Mirror, mirror

Cal framed his smiling wee face with the linked plastic fences of one of his toys.

‘I’m a mirror,’ he said.

‘So,’ I replied, ‘when I look at you I’m looking into a mirror, and I’m seeing myself as you, rather than me.’

As we look at those we love, we become like them.

So important to spend the majority of time looking at God. It’s the only way to become like him. All the rule-following only makes me grumpy. As I look at God, I am changed.

So easy. So difficult.

Choices

Pheasants in the garden, nabbing the berries and last insects of autumn I guess. Flaming trees and glorious shades of berries. Yesterday’s torrential rain has segued into today’s grey skies, the sun playing peek-a-boo.

Soon heading off to LA, where the 14-day-forecast is for constant sunshine and high temperatures.

I love both, sunshine and warmth, autumnal and changeable.

Feeling so blessed to have change, to have choice. Praying for those caught in situations for which there seems to be no way out. Especially thinking of the Kurds in Syria.

May God make a way.

Squirrelling

It’s that time of year.

When Dusty was alive, I would always carry a bag with me on our walks. I would gather pine cones and twigs to use for lighting fires once the winter set in. I felt like a squirrel, busy storing nuts for those cold winter days.

Summer doesn’t last forever. So important to store up for the days which may be bitter and cold. Nourishment from a storehouse is never so tasty as that freshly picked, but nevertheless, it is nourishment, and it can sustain life.

Heading off soon for two weeks of busyness and emotional challenge, moving Mom again. Mostly I will be drawing on the nuggets of wisdom and encouragement gathered now.  Living close to others, there is little privacy to draw near to God and listen. Only during the nights, when jet lag will probably enable me to snuggle in to my heavenly Father and know his love and peace.

Perspective. I will keep the cross in full view. All else then retains its correct proportion.

I lift my eyes

The dampness clamped right down to the ground. A watery sun suggested itself beyond the mist, hints of better things to come.

Meanwhile, we shivered as we walked, admiring the beauty of spider webs stretching between spiny thorns on the gorse lining the road. Starlings lined up on the overhead wires or swooped in synchronised exactitude above the harvested fields. Cows occasionally broke the stillness with their autumnal braying. What’s that all about?

Beneath our feet, leaves mouldered in soggy piles or shrivelled in crispy isolation. Pine cones brought down by Saturday’s wind sprinkled across the tarmac.

The nights are drawing in. A light frost shimmered on the grass yesterday morning. Autumn is here.

When engaged in unpleasant tasks, I find it so helpful to focus on the glories of this beautiful world God has given us to live in. I am so grateful to live in peace. So grateful to have friendly neighbours. So grateful for loving family, the NHS, good health, abundant food, flowers in a vase in front of me.

I lift my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help is in the name of the Lord, who has made heaven and earth. Praise him.

A miracle

Jesus did it all. All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain; he washed it white as snow.

My carbon footprint is huge. My aim is to reduce it. To drive less; fly less; eat less meat; use less plastic. But I find circumstances necessitate me driving more, flying more. The meat and the plastic are in my control, but when other pressures bear down, it’s often the easy option I choose. Not the ones that will have less of a negative impact on our planet.

I have to give this to Jesus, too. If he could wipe out the crimson stain of my sin, he can negate my carbon footprint. As I trust in him, he can guide my choices. He can influence my thinking. He can inspire my activism. He can change me.

It feels as if we are in a race to the bottom, spiralling out of control politically, as nation rises against nation. Some of our leaders are delusional, yet there seem to be no people of integrity and courage, of noble character, willing to stand up and depose them. Their actions and careless words bring death and loss, suffering and anguish, and still they speak. Still they sit in positions of power.

In the Bible, God looks down and cries out: is there nobody to stand against the evil?

He sent his son. Jesus.

The world is crying out. Peace, peace, but there is no peace. No real peace outside of Jesus.

Jesus is our prince of peace. He is the source of deep peace, peace beyond intellectual understanding, peace in the midst of turmoil.

He wipes away my sin. He guides me into responsible living choices. He heals my wounds. He mends relationships. He makes me brave. In the thick of things, he inspires my heart as I look to him. Peace. All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain; he washed it white as snow.

A miracle.

Thank God for Jesus

Backdrop: the Pacific Ocean. Foreground: a cluster of old people. Some I recognise. Most I don’t.

Fifty years ago, and more, I saw these people every day. We pondered geometry proofs together. We ploughed through Plato and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. We sweat through the subjunctive under the beady eye of Mr Bibiloni. We soared through the exquisite notes of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet under Mr Pappone’s baton.

In June, 1969, we donned caps and gowns, all 1200 of us, and as the rousing, emotive notes of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance played on a loop, we marched into the stadium on a balmy California summer evening. We marched in as friends, and out into the world, most of us never to rub shoulders again.

We marched out into a world writhing with pain: some graduating that night would soon die in the jungles of Vietnam. Most wanted to make love, not war. Flower power was at its height. We were determined to sort out the world and leave it in better shape than our parents did.

Well. We watch and wail as climate change wreaks havoc, mostly on the poorer nations of the world, so far. We meddle in wars and make them worse, or don’t meddle and make them worse. We have no more wisdom than did our parents. Our legacy is not one of which to be proud.

We are in dire need of a Saviour.

And now we are old. Or at least, they are. I wasn’t in the picture, living on the other side of the world for most of those fifty years. But anyway, apart from my friend who has stuck close through the miles and the years, if I’ve not seen them in all this time, how can we possibly have anything to talk about? Or, conversely, with so much to talk about, how can we ever stop talking again?

Summer is over. The rowan leaves have browned and dropped. But the berries are red, deep and vibrant red. Different. Still beautiful.

We are approaching the ‘jumping off place’. (Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Café). Some have already jumped. I am so grateful that, like a child leaping from the stairs into her daddy’s arms, when it comes my turn to jump, I am confident that my eternal daddy is ready to catch me.

We are all in dire need of a Saviour. Thank God for Jesus.

Stuck in the Mud

A voice calling at the back door (because the doorbell doesn’t work…). ‘Stuck in the mud. Help!’

Walking each other home is a lot like getting stuck in the mud sometimes. Here we are again, with inaccurate measurements on room lay-outs, trying to figure out scales and convert from inches to metric. I threw out my careful measurements of the furniture taken before the last move, so we are left trying to figure it from the floor plan…

It’s obviously a smaller room, but how much smaller, and which pieces will need to go this time?

Frustration threatens us, cat-calling from the side-lines as we struggle to stay in God’s peace. Yet his peace does continue to remain deep within me, a peace which I didn’t have with the last move.

God knows what he is doing. There is a lot of effort being expended in keeping Mom safe and happy, but God still has a plan for her here on earth or she would no longer be with us. Her days are numbered by him, and while there are more to run, his purpose for her is not yet complete.

She is a blessing still, imparting encouraging words to her granddaughter when she seeks advice. Yes, perhaps the memory is slipping, but the smile is still broad and the faith in God remains intact.

If we are stuck in the mud, repeating what we just did, there is a good reason for it. Thank God that I am not in charge.

Pin Ball Wizard

I call it a pin ball machine; Don calls it bagatelle. I think they’re the same thing.

Yesterday I felt like the ball which gets knocked upwards on the enclosed board and then ricochets from barrier to barrier until it finally comes to rest somewhere. I got up thinking I was aiming to continue trying to identify a new residence for Mom.

An email arrived, offering a home and care to Mom from someone in the wider family. Suddenly I was pinging in a new direction, thinking of all the advantages to such an arrangement and minimising the disadvantages. Discussions seeking points of view from the rest of the family resulted in my coming to one conclusion; other messages arrived from other members of the family offering a variety of points of view. Before I knew it, I was pinging off again into a different direction.

All this seesawing was in the midst of praying for guidance and direction in this situation. What initially seemed like answered prayer gradually became a red herring. Now I’m dropping like the marble back into the decisions I was arriving at before that first email. Peace.

Jesus promises that he will never leave us; that his is the still small voice of calm, whispering, ‘this is the way, walk in it’, but it is very easy to assume, presume, and head off down a wrong path.

I continue to pray that every step, every decision, every booking will be guided by God, and that the next situation Mom is in provides the love and care she so richly deserves.