Blush of new life

 

We awoke to overcast skies and a gentle rain. The field which encircles our house like a skirt has lain ploughed and brown for the last few weeks. This morning, after the rains, a blush of green has spread over the land. New shoots have sprouted. New life.

Full of promise. Beautiful.

Prayers can fall like gentle rain on the arid and parched situations in life. No prayer cried out to our loving God is ever forgotten, ignored or dismissed. It may seem a long time before those green shoots sprout, but sprout they will, though the plants which spring up may not be exactly those we had imagined and asked for. But in the wisdom of God, they will be the best, the ones which will grow, mature, and bear fruit for the world.

Lord, keep me constant in prayer. May I pray in the assurance that you are listening, that you are wise and loving and that at just the right time, new growth will spring up in those situations which seem arid and dry.

All that glitters

 

A few days away in Aberfeldy, with most of the family. The fourteen of us headed off for a hike to see the waterfall at the Birks of Aberfeldy. It wasn’t that long a walk, but it did involve a steeper climb than Don and I usually do these days.

Eliott and Callan are into rocks and stones, noticing their shapes, their colours, and particularly the glints of minerals that convince them of their value. Before long, Eliott (8) picked up a heavy cube of stone. He could not be persuaded to put it down; he could not persuade anyone else to carry it for him, so with grit and determination he carried it all the way up, and all the way down, to take home later. He was sure of its value.

What am I carrying today which glitters like Fool’s Gold, distracting me and slowing me down in my spiritual quest to live for Jesus only? Like Eliott, I have trouble discerning values, and don’t always listen to other people’s advice.

Lord, on this beautiful spring morning, please help me to abandon the burdens which are not mine to bear. I want to run my race with joy, not with grumbling. Thank you for the cross, where I can lay my sins and burdens down. And thank you for you loving invitation to be yoked with you, so that those burdens which are mine to bear are lightened through the sharing of the load with you.

As the finishing line comes ever nearer, I want to be running my best race for Jesus, radiating his love and grace, mercy and forgiveness, into the dark chaos of the world today.

 

 

Beyond the Cross

 

For the joy set before him, he endured the cross.

Jesus saw the light of God through the cross. He knew where he was going, after he had endured the cross.

I am back from a few days away with the family, wonderful days making memories and filled with laughter and joy. I’ve landed with a thud. My e-mail in box has half a dozen messages from Mom’s insurance provider. Things I need to figure out; a phone call I will need to make. There is also something I need to do by phone later today for her bank. Another situation I have to address concerning her accommodation. And it makes me feel weary, burdened and heavy-laden.

Over these last years, this is the cross I have been called to bear. I am grateful that my love for Mom is strong enough that I can bear it, with Jesus’ help. Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will refresh you, he says.

We are all bearing a cross. The joy lies in the conviction that beyond the cross lies peace, joy, freedom, love, life itself. Salvation.

I am so grateful for Jesus enduring the cross.

Dry and Weary World

 

The sun shone with springlike brightness, drawing both Don and me out into the vegetable patch where we continued to dig and weed and feed, preparing the soil for hopefully a productive planting.

Inside, I have been washing some windows and generally tidying up a bit, preparing the house to welcome visitors on the weekend. I have been cooking and baking, planning and buying, for a few days away next week with most of the family. (Sadly, not all, as Emirates cancelled flights from Brisbane, because they transited through Dubai.)

The Maundy Thursday night story in Luke details that it was as Jesus was still speaking words of guidance to his disciples, that Judas and the arresting soldiers arrived to take him prisoner. Jesus knew they were coming, and up until the last minute, he prepared in prayer. Not in sad farewell admonitions to his friends, but in heartfelt prayer with his Father.

Lord, as my tendency is to slide into Martha-esque preparations for Easter celebrations and reunions, please pause my busyness and draw me into quiet, contemplative preparations of my spirit. You, Jesus, prayed until the final moment; may I trust that with you there is always enough time.

May I walk with you through the sadness and brokenness of Thursday night and Friday, and into the bright new dawn of resurrection life on Sunday morning. Show me how to pray without ceasing for the brokenness of this world in agony, knowing that at just the right moment, the dawn will break and Jesus, the Prince of Peace, will appear with healing in his wings.

My whole being yearns for Jesus, in this dry and weary land where there is no water.

I Worship You

 

I worship you

I stand and sing

I worship you, Exalted King

To you I cling.

I worship you

I bow and kneel

I worship you

Lord, be revealed

I worship you, Exalted King

To you I cling.

On my chair lay a cross fashioned out of a strip of palm branch. I grew up in a tradition of symbols providing a touchstone with the divine. As a young teenager, I sat for many an hour with other church teens fashioning palm crosses to be distributed on Palm Sunday. The cross on my chair yesterday briefly took me back to those happy hours.

Then we stood to worship, singing Hosanna. Hosanna. In my upstretched hand I held the palm cross and waved it before my Lord and King. As I did so, I realised that I was not holding the cross lightly. I was clinging to it. Gripping it as with all my might.

The enormity of Jesus’ suffering on the cross for me gripped me. The unconditional, endless love of the divine Saviour as he hung there in agony, never giving up on me: it hit me with a wave of gratitude and humility. I sensed his presence powerfully as I poured out my heart to him.

Later, in sharing the profound experience I’d had, initiated by God through that palm cross, I explained that I recognised that I am totally clinging to his cross. Gripping it, more aware than ever of my absolute dependence on Him.

I sensed by others’ reactions that they wanted to extend compassion to me, thinking I was at a particularly low point. But no. Not low, but a new awareness of the absolute dependency we all have on the Cross of Christ. It is a delusion to assume we just need to hold tight when times are rough for us individually or globally. It reveals our pride, our independent streaks. Rebelliousness.

May we all be clinging to the cross today and every day as we walk with alert prayerfulness through this Holy Week, to the cross, through the cross and to the glorious day of victory and resurrection. May we all be exquisitely aware of our own dependence on his love and sacrifice and his saving grace.

Hosanna. Save us, Lord. Hosanna.

Blanket of Deception

 

In North Korea, a blanket of propaganda and lies has settled over the nation, blocking out the truth and deceiving many.  In Russia, a similar blanket has lowered over the populace, spinning out propaganda which distorts and denies truth. Autocrats around the world lie to their people, telling horror stories of the enemy and fueling a ‘them and us’ mentality.

The one in the west who voiced accusations of fake news is now the voice raised most often in promulgating it.

But this blanket of lies is not fire-proof.

The light is in the world, and the darkness cannot overcome it. May the fire of the Holy Spirit of truth flame brightly in the hearts of all who love Jesus, who is the Way and the Truth and the Life. And may that holy fire expose and totally incinerate those untruths being spread by the father of lies.

Lord Jesus, open hearts and minds and spirits to hear and see you, to receive you with joy and to serve you with courage and perseverance today.

Short-sighted

 

Other Radio 4 listeners might have caught the programme yesterday about eyes. I heard a few minutes of it as I drove between places.

My take-away was that developing eyeballs need exercise. When the eyes of young children are focused on screens, they grow too big and that makes them myopic. Yes, that can be corrected by glasses, but it can have other negative effects that come through later in life – an increased risk of developing glaucoma, for instance, macular degeneration, and maybe something else.

The antidote: the healthy development of children’s eyes hinges on their being outside every day, naturally exercising their eyes as they focus and refocus on things near and far.

God has given us so many ways to encounter him. Focusing too closely on just one way – be it through a particular preacher/teacher/writer, doctrine, nature, worship music, or even the Bible itself could distort our vision of the height, breadth, length and depth of the amazing God. I hesitate about adding prayer to that list, because surely one can never pray too much? But perhaps if the prayer is not well-informed by Scripture, teaching, nature and even experience, it could veer into a self-centred distortion of the reality of God.

I’m reminded of Jesus declaring, ‘I came that they might have life, life in all its fullness.’ Perhaps it is in the embrace of all the facets of life we are offered that we really gain a true perception of who God is.

I don’t want to have spiritual eyes which are myopic; I crave to have spiritual eyes which see as much of the truth of the glory of the God we worship as I can take in. I don’t want to slide into a spiritual blindness which results from too narrow a focus on too constricted an understanding.

On this glorious spring day, I intend to listen to hear God in the garden as well as in his Word.