So when it rains in Southern California, it pours. That is what’s going on now.
As I redirected my morning to going through more of my parents’ files, I first had a quiet time and read Ecclesiastes 3:6, where it says, there is a time to keep and a time to throw away. I’m revisiting the stuff I’d decided to keep, which is too heavy for me to carry back, and am being much more ruthless.
Who knew the Bible had something to say about decluttering?!
Arriving at Mom’s place late morning, usually, I help give her lunch, then roll her wheelchair over to a lighter, quieter spot where we, or at least I, can look out across Los Angeles to the mountains which encircle the city. Hollywood Hills, San Gabriel’s, San Bernardino’s: I’m not sure which I’m looking at.
Mom snoozes, arousing from time to time for a brief interaction. I play her some 40’s music on my phone and am so pleased to see her slight rhythmic motions, assuring me she hears and she enjoys.
After a couple of hours of that I leave for a restorative walk along the coast. Somehow, I missed lunch again. So I nibble on a bag of trek mixed nuts and a few raspberries. Today I added in a smoothie, but not a proper lunch. Not really.
The sermon this morning was looking at the transfiguration as told in Luke 9. The preacher commented that Peter’s suggestion to put up some shelters revealed his desire to make it last, so that he and the other two disciples could linger longer at this mountain top experience with Jesus.
I’ve had mountain top experiences, and am so grateful for them. But I have to confess that even in the most transcendent moment, I’ve rarely if ever been totally absorbed in the experience, but have usually been aware of those around me, or of the need to cook a meal, or even the nagging thought that it’s getting late and I need to get to bed.
That leads me to Martha. Mary chose the mountain top and was able to focus on what was best … time with Jesus … and resist the nagging guilt that she was dropping her responsibilities to help put supper on the table.
That brings me back to the nuts and berries, and skipping lunch. How often do I shorten, or even miss, mountain top experiences with Jesus because I am distracted by many things and prepared to live on spiritual nuts and berries instead of lingering to enjoy the feast Jesus wants to give me?
It feels like a no-brained, so why do I find it so hard?
I have been a Christian a long time, and I still have so much to learn. I’m asking God to help me develop focus and concentration, and the discernment to recognise where I am on the mountain, and the courage to choose pleasing Jesus rather than meeting others’, or even my own, human expectations.
At Jesus’ baptism, when the Father declared his love for his one and only Son, he instructed, ‘Listen to Him’. My prayer is that the Lord will transform me so that I am eager to tabernacle with God for however long he chooses, without falling prey to human motivations and distractions.
R
I really want to ‘listen to Him’, especially in these challenging times. Don’t you?
There is something mysteriously comforting to me in standing or sitting by my dad’s grave. I know he isn’t there, but it provides a touchstone to the personality I know and miss. I stood in the warm sun, gazing down. I didn’t bring flowers. He wasn’t sentimental and I know they gather them up once a week before cutting the grass, and throw them out.
The warm sun on my back was inviting and I sat down on the brow of the hill beside his headstone, gazing out at the view. I could see the Harbor freeway, smaller roads, Terminal Island with its working cranes, and the Pacific. Somewhere in there is the hospital in which I was born. Around the corner from the cemetery are the social housing projects I lived in during my first year of life. I felt embraced by the place of my beginnings on this earth.
I love living in Scotland, and have moved away from wanting to live in such a sprawling city as this. But still, sitting on that hill, the dry grass beneath me, little black ants finding their way onto my legs and feet every so often…it was all so familiar, so welcoming. Home.
God is in the mystery. I walk my days between two places, loving both. Only the Lord can bring it all to a happy conclusion, tie my life up with a big red ribbon one day, soon or not so soon.
Good to have time to reflect. To sit. Rain is in the forecast, even here, and I may not have many days for sitting and staring, absorbing the place.
Grateful today for the Valentine our Heavenly Father has given us all, the gift of life itself. Thank you Lord.
While waiting for a banking appointment yesterday, I was leafing through a table top picture book of Los Angeles and recognised the place I walk to every day while here. For a few decades, ending in the 1970s, the asphalt platform held a defensive missile system called Nike. That has now moved inland since longer range missiles were developed. The asphalt has been left to crack and break, its purpose largely forgotten.
I stepped onto it yesterday, finding it curious that in a site of such breathtaking beauty there had lurked a system of death and destruction, albeit defensive.
We may be God’s image bearers, and therefore imbued with his breathtaking beauty, but Jesus warned us to be alert, to be wise as serpents though innocent as doves, to abide in him: these are our defensive weapons. Paul explored that in his letter to the Ephesians.
Perhaps we are living in a time when this advice resonates more than ever. Or perhaps it has always been like this, but just not quite so obvious.
Either way, don’t go out without the armour, especially the helmet of salvation. In an age of deception, only God knows truth.
It rained overnight, hard enough to waken me. This morning, though, dawned dry under leaden skies.
By 4 the sun had vanquished the clouds, and after a busy day I started my frequent walk up the incline skirting the shore at Malaga Cove, a surfer’s paradise. I watched in wonder as a very skilful surfer rode the waves, twisting and turning and finally trying a flip which landed him in the water.
I plodded on, sun in my face, slow and steady, up the hill, thinking about someone else who rode the waves, so to speak. Jesus, walking on the water.
The storm was still raging as he made his historic walk. For the first time, I wondered if his feet stayed dry, or did his toes dip in? Was his robe soaked or just splattered with spray? Was it raining as well?
I think it is probably not possible to walk on water without getting a little wet, especially in a storm.
I’m not in a storm, but the things that need doing for Mom always become more complicated than I anticipate, and I can begin to feel overwhelmed. I can feel like I am in a storm, lashed by rains and buffeted by wild winds. But before I falter I look to Jesus. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, and when I remember that, and focus on him, even if my toes dip in and the wild waves splash, I don’t sink.
I don’t know if Jesus got wet, but he didn’t sink. Peter would not have sunk, either, had he not taken his eyes off Jesus and freaked out at the size of the waves and the impossibility of doing what he was doing.
These days there are storms in all lives. My storms are minor compared to the dreadful storms unleashed on so many, so it is with real humility that I suggest Jesus can handle the most terrible of tempests. Keep your eyes on him, and put one foot in front of the other.
The sun will shine again and the gales will blow themselves out.
Be still and know that I am God.
‘It’s so cold!’
I’m packing to go from a bleak midwinter in northeastern
Scotland to what is also winter, but in southern California. What should I
take?
I do this regularly and every time I struggle. There is no right
answer to the question of whether or not it’s cold, because perception of cold
or heat, except in the extremes, is so variable.
I’ve learned over the years that when Don says it’s ‘baking
hot’, it’s probably just a comfortable temperature. Equally, he knows that when
I say it’s really pleasant, it’s probably too hot for him.
The temperatures will certainly be lots warmer than here,
but I know that on the California coast, it can be foggy, damp, and feel cold. So,
I’ve put in more than I will need, for sure.
On every level, our world - the natural, the social and the
political - is open to interpretation and dependent on perception. We may well
ask, as Pilate asked Jesus, ‘What is truth?’
I am so grateful that Jesus has told us that he is ‘the Way,
the Truth and the Life’. So when I look at circumstances and the chaos of our
world, I can look beyond them at Jesus and know that if what I’m seeing is not an
expression of love, of kindness, of grace, of mercy, of forgiveness, or of
peace, then it is not the Truth and it is not the way in which I want to walk.
Grace and peace, enrobed in love. Have a great day.
I am still sitting with the alabaster jar. Meditation can
sometimes last for days or weeks, in quiet times or as I drive in to Aberdeen
for a hair appointment. That was the situation this morning.
As I prayed, again, that the Lord will help me leave that
broken alabaster jar at his feet, and completely let go of all expectations of
myself or anyone else, I thought suddenly of the Japanese art of kintsugi. I
have used a kintsugi kit to repair some broken bits and pieces round my house,
and really do love the golden lines which mark the break and repair. The bits
and pieces are no longer generic bits and pieces: they are my bits and
pieces, which stand out because of the breaks and repairs. They are
something special.
I will need to continue this prayer until I am convinced I’ve
really surrendered all expectations of myself and other people, but this
morning I began to pray that the Lord will help me with putting that alabaster
jar back together with kintsugi. I’m not sure exactly how this is going to
happen, but I want an alabaster jar which is sound enough to hold all my
expectations of Jesus: that he will never leave nor forsake me, that one day
there will be no more tears, death, separations (or airports – I think John
left that one out in Revelation!), and basically that all his promises are
true.
I pray that at the end I will have – or maybe be – an
alabaster jar completely mended and whole, with golden threads of glue joining
me back together. Underneath the royal robes, I don’t deserve, I will be a ‘kintsugi
vessel’, living to serve His Majesty forever.
We are all cracked vessels, but with the Lord’s golden touch
we will one day stand before him, uniquely whole.
Hallelujah!
Another bird bangs into the window. Sort of gently; not hard
enough to break a neck and so it flies into a bush to recover.
We put stickers on the windows, silhouettes of raptors. Scary
predators for the blue tits and robins. Yet still they fly into, and bounce off
the windows. Occasionally, they hit too hard, and we find them dead on the
flower bed, on the path.
We think we see the way forward in life. Sometimes, the Lord
gives us warning signs that actually, that is not a safe way to go. Occasionally
he may even allow things which frighten us into changing our direction.
But we, with our free choice and often rebellious spirits,
sometimes continue on the dangerous way, undeterred by the warning signs. We may
just take a knock, surrender our pride and embrace humility and acquire a more
teachable spirit. Sometimes it doesn’t end as well as that.
Open my eyes today, Lord, to perceive any warning signs you
are giving me. Open my ears to hear your words, ‘This is the way; walk in it’,
and to obey with humility, confident in you. (And keep the birds from their
kamikaze flight paths into our windows!)
I was probably about 8 years old, with my family on vacation
at Big Bear Lake. My sister and I were playing in an outdoor pool while our
parents watched from the bleachers. Uneasy in the water, a poor swimmer, I suddenly
felt myself out of my depth. But I didn’t want to attract attention to myself.
I hated being in the limelight, so I sort of whispered, maybe a little more
than a whisper, ‘Help!’
I continued to struggle towards the pool’s edge, sinking and
then emerging and stage-whispering, ‘Help!’. My dad was on his feet after the
first whisper. I remember seeing him taking the steps down to the pool two at a
time, and then I managed to grab the side of the pool.
My dad heard the quiet cry for help from his daughter, and
didn’t hesitate.
Neither does our heavenly Father. Peter lost sight of Jesus
and was sinking when Jesus reached out a hand and guided him back into the
boat. I don’t think Peter was whispering his cry for help: I don’t think Peter
was as shy as I was!
The message of that story is, of course, that we sink when
we take our eyes off Jesus. A great message, which spoke to me this morning in
the recollection of that moment in a swimming pool many years ago, which says
more about the response of the Father to the cries of his children.
Our cries for help are always heard and acted on, no matter
how quietly they are uttered. They may be only in our heads, but still our
Father hears them. And is on his way.
I am so grateful for a dad who modelled the love of God to
me. Thank you, Jesus.
The alabaster jar. You know the story. The unnamed woman in
the gospels brings a costly alabaster jar, containing valuable nard, and breaks
it at Jesus’ feet, giving him a gift of incalculable worth. To some it is offensive,
a waste of a precious resource; to Jesus it is beautiful.
Perhaps we each carry such an alabaster jar in our hearts,
our minds, our spirits. Mine is fashioned from expectations I have on myself to
never fail in the care of my dear Mom, and the expectations I can have on
others I love, family and friends. These expectations are not from God and they
suck the joy from me. While the precious ointment inside the jar is my love for
Jesus and these others, the joy of that love is contained and bottled up by
expectations, which can be flawed in me, and which can disappoint if they are
not met.
Jesus showed me this in a time of art journalling this week,
and it has been a profound revelation to me and one I am praying through. (Thank
you, Elaine, for facilitating this amazing way of connecting with God!) So
again, tonight, Lord Jesus, I ask your help to make this revelation a reality
as I break this beautiful, but heavy, alabaster jar at your feet, releasing the
beautiful fragrance of freedom in Jesus, releasing the aroma of the joy of
knowing that in Jesus I am enough, he is with me, he is with all those I love, and
all is well.
Maybe it’s only me that lugs around such an alabaster jar. I
am so grateful to the Lord for this revelation, and am beginning to smell the
aroma of love.
I reached up to draw back the living room curtains. The one
on the right slid open easily. The one on the left caught on the supporting
hook. It would not slide without being lifted up first. As I couldn’t reach, I left
it closed, diminishing the early morning light in the room.
My perception of life, of events, of God, is not always –
maybe even just rarely – clear. My ideas can become caught on an assumption, a
vague value, a misconception which impairs my view and limits my understanding.
I may think I see clearly, but if the curtain is not fully open, I don’t.
Lord, tear open any curtains which obscure, which distort,
which conceal truth today. May I not fall prey to embracing half-seen ‘truths’
but instead may I sit in your presence, you, Jesus, who are the way, the truth
and the life. Open my eyes, Lord: I want to see.
A perfect winter’s day. The sun is as strong as it gets in
January, beaming out of a blue sky sprinkled with a few wispy white clouds. Ice
makes the road treacherous, but maybe it’s that frigidity at ground level that
causes a mist to rise low and, earlier, thick. I couldn’t see through the mist,
but beyond it, rising above it, stood the familiar hills to our south, Scolty,
Clachnaben and others.
Sometimes, life lands us in a thick mist through which we
cannot see, but we can still glimpse the promise of what lies beyond. We can
focus on what we can see beyond. As I took a careful, short morning walk, though,
that mist thickened, obscuring the hills beyond. Sometimes, life’s fogs curtain
everything off, and it’s our faith which keeps us putting one foot in front of
the other. Our faith, and the reassurance that we are not walking alone, but
have our divine companion, Jesus, always with us.
Now, an hour later, the mist is thinning and I can see
landscape of fields and trees leading up to those hills. It is a relief and a
joy when life’s fogs thin and disappear and we can, once again, walk with
confidence as we see exactly where we are going.
However thick the mist you are navigating today, may your inner
eye focus on the promise of the Kingdom. The road may be rough and you may feel
you are driving blind, but God guides your every step when you surrender the
controls to him.
Martin Luther King day. A day when a man of God, a man of
courage and colour, who led his nation towards the promised land, is honoured.
I read this morning of the extraordinariness of his life, and how, the day
before he was shot and killed, he said these words in a speech: ‘I’ve been to
the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long
life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just
want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve
looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But
I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.
So I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.’
May we all walk through the mist, as courageous and
confident as this inspirational leader was. May we walk with integrity and
faith knowing God leads us to the Promised Land.
Thinking this morning about the astonishing grace of Jesus
who, as a Roman soldier knelt beside his broken body stretched onto that cross,
hammering in the iron nails, prayed, ‘Father, forgive them, for they don’t know
what they are doing.’
I look at our world with dismay and anger but am challenged
by my Saviour’s lavish love. In extreme pain I can only vaguely imagine, and
with love in his heart I can only aspire to, he saw the enemy’s face up close. The
soldier was following orders, doing what he had to do for his own sake. Maybe he
was sweating doing it. Maybe he was recoiling with every hammer blow, or maybe
he had grown blasé to the pain of others. Maybe he didn’t really care.
Jesus saw his heart, and whatever he saw, he loved him
still.
Prayer is powerful. Prayer for one’s enemies, while under
attack by them, is most powerful. By the time Jesus had died, one of the
soldiers, at least, had recognised that ‘truly this was the Son of God’. Jesus’
prayer in extremis was answered.
‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only
Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting love.’
John 3:16
Father, help me to abide in Jesus as I pray today. Especially
as I pray for those I see as enemies. Father, forgive them, for they don’t know
what they are doing.
In the cool recess of the garage on a warm southern
California spring day, my Dad coached me in the construction of a kite. Every spring,
Emerson elementary school had a kite-flying competition with prizes for all
sorts of categories: biggest, prettiest, highest flyer, etc. I was eager to
enter, hoping to win.
We started with tying two bits of balsa wood together in the
form of a cross. The cross was foundational. We stretched tissue paper over the
form, decorated it, and then Mom appeared with some old rags. I thought they
would ruin it, make it ugly. But without a tail, Dad explained, the kite would
be uncontrollable. The rag tail would give it weight and balance and prevent it
pitching wildly in the wind. Finally, we tied the ball of string to the cross,
and I was ready to fly.
I didn’t win. But I had fun, working with my Dad. A warm
memory.
I noticed that cross in my prayer window this morning, and I
thought about myself. I am like the tissue paper (except that I have choice!). I
choose to stretch out on that cross: ‘I have been crucified with Christ’. And as
I align myself with Him, so the wind of the Spirit catches my life and lifts me
higher and higher above the darkness and despair.
I confess that I’d quite like to lose that rag tail. It’s twisted
together from the yuck of life: the duties and responsibilities, the set-backs
and challenges, the difficult situations and people. But without the check of
those things, perhaps my stability would be lost and I would pitch and dive
alarmingly. Those things that I find most tedious and concerning are the things
that keep me depending on Jesus.
Just over the weekend, a new situation developed with Mom’s
care which could have sent me into a steep dive. Instead, as I clung to that
cross, cried out to God to help (remember Isaiah 41?), he sent a dear cousin to
come alongside me and make some calls. The situation was a raggy tail but the
solution was a fresh blow of the wind of the Spirit which has sent me sailing high
this Monday morning.
It’s a bit too windy here today, but one day soon I think I
might just go fly a kite.
I loved it when I saw it a few months ago in one of those
rarest of shops – a Christian bookstore. Mhairi took note and there I found it,
under the tree on Christmas morning with my name on it.
As I sat in the prayer window gazing at it this morning, I enjoyed
the light penetrating the narrow outline of the cross. For the joy set before
him, Jesus endured the cross.
I had awakened to a situation concerning Mom’s care, and
immediately gone downhill with the on-going nature of it, where I have to make
decisions from time to time about things which I know very little about. Not
earth-shattering, but challenging because of the great distance between us. Deep
sighs had escaped me when I’d read the email, but now, gazing at this reminder
of the cross, and having been boosted by a Scripture in my daily reading, I am
ok.
We are all called to take up our crosses. For the joy set
before us. The way is narrow, Jesus cautioned, but on the other side is the
vast expanse of light, pure and good and everlasting.
‘So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for
I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my
righteous right hand.’ Isaiah 41:10.
He’s reminded me of a couple of folk I can reach out to for
advice. I see His hand in this, yet again, as I have to depend on Him and Him
alone. So grateful for his blessings. New every morning. Great is his
faithfulness.
Yet more of the white stuff overnight. I emerge tentatively
from the back door, eager to re-fill the bird feeders for the desperate wee
creatures seeking sustenance, but I am cautious. Cautious with reason, for the
temperature lingers at -8C and where the snow slushed in yesterday’s sunlight, today
it is frozen in the morning’s overcast clouds.
I am grateful that we made a foray to the grocery store
yesterday. Today, with Don nursing a bad cold and cough, and with the snow so
hard-packed, I would not have been able to shovel a path or help dig out the
car’s tires if they lost traction.
Yesterday’s snow could be lifted and shifted so that people
and cars could move fairly freely. What was left in situ yesterday, however,
today is frozen solid in place, and it would take effort and strength to dig it
out.
Critical thoughts and attitudes, towards situations or
individuals, if left in our hearts and minds, can soon harden into icy monuments
of judgment and grudge which become increasingly harder to shift. Soft hearts
can harden. Keep short accounts with God, I have often heard, and also with one
another.
Jesus declares that he has come to set the captive free. Often
we become captive to our own hard hearts and judgmental thinking. It is
challenging to be quick to forgive, but God never asks us to do anything
without giving us the strength and ability to do it. And he asks us to be quick
to forgive, before temperatures can drop and freeze our grudges into place. As we
forgive, so we will be forgiven.
There are public figures who I find challenging. There are
probably private individuals, too, who push my buttons. Lord, I can’t clear my
frozen interior by myself. I don’t want to find my heart increasingly hard,
frozen in judgmental attitudes and self-righteous condemnation. Come, Lord
Jesus. Set this captive free.
Forgive me, today, as I forgive those who offend me, Lord
Jesus. And then, Lord, I will be free indeed.
Our neighbourly farmer Matt came along in the afternoon and
ploughed the driveway, shifting the drifts and leaving an even surface. So
grateful to him. We were able to get out to replenish the milk this morning.
Overnight, though, there was more snow, and we awoke to
another day of winter wonderland beauty. The trees stand glistening in the
sunshine against a backdrop of blue sky, slowly beginning to slide some drips
and drops from the twigs and branches. But it’s freezing still out there, so by
and large, even in midafternoon, the white-lined, otherwise-bare trees, still carry
their weight of snow.
In this monochrome wilderness stands the rather stunted
crab-apple tree. It’s a tree I’ve never liked. I wasted time trying to make
crab-apple jelly once. Never again. So the apples still cling to the tree, and last
week I nearly lopped them all off in an effort to sculpt a more pleasing shape.
I’m so glad I didn’t do it. Yesterday, we watched as three
or four pigeons fought for those beautiful little red fruits. The weak twigs
swayed under the weight of the big birds, voraciously devouring what they
could.
Nothing is wasted in the economy of God. Even the fruits I
dismiss as worthless come into their own at just the right time. Their
startling dots of red bring a glorious relief to the otherwise black-and-white
winter world.
Thinking spiritually, it’s easy to conclude that others’
fruits are more beautiful, more useful, more Godly even, than our own. I know I
can do that. But as I watch the pigeons gratefully pecking at the crab-apples,
I remember the words of The Teacher: He has made everything beautiful in its
time.
I’m looking forward to some of my crab-apples coming into
their own. Maybe this is the year. Maybe this is the time. Maybe not. What I do
know is that God rejoices in every offering we make him, however humble it may
be.
I think it was Friday – but the days all merge together,
just as the snow merges the fields and roads into one white carpet.
The snow was perfect and I had grandchildren here. Yippee!
First we rolled snowballs up the drive to make three giant snow-folk. It took Chrisie
and I together to move them as they grew to impressive sizes. They were
incredibly heavy.
As the accumulating snow revealed the asphalt of the driveway
beneath, we began to pick up the detritus of autumn. Inside each of those
snow-folk lie the leaves and needles and a few pinecones from last fall. Final rolls
went on pristine snow, so the decaying foliage is hidden. Buried under a
garment of almost-pure white.
Perhaps this is a little disrespectful – I hope not – but Jesus
is that giant snowball for each of us who comes to him. He took all the dirt
and sin lying there in our lives, washed us clean and gave us each a robe white
as snow.
As the snow melts, the leaves and needles will soon reappear
as small hillocks of decay. But the sin that Jesus took on himself is gone
forever. We have no need to fear a sudden revelation of our worst moments. As far
as east is from the west, that’s how far he has removed us from our sin.
So, we can rejoice in the grace and mercy and love extended
to us through the sacrifice of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Happy New Year 2026! May it be a year of each of us taking
our sins to Jesus daily, so that he can wash us and clothe us in the garments
of salvation.
