statistics sits heavy on our minds, may we focus instead on the joy set before us. Because Jesus endured the cross, and entered glory after he was powerfully raised from death to life, so we, having endured whatever we are called to bear, can be assured that eternity in his glory awaits.

Jesus has gone ahead to prepare a place for us. His was an eternal perspective. As we share in that perspective, joy overwhelms and peace fills us. There is no room for fear. Only love, deep love and gratitude.

Call out the Gold

Back from my walk, I strolled round the garden to see what’s happening. I was surprised to see wallflowers budding and beginning to show colour. I planted them last year, given them by my neighbour, and didn’t know whether to leave them in for another year or pull them out in autumn. I’m glad I left them in.

It’s lovely to find new growth where things appeared dead. 

Kris Vallotton coined a phrase, ‘call out the gold’, in reference to seeing the good in every person, prophetically or otherwise. I pray that this might be my aim today and every day, that when I consider anyone else, I ‘call out the gold’.

That’s what God does with us. Even when we were still sinners, he saw something within us worth redemption and Jesus came and died for us. Even when we mess up, he still looks at what might appear dead, and sees green shoots of life and beauty.

The message of Easter. So fitting for springtime!

New Life

A blanket of black, slimy leaves lies on the flower bed, covering what lies beneath. Tangled with the leaves are limp stalks of last year’s flowers, spotted with decay, broken and dead.

The weather yesterday was spring-like, so when I got a few moments, I wheeled the barrow beside the flower bed and clipped away the stringy stalks, scooped up the dead leaves. As I worked, I uncovered the shoots of new life. I stepped gingerly on the ground in order to reach the back, wary of wounding any of the tender daffodils, crocus and snowdrops breaking through the earth.

These onion-like bulbs lie brown and dormant most of the year, but time and season are beginning to draw them out of hibernation. From what seemed dead, new life is sprouting. Fed, protected even, by what lay above for the last few months.

The miracle of life. God’s gracious gift to us all. May he use that which is dead in us to feed new shoots of hope and faith. He is good. He is faithful. He is at our right hand. He will not leave nor condemn. May I – may you – focus on him. His ways are not my ways, but his ways are right. May I humble myself before him, and follow, repentant and forgiven, rejoicing in the one who made me, who died for me, who lives in me. Without him, there is no life.

May he use my failures, use my disappointments, use my hurts to make more room within me for his Spirit to live. May my brokenness reveal his light. May his joy be my strength, today and every day.

Jesus, all for Jesus. All I have and am, and evermore will be.

Monday Morning

Monday morning. The start of a new working week. I’ve just heard of a new baby girl born into the wider family last night. The start of a new and precious life. Welcome to the world, Baby Mathieson!

Spring is the season of new life. We see it all around, in the lambs gambolling (not gambling!!) in the fields, in the budding on the apple trees and the flowering of the cherries. But new life isn’t restricted to springtime. We have babies incubating in precious mums we know, waiting for their moment of birth in late summer, autumn and winter. 

New spiritual life isn’t restricted to seasons either. My new life, being filled with the Holy Spirit and set on fire for God, did in fact occur just after Easter thirty-seven years ago, but my spirit had been incubating within the Father’s heart forever. 

God loved the world so much – not just a chosen few but the whole world, every individual – that he sent his most precious and only Son Jesus to bring them home to him. Home into the crucible of Love. Love that never gives up on anyone, no matter what’s going on in their lives right now. 

At the start of this new week I remember that and challenge myself not to write anyone off but to look deeper and prayerfully seek to draw out the gold in the lives of everyone I meet today, tomorrow, from now on.

Whose fault?

When Jesus and his friends ran into a man who had been blind since birth, the friends wanted to know whose fault it was. In the thinking of the time, misfortune was the result of sin. Being born blind – did that indicate sin of the parents or was a baby capable of sinning while still in the womb? That was the gist of their question and it was a familiar point of debate at the time.

Jesus turned it on its head. Nobody’s fault, he says in effect. Stop looking for someone to blame and instead see what good you can bring out of the situation. In this case, Jesus was going to use the man’s ailment to illustrate his claim to be the light of the world. He would heal his physical and his spiritual blindness.

We live in a blame culture, where we often seek to shirk responsibility and instead identify something or someone else to blame. By looking back we can get sucked into a mire of recriminations, and as we identify a culprit we usually find that we ourselves rise up a few notches in our own estimation. 

But basically we’re all the same. We all make mistakes and do things wrong. And we live in what we Christians call a fallen world, so that bad stuff happens which has nothing to do with what we or anyone else may have done. It’s just the way it is.

Jesus counsels us to look forward. What can we do in the situation in which we find ourselves? How do we redeem the situation so that good can come out of it?

Vision. Hope for the future. Redemption from the past. That’s what belief in Jesus as Saviour and Lord gives you. A new focus. A new life.

Just beginning to gear up for Christmas here. Starts with Thanksgiving this week. More on that another day.

The miracle of new life

The miracle of new birth. We think of that especially in spring, not in autumn, but this morning I became a Gramma for the first time as one of our sons and daughter-in-law became parents to Felicity Catherine Le Morrison. 

Felicity is beautiful. She is perfect. Even the paediatrician examining her said that. Perfect. Felicity did nothing to be beautiful and perfect. She just received the gifts from the Father in heaven who loves and created her.

Before he created her in the womb, the Father knew Felicity. He knows the plans he has for her, plans for good and not for harm, plans to prosper her. He has prepared good things in advance for her to do while she is on this earth. She was born for such a time as this. She is created in the image of God.

Felicity can’t do anything for herself yet. She needs to be fed, washed, changed, loved, carried, cradled, sung to. But a year ago, Felicity was still a glimmer in her Father’s eye. And now she is here. 

I am so excited to see what God has in store for wee Felicity, loved so much by the Father that he sent his only, and much beloved, Son to die for her, as if she were the only person in the world. He didn’t die because she was independent, good, successful, beautiful, or anything else. He died because he loves her and wants to spend eternity with her. 

The miracle of new birth. I remember when I was born again – not the first time, but when I gave my heart and soul and mind and spirit to Jesus and invited his Holy Spirit to live in me. That was an amazing miracle which I didn’t deserve.

The miracle of life. Gratitude doesn’t seem enough, but that’s what I give to my Lord tonight. Heartfelt gratitude for the safe arrival of wee Felicity. Praise Him.

Beauty from Dead Wood

Last week I spoke about the devastation left on the road verge by the JCB operator who used his machine to chew its way through the roadside plants, from honeysuckle to damson and cherry trees to the humble broom and gorse. 

Today, much to my delight, I discovered that on top of the wreckage of the mauled gorse there are sprouts of some sort of golden fungi which are actually quite beautiful. They are of a deeper hue than the ordinary flower of the gorse and seem to be bursting out of the torn stems and branches strewn on the ground.

No matter how wrecked a life looks, there is always an opportunity for new and beautiful growth. 

The nature of God is so good, that when he looks at your life or mine he sees infinite possibilities for new sprouts of beauty. 

Perhaps your circumstances or a situation in your life today seems like a scorched battlefield, but wait, prayerfully wait. God is at work to bring beauty from ashes because his nature is always to love, to create, to bring us blessings which none of us deserve.

Wow.

Spring

Walking Dusty through the familiar woods yesterday and still struggling with aftermath of the flu, my thoughts closed in on myself. Then, suddenly, I was aware of the difference. 

The landscape is still splattered with pockets of snow, which continues to drift sporadically from the sky. The wind hasn’t lost its biting edge. The sun peeks through occasionally, but generally keeps a low profile. To all intents and purposes, it could still be winter.

But the woods are alive with the sound of music, the music of spring. Birds, no doubt a little confused by the chilly weather, nevertheless are into romance and are singing their wee hearts out to each other, hoping to find a mate.

The joy of renewed life.  Of that which has been dead coming back to life. Of course, in nature, it has only appeared dead over the winter as plants hibernated to avoid dropping dead with the cold. 

But today is Good Friday. Having been sick, I’ve missed the usual walks through this Holy Week which I like to do. I like to remember what Jesus did for me. I want to make sure that my gratitude is as real and as full as it should be. But I missed the services, and the walk with the cross.

This morning, though, as I stared out of my prayer alcove window, there glinting in the sun were 3 telephone poles, looking like 3 crosses. 

There are many ways of remembering what Jesus did for us. They don’t all involve going to church or hanging out with church people.

May God renew his life in you over this Easter weekend. May his hope rise within you as the sap rises within the plants and trees. May you know the peace of Christ deep within your heart, as your voice joins the ebullient birds’ chorus. Happy Easter.