From my prayer window, I saw the hungry birds fluttering
round the empty feeders. I went out and filled them with peanuts and seed. Heading
back in, I was suddenly aware of the sprinkled sand on the porch, and went to
the garage for the stiff broom.
When the ice was thick and slippery a few days ago, Don
sprinkled sand there so we wouldn’t come a cropper as we went out the door. He
made a safe path for our feet. Now it’s been raining for a day or two, and
there is no ice, just sand waiting to be tracked into the kitchen.
As I swept, I gathered the needles from the larch tree,
burnt sienna and blown into corners and scattered across the porch. Sweeping them,
I realised that by not gathering them earlier, we’d allowed their little piles
to provide fertile ground for weeds to take root, in the corners and the
crevices. Not where you’d particularly notice them. But as I swept, I noticed
them, having to push harder to dislodge them.
Prepare the way for the Lord. It is Advent, the time of preparation
for the coming of Immanuel.
I took a walk, asking God to reveal to me the things in my
life which I’ve allowed to invade my thoughts and spirit. Which have been there
so long I don’t recognise that they don’t belong in me. Which have taken root
and grabbed a foothold in my thinking and my actions.
Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. I have allowed thoughts to
form and threaten to become default attitudes, thoughts which judge others
mainly in the global scene. I hope I have swept those thoughts out, that
quickness to judge who is in the right and who is in the wrong. Today I hold up
the hot spots around the world, laying them before the throne of grace and
praying that those involved in violence and brutality will be set free from
their anger and distrust and fear. That they will allow God to dish out
vengeance as he sees fit, and that they will be given faith and hope to trust
in him to do that.
It's a big ask, when the legacies of pain go numbingly deep.
But nothing is impossible with God.
So on this advent morning, I lift my face to the Lord and
ask for miracles. Starting with my own attitudes, fears and doubts.
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