Turbulence

The wind is living up to its March-reputation today. It is whining and howling round the house, slamming doors and rattling windows and being a general pain. 

I don’t like the wind. 

It seems relentless as it blows. It can come in wild bursts or blow steady and strong. Don’t like either. It can break off branches, or pick up debris and fling it into your face or onto your head. For contact lens wearers, the dust is a menace. 

It can bring down telephone wires and disconnect communication channels. Someone in our area has been waiting for 6 weeks for the company to re-connect him after the last big blow.

It’s the unpredictability I hate, and the fact that I can see few redeeming features to its activity. Oh I know globally it does the whole weather thing, but here, in my garden, it does nothing but tear down and spoil things.

Every morning I pray that the Lord will enable me to handle all that comes my way, a surprise or expected, with grace and love, trusting that he has allowed it to touch me for some reason. Today I have felt blown about in more ways than just by the wind outside. 

Nothing horrendous, but lots of medium-sized niggles. Anxieties about family. Concern for health. That wearing back pain. Mistakes and criticisms. Work to be done which I had intended to do this morning, but my day has been hijacked and it will not get seen to today. 

Through my mind has just flashed a song which was popular in prayer groups when I was first born again. ‘Wind, wind, blow on me....set me free...the blessed Holy Spirit.’ How I loved that chorus. I loved singing, ‘wind, wind, blow on me’! Funny, when my feelings for the wind are not so positive.

The Holy Spirit is likened to the wind. Unpredictable. Blows where he will. Can’t be pinned down. 

Some Christians don’t really ‘do’ the Holy Spirit. His activity was for the early church, they may say. Now we have the Bible we don’t need his constant intervention and activity. To my mind, experience, and the way I read the Bible, they are turning away from an important aspect of God.

I wonder if this aversion to the Holy Spirit is like mine to the physical wind. Folk like to be in control. They don’t like something to happen in church (or anywhere else perhaps) which wasn’t allocated a time-slot for, which doesn’t seem quite normal, which has no explanation and may feel like it has no end. 

The thing about the Holy Spirit is he is God, an integral part of the trinity, and as such, he is love and nothing will happen which he hasn’t allowed. The wind of the Spirit may seem wild and out of control, but it isn’t. Out of our control, perhaps; not outside of God’s.

And neither is the wind blowing outside my door. So off I go to walk Dusty again...

Downwardly Mobile Swans

Dusty and I circled round the back of the woods and began to head towards the road. Behind me, in the air, I heard a beating sound, like the sound of bellows blowing wind into a stubborn fire. I looked back.

Two swans descended in tandem, tracing a gracious circle in the air before disappearing from my view. I knew where they went.

The local laird dredged out a ‘duck pond’ – complete with shooting ‘hides’ – several years ago for his own private use. I’ve not seen him or the game keeper there for a long time but that’s not to say they don’t still come and shoot wild ducks in season. 

My swans floated on the surface of the pond, nibbling at pond weed, graceful necks twisting and turning. There is a pair of breeding swans at a garden centre pond a few miles away, and I wondered if these two were having a day out from there. 

In the UK, only royalty can eat swans, by law. I would imagine that confers a certain protection on them, so that they can land on duck ponds with impunity, without fear of being shot. By extension, perhaps their very presence on the pond affords a protection to any ducks which might otherwise be the target for the laird’s table.

Graceful, royal birds protecting ugly ducklings just by their presence.

It reminds me of Jesus, who left behind his glory in heaven to take on the ugly duckling garb of humanity, only to rise to everlasting life. His identification with us gives us a protection from the enemy whose aim it is to destroy us. Staying near to Jesus is similar to a duck staying near to a swan. 

And the other thing about Jesus which I see in this rather goofy analogy, is that though we are all ugly ducklings now, because of his sacrifice for us, we shall one day be swans, full of grace and beauty. 

All because of Jesus.

Brokenness

Last week I opened a cupboard door and a good pie plate fell out and smashed all over the tile floor. Of course it wasn’t one of the everyday pyrex ones but a specially deep and nicely fluted one. However, I’ve never been one to cry over broken crockery. As long as nobody is hurt, it’s just an object and can be replaced if necessary. 

Standing beside the car yesterday I noticed a nasty scrape above the well for the tire. It’s in the same place we just had fixed and repainted for a similar scrape, gotten from parking too close to a wall. I’m not naming names, but I didn’t do it. However, I’ve never been one to cry over a scratched car, either. I like a car to look nice, but at the end of the day it is just a vehicle to transport us from one place to another. As long as nobody is hurt, it’s just a car.

I’ve been praying for a lot of brokenness in peoples’ lives lately. Broken marriages. Broken relationships between parents and children. Broken friendships. Broken hearts. 

Broken lives. These I cry over. These I pray for.

 

It seems everywhere I look I see scrapes and scratches and even apparently total smashes in people’s lives. There are people with heavy hearts and long faces, spirits sagging into despair as they lose hope that it will ever get any better.

Jesus went into the Temple once and picked up the scroll of Isaiah and read from what we call chapter 61, identifying himself as the person described. ‘...the Lord has anointed me to ...bind up the broken-hearted...to comfort all who mourn...to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.’

That was Jesus’ mission statement. That was his purpose in coming to earth as a man. And he did it, and he still does it, every day. Sometimes miraculously in one fell swoop. Sometimes incrementally, almost unnoticeably. 

If you are reading this from a position of brokenness – if your heart is despairing and expectation of restoration lies dormant or even dead - then I pray, as Paul did for the Romans, ‘May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.’

God is faithful, and he will do it.

Heart Throb

Today I participated in a research project for a cardiology student from the university. He needed volunteers of a certain age so Don and I stepped forward. Well actually, Don stepped forward and I was dragged. I feel like I spend enough hours in waiting rooms for appointments, and I was sure my heart was fine anyway. Probably not much interest to the student.

However, Don persuaded me that it would be good to make sure our hearts are, in fact, fine. So we went, and I have to confess that I’m glad I did.

Not because he found anything sinister or threatening. But because of the glimpse I got of a miracle.

I lay on my side facing the computer screen as the student positioned the scanner in the right places to get the optimum pictures of my beating heart. I saw the valves opening and shutting. I heard the swooshes of blood as they pumped through the chambers. I saw explosions of red and blue on the screen, indicating which blood was going in, and which was coming out, of my heart.

The technology is amazing – the scanner, the computer, the things it can measure. But the technology is nothing compared to the human heart.

For over six decades this heart has never had a break (well, actually, there have been a few heartbreaks!) No stoppages. No going on strike. No just pausing for a minute or two. Day in, day out, sitting, running, sleeping, climbing stairs, that incredible muscle has never paused or stopped.

We are fearfully and wonderfully made, the Bible says.

Who can deny there is intelligence behind the creation of the beating heart?

Lion or Lamb? Is there a choice?

In like a lion, out like a lamb. The month of March, that is.

Well, this morning it was just a gloriously sunny morning. The snowdrops and crocus look jaunty in the glare, and the daffodils look as if they might burst open within the next week or two.

Lamb.

But then I got out there with Dusty and needed my normal dog-walking garb (2 shirts, a sweater, a fleece and a windbreaker, an earwarming headband and my hood up – oh, and gloves of course!). The breeze was bitter and negated the watery warmth of the sun. 

Lion.

Of course it’s only an old wives’ tale, a saying common to California and to Scotland. Mind you, they were having storms in California yesterday, so if they continued overnight I guess they can count on a reversion to their usual paradise-type weather by the end of the month. 

Bit trickier over here to determine as most of the time it feels like a lion to me.

Funny that the weather would be commonly characterized by two animals associated with Jesus. I just noticed that. 

He is called the Lion of Judah. C S Lewis uses Aslan to represent Jesus in his Narnia stories, giving him both a cuddliness and a ferocity. When he walked on earth, Jesus displayed total self-control of what were definitely awesome powers. He told his friends he could call legions of angels to defend him if he wanted. He commanded the wind and the waves to be at peace, and they obeyed. People noticed that he taught with authority. He healed the sick and raised the dead and cast out demons. 

And he challenged the ruling elite with harsh words intended to make them recognise their ungodliness and turn back to God.

He is also called the Lamb of God. John the Baptist first identified him as that as Jesus approached the Jordan River to be baptised. Look, he said, here is the Lamb of God. The last book of the Bible speaks of a ‘lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the centre of the throne’ in heaven, and states that the ‘Lamb at the centre of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’

Oh, I like the sound of that. Well, I like the sound of springs of living water and no more tears. I am not so keen on the image of Jesus as a slain lamb, the ‘scapegoat’ who carried all of my failures, inadequacies and just plain sins so that I can one day enjoy that living water and a time without tears.

Jesus is both our Redeemer/Advocate/Protector, and our Saviour/Friend. Lion and Lamb. The Bible also prophesies that one day the lion will lie down with the lamb, rather than eat her. Hard to believe in this tough world we inhabit just now, isn't it? But it is true.

 

I’m hoping that March will go out like a lamb. Headed towards Easter, where we see both the divine Lamb on Good Friday, and the Victorious Lion on Resurrection Sunday.