Digitalis

Digitalis. A genus of perennials we call foxgloves in Scotland, which grow wild in the garden. The source of a drug used to treat heart arrhythmia. Beautiful flowers with a beneficial use.

This morning I am suffering from what I am calling Digitalis. It’s not beautiful but there is a beneficial use, if I can master it. If I can’t, I may well suffer from heart arrhythmia!

Preparing to fly to the US tomorrow, there is the usual flurry of packing going on, but the anxiety rises exponentially as I try to get to grips with a couple of apps. In this digital age, and in these Covid-19 days, proofs of vaccination, of recent negative Covid results, attestations, passenger locator forms, proofs of Day-2 tests pre-booked for my return: these things and maybe some others are all requisite if I am to be allowed onto tomorrow’s flight. If I can get them onto the app, I can check in online and choose a seat.

Easier said than done. But as I wrote this, I was waiting for the app to verify one of the documents. Praise God, that has just happened. In another half hour, I can (hopefully) check in online.

Without the information stored digitally on the app on my phone, I would have to wait to check in (along with the other Luddites) just a couple of hours before the flight, showing the paper copies at the airport desk.

I am more than grateful for an in-house IT department and a willing son to help me.

No more heart arrhythmia, I pray. (Of course, I’ll be carrying the paper copies, sometimes in duplicate, in my bags. Just in case…)

  

Gales

 

Gale-force winds battered Scotland over the weekend, gusting to 100 mph on the hills. The glorious autumn foliage lies scattered over the ground, mellow colours beginning to moulder and decay. Branches, bared now for the coming winter, stretch to the sky.

Covid-19 has battered the world like an autumn gale. It has brought uncertainty and death and left many of us stripped down to basics, more aware than ever of our inability to control nature. More aware than ever of our total dependence on our loving Creator.

And as we enter the second week of COP26, we pray that the nations will unite against further self-destructive behaviour, however costly it is. The autumn winds are howling, hurting the most vulnerable and least culpable of peoples.

Our need to remediate our behaviour is starkly exposed. May God inspire those making decisions and commitments to be willing to sign up to sacrificial steps in order to allow our planet, God’s glorious world, to recover.

A Dappled World

 

Dappled landscapes dominate in the fall. As I braved the biting wind to hang out the wash in the weakened sunshine, I scuffed through a carpet of autumnal colours. As I look out my bedroom window, my spirit rises with the beauty of the red acer, whose glorious foliage is now thinning in the autumn winds, carpeting the vegetable patch in rubies.

The sun is out today, playing through the thinning leaves of the trees, dancing on the variegated shades on the grass.

I continue to pray for COP26 and the outcome of discussions which will determine the course of climate change. No doubt the results will be dappled; there are already signs of breakthrough amongst brushstrokes of failure to commit to the hard decisions and self-sacrifice necessary to effect change.

Light and dark. The world is a canvas of dappled beauty. But we know that the Light has come into the world, and the darkness cannot overcome it. Light of the world, enlighten our hearts and minds today so that we all live in the light, spreading hope and kindness wherever we go. Amen.

No Mystery

 

Tis the season to be thankful, fa la la la la, la la la la.

As the harvest comes in, it is natural to lift our eyes to God in gratitude. Whether it’s a bumper crop or a meagre one, God can feed us from what we have brought in.

Over the years, I have prayed many times for healing, for myself and for others. I have had a particular outcome in mind, which has occasionally been met, but God has answered in a way known only to him. But yesterday, the consultant surgeon murmured, ‘It’s a mystery’ as to how the lump disappeared without intervention.

No mystery. God. Praise him.

Rowan berries

 

Red rowan berries litter the lawn and the tarmac driveway. Squashed by cars and footfalls. Messy. Yet on the tree, before they dropped, they stood out like rubies against the fading leaves.

Pristine on the tree, or messy on the road, the berries bring blessing to birds, small critters, and a grateful gaze. All around us, creation cries out, in songs of praise or in laments of sadness.

Those who have ears to hear … those who have eyes to see … may we act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly before our Lord today, respecting the creation and revering the Creator.

Perfect Melon

 

We bought four tomato plants last spring from a garden centre. I planted them carefully in compost purchased at the same time. We watered and fed the plants, harvested a rather mediocre crop of tomatoes, and when it looked as if the plants were finished, as I wrote a few weeks ago, I prepared to move them out of the conservatory into the cold greenhouse.

Then I found a vine, which had planted itself in one of the tomato pots, and grown and flowered and even produced a small cantaloupe melon.

Last night we harvested that melon. I maybe should have cut it a little sooner, but it was juicy, flavoursome and sweet.

While we had been focused on the tomatoes we had planted, God looked after the one melon seed that somehow got into the pot, too.

What a reminder to me that while I am focused on things I might do or say, thinking they might produce fruit for the Kingdom, God is doing his own thing right alongside me. If I’d noticed the melon sooner, perhaps I could have fed or watered it more diligently and it would have been even better.

Or maybe not. I love knowing that even in spite of my ineptitudes, God is able to come alongside and produce fruit.

I am focused on COP26, praying for breakthrough. While I look for that, though, I can be sure that God is working alongside, largely unseen, producing fruit I don’t plant and don’t anticipate but somehow have a hand in. All glory to him.