Adverse Circumstances

If I’ve learned anything through the years of my life, it is that I don’t know nearly as much as I think I do. School years measure academic knowledge, and if you put in the study you come out thinking you are pretty smart.

Until you move out into the world, and on into life. Competing voices vie for your attention, promoting their values, lifestyles and dogma. Some don’t appeal, ever, but others you might entertain briefly, or for a lengthier space of time. Or even for the rest of your life.

Much of life is one foot in front of the other, day after day. Routine. But sometimes other things interfere which cause us to pause and consider. Often those other things are not nice in themselves.

I know someone at the moment who is struggling at work, not being given good clear instructions but then being criticised when things are not done as expected. She is facing this situation as an opportunity to grow, and refuses to walk away. 

I know there are thousands at the moment flooded out in England. Day after soggy day the rains  come down and the floods rise up until they engulf the gardens and invade the kitchens. And still the forecasters predict more wet weather. Is this a time for some of those thousands, if not all, to reconsider values and aims, goals and meanings? 

I have had some routine hospital appointments this morning, always sobering as you rub shoulders with the chronically, long-term sufferers. Will my back ache ever ease? Or is this a time for me to reassess priorities and drop deeper into God to draw on his resources more fully?

Little Samuel was sleeping in the Temple when he was awoken three times in one night by a voice calling his name. Finally he was given advice from Eli, the priest, ‘Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening’. 

Samuel took Eli’s advice, and God shared a couple of secrets with him. 

One can’t  measure life experience like one can measure academic knowledge. And we never reach the end of the textbook until we end the final chapter of our lives.

Today I want to be open to hearing God’s secrets, if he wants to share them with me. I want to be open to new growth opportunities. And I look forward to the time when I am eager for things without having been prompted to want them, through adverse circumstances.

Blooms among the Dead Wood

I’m trudging along the usual path Dusty and I walk. I’ve forgotten it’s spring. Well, no wonder, since I’m still wearing five layers and a woolly hat and gloves. That wind is brutal.

So, I’ve forgotten it’s spring and my eyes are downcast. It’s been a busy day; now it’s time to cook dinner, skype my mom, and here I am walking the dog, feeling vaguely stressed. I wanted to go to Messy Church tonight and meet some of the folks who are coming along, but my annual check-up at the hospital was over an hour late, so I missed it. 

Not in the best of moods. Suddenly, my eye is drawn to a splash of colour down in the gully of detritus and dead wood. It’s just a wee dip off the path, but every year, about this time, there is a cheerful display of yellow and hot pink in big clusters of primroses. Wild primroses.

I can but smile. How lovely. How wonderful to discover a thing of beauty in the midst of drab and dreary brown. 

Beauty is all around us, in the most unlikely of places. We just don’t see it sometimes. But if we let our eye wander; if we linger and pause and pay attention, we might just be amazed at the beauty to be found everywhere.

There’s a story in the Bible about David. God spoke to Samuel and told him to go visit a certain family in Bethlehem, and he would tell Samuel which of the sons of the family was chosen to be King of Israel. Samuel went, and as Jesse, the dad, paraded six sons before him, Samuel was shocked as God rejected them, one after the other. Each one was good looking and seemed a distinct possibility for kingship, but God said no. “The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” The Lord looks at the heart.

Finally Samuel asked Jesse if that was all the sons he had and he admitted he had one, much younger, who was out shepherding the flocks. When David was summoned and came before Samuel, God said YES. “Rise and anoint him; this is the one,” God said. (1 Samuel 16)

I could have walked blindly past those primroses today, and missed a moment of joy. I wonder who else I walked past today, never giving them a second glance. 

There is always the possibility of blooms among the dead wood.