Be still

The Minutiae

I think someone has put me on a High Speed Rail Link. Except there doesn’t seem to be a start and a finish; rather it is a loop of intricate curves and patterns but which essentially just keeps going round and round.

I’m frustrated because I had hoped to introduce a more sedate speed to Advent. Maybe that sounds like a joke, since Advent is the lead-up to Christmas, but I don’t plan to run around all the shops being driven crazy by those dreadful modern Christmas songs. I thought that I would be able to slow down and focus on an advent meditation to really prepare my heart for the coming of Jesus into the world, which we mark at Christmas.

But instead I’ve been on a whirlwind tour of hospitality, of cooking and cleaning and volunteering for various things, interspersed by the Dog Walks.

Perhaps in the end, it will be Dusty’s dailies which keep me sane.

So fractured has my time been, though, that even on these daily walks I’ve struggled to focus, to find a peaceful cohesion to my thoughts, to really slip into the presence of God. 

Be still and know that I am God.

A wise man (or woman?) wrote that thousands of years ago. Sometimes I fear that if I am still, I am unproductive, and therefore the world may collapse round my ears. 

It can seem almost sinful to be still. 

But it doesn’t say just Be Still. To just Be Still might imply I have gone to sleep. No, it says Be Still and know that I am God. 

Be still and know. If I’m too busy, I don’t have time to know. To know that God is God. And to know him.

I must find a way to be still tomorrow, and know that God is God.

Good News!

Good News!

Yesterday I got a phone call and as soon as I heard the voice on the other end, I knew by his tone that it was good news. Wonderful news which was longed and prayed for. I not only wanted to shout Hallelujah and Praise the Lord, because I know he is the one who made it possible, but I also wanted to shout the news out to friends and family.

So I did – to a few. 

Today I have an email asking me to refrain from sharing this until it is made public officially. Oops. Too late. I can back-pedal now and button my lips, as my dad would have said, and I have emailed the friends I shared with but actually, the news is out in a modest fashion. 

Thank goodness I didn’t tweet it. I might have, being new to this social medium and enthusiastic about the Twitter Bug.

Good news is for sharing, of course, but sensitively, and at the right time and in the right way. I’m sure Mary didn’t rush out from her encounter with the angel Gabriel and shout out her good news. We aren’t told how she broke the news to her parents, or to Joseph, but we can be sure it would not have been good news to their ears until the truth of it – God to be born as man through a virgin – was accepted.

This is still the best news the world has ever known, or ever will know. That God, the Creator of the universe, chose to be born into humble circumstances in a miraculous way, but then to live a very ordinary life as if he were an ordinary human being. He was a refugee, a man without a home of his own, a pariah to the authorities, a joke to the soldiers, a martyr. 

His truth, though, is the truth, and he was vindicated on the third day in the tomb, when he rose again to life. 

The great news of the child in the manger is awesome when we know the whole story of his life on earth. Jesus Christ, Saviour. 

That good news is not to be suppressed. But my mouth will keep mum about yesterday’s good news – though in my heart, I’m dancing.

Fabulous or Ferocious Friday

Freezing temperatures outside - frozen puddles, frost on the bushes, ice on the road. Slick and slippery and treacherous.

Or fabulous. I lift my eyes to the hills. And I see an ice blue sky, streaked by a few streams of grey cloud. I see trees with bare branches lifted high. Although in the forest this morning I encountered a graveyard of trees uprooted by yesterdays ferocious winds, praise the Lord none of the trees on our drive have been tumbled, and all still stretch up to the sky. Long may that continue.

Fabulous. I've spent the morning delivering church magazines, chatting to friends, doing a fair bit of walking, and now about to walk again, to give Dusty her afternoon stretch. She's ready and waiting outside, probably with icicles forming under her nose (only kidding...)

It's all your point of view. Your frame of mind. We've had a dreadful week with technology failures, some not yet rectified. But we've had a special week, seeing Doug and Joey before they head for Oz today, speaking to Jamie and Chrisie, and Robbie, catching up. Hosting a very friendly, wonderful young man from Spain, and trying to help him improve his English (which is pretty good already, I must say...)

It's all in the spin. And the spin determines which direction the next few hours will take. I can feel defeated by the rubbish telephone line and the email problems, or I can feel victorious because of the relationships renewed this morning, and because at the end of the day, all that matters is that I know that in it all, God is with me.

He does care. Don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise. If he didn't, would he have subjected his only, beloved son to torture and hideous death. I don't think so.

Disruption

It wasn’t enough to have the broadband only working intermittently. 

Now the Northeast of Scotland is being battered by severe storm winds which, this morning, turned off the lights. And the heat. And the electric shower...

So here I am in Don’s office, trying to catch up emails, send in an article which is due today, and remain calm and unruffled despite the onslaught.

Is it just my perception, or do ‘things going wrong’ gather their own momentum, like a cyclone, and begin to cause disruption in more and more areas? 

When I moaned to my friend in a text this morning about our power going out, she replied that I shouldn’t worry, God’s power was still working.

That’s right. Through it all, God’s power continues to work. The things I stress about here are a blip in the course of time. 

Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Yesterday he created the world. Today he is with me in it. And forever – wow. Something other-worldly, for sure. No power outages, or intermittent broadband.

Staying Connected

Ten or fifteen years ago, we connected to our friends and family far away by snail mail or the telephone. With the advent of internet, at first we could email as often as we wanted to for free, and now we can Skype. We’ve become accustomed to sharing our lives on a daily basis with those we love who live far away.

We are currently experiencing internet problems. We have intermittent connection; the phone company is sending out a new router, and we are limping along, watching anxiously for the blue light which indicates broadband is on and we can connect again.

I feel bereft, cut off from the daily Skype calls to my mother and the frequent email exchanges with Mhairi and others. People know that I check emails regularly so I fear that if they don’t hear back from me they will feel offended or assume I am in agreement or disagreement or will appear at a certain time for a meeting.

There are more serious repercussions of course, as Don tries to research an order in the brief online moments. 

The Israelites could only connect to God through Moses. He was the divine go-between. After Moses, they had to go to a special place, the Temple, and connect to God through the priests.

Jesus came and abolished that requirement. Because of his sacrifice, we can connect to him from anyplace, at any time. We don’t have to be anyone special. We just have to come with an open heart and a trusting spirit.

There are no routers that can go on the blink. No phone lines that can get full of static. No stress in connecting to God through the Prince of Peace.

Whew.

Space

Space.

Not outer.

Inner.

Although very often the outer can affect the inner, for good or for bad.

We have a big house. We enjoy hosting B&B guests. We also enjoy hosting friends. Right now we have someone who is kind of a mix between the two, and that is less easy, because it means someone is in my kitchen who is connected to me through a rather thin thread of relationships.

He is very nice. We are doing fine. But there is something about finding the boundaries which will keep us both happy. 

Establishing our outer space, so that our inner space can function well.

Sometimes, though, our inner space overflows to the outer space. Like yesterday afternoon at The Well, a space for coming together as the family of God and drawing near to Him as one body. Listening together for his word to us. Lifting him high in worship and praise.

Sometimes just sitting in silence together. Just enjoying ‘being’. Being with God, together, consciously.

Space. When we are one in the Spirit...when we can come together into the presence of God the Father, through God the Son Jesus, via God the Holy Spirit...individual space disappears and we become ‘one’, the Church, the bride of Christ.

Inner space overflows into outer space. And it’s beautiful.