Make contact

I guess when you’ve been fasting for a month, it is all about the food. Food and friendship, laughter and chatter. 

Of course most of it was in Arabic; after the two or three words we know we are a bit stuck. But the smiles and the welcome and the hospitality of these refugee folks who have lost everything was lovely.

It was pouring rain yesterday when we arrived for the Eid celebration. The hall had been double booked so everyone was traipsing up the street to the town hall carrying their trays of special food, pushing buggies and holding umbrellas and dodging puddles. Nothing quite like a Scottish summer. It must be so different from Iraq and Syria. 

But there were no complaints, nothing but happy smiles, children playing with balloons, and the food, which was different and delicious. The motto of our church’s youth fellowship is ‘make contact, make friends, make disciples’. 

We have made contact, and will press on to make friends. It is a privilege.

Friends come and friends go ...

Friends come and friends go, but a true friend sticks by you like family. (Proverbs 18:24, The Message)

This is my oldest friend. She has been with me since I was about 8 or 10 years old and travelled the world with me, now living behind the couch in Scotland. We were separated for five years when I was first married, because I couldn’t afford the air fare to get her here from California. Then, returning to Scotland one January in days when planes were not always full, we audaciously carried her on without having purchased her seat. A helpful air hostess put her in a closet on board, and my cello and I were reunited at last.

I don’t play my cello often enough, and when I do, I recognise that I have slipped since the days of daily practice. Yet still much of it comes back to me and I soon get lost in the resonance and beauty of her sonorous voice. 

I of course value my human friends above my cello, but my cello has been with me singing her heart out in great orchestras playing some wonderful music, in small string quartets and in occasional solo spots. She has felt the nervous perspiration on my fingers at times and responded to my sorrowful or joyous heartbeat other times. 

When words fail, there is nothing like my cello.

Music is a gift. A universal gift for which I am grateful.

Relax!

Fourth entertainment event at our place in eight days. I’m on first names with the folk at Tesco as I dive in practically daily.

There’s a few plus points on having a rolling diary of events. Having picked up the clutter in many rooms, it hasn’t had time to slump back onto chairs and tables in quite the usual amounts. A quick dash round in a few minutes should complete the tidying, then a zip through with a duster. 

We’re eating well. If it’s not the original dishes it’s the leftovers the next day. Desserts in abundance; good for the taste buds – bad for the figures. 

We’re enjoying meeting new people, getting better acquainted with folk we don’t know very well, and enjoying close friends and family. 

The downside, from my point of view, is the number of hours I’ve spent both at Tesco’s and in the kitchen over these last eight days, and that’s with keeping meals fairly simple and relaxed. 

Jesus enjoyed parties and gatherings with friends, and he didn’t need fancy food or well-dusted houses. He told Martha to relax and hinted that she should join her sister Mary in just enjoying his presence rather than racing round trying to make everything tidy and perfect.

I’m taking that story to heart, so that tonight I will enjoy our company and not be so worn out I haven’t the energy to contribute to the conversation.

Ring a Ding Ding

The telephone rang about an hour after we returned from my friend’s house where Mom, Mhairi and I had enjoyed coffee and a chat. 

“Have you lost a ring?”

My mother looked at her hand and gasped. Her sapphire ring given to her by Dad several years ago was not on her finger. She’d not noticed it missing until then.

Within an hour, my friend’s husband was at the door, beautiful ring in hand. The hero of the hour. He’d returned from a game of golf and seen the ring lying on the hall rug. 

No doubt it had slipped from her finger as she removed coat or gloves, her fingers smaller in this cold than they are in the heat of Long Beach. 

It could just as easily have slipped off in a restaurant yesterday, or at the wedding venue last week, and been lost to her for good.

Mom and I remembered a few years ago when the diamond slipped out of its setting in my engagement ring while I was visiting her. We had prayed about it and started scouring the house for the stone. Within minutes I saw it lying on the kitchen floor, precariously close to the gap under the fridge door. 

Sometimes we consciously enlist God’s help in finding lost items. Other times he rides point on our lives, putting right things that have gone wrong before we even realize it.

This time, he spared Mom from the anxiety and upset of thinking she’d lost such a precious item of jewellery. 

Jesus told stories about lost things – a sheep, a coin, and a son. In each of these stories, the hero of the hour is God himself, who leaves no stone unturned in seeking to find and save that which is lost. His love drives him on to save what is lost at incredible cost to himself.

I am so grateful, and as we head towards our celebration of Thanksgiving tomorrow (a few days early), one of the autumn leaves on our Thanksgiving tree will no doubt be giving thanks to God for finding what was lost.

Swimming for Sticks

These may just be words to you, but to Dusty, they convey a specific meaning. One of the special walks we do together is at Crathes Castle, where we basically walk from one water source to the next and I dutifully fling sticks into the water which she enthusiastically retrieves.

Enthusiastic doesn’t do justice to the joy and excitement this dog has over a swimming for sticks walk. It is probably what her ears itch to hear daily. When the second stick goes into the water (she only ever leaps in on the second stick going in, and then tries hard to herd both sticks into her mouth and back to the shore), she races and leaps with absolute trust and abandon into the water source.

She reminds me of a young child who loves to stand a few steps off the ground and fling herself into her daddy’s waiting arms. She knows her dad and trusts him not to let her fall. Dusty is full of faith that she is leaping into a safe place, too, where there awaits a welcoming landing, and that the exercise will refresh and invigorate her.

As we age, many of us grow cynical and hard, disappointed by life and other people, sometimes doubting that God is always good, or that he does love us. In the Bible, Hosea wrote to the people of Israel, ‘Plant the good seeds of righteousness, and you will harvest a crop of love. Plow up the hard ground of your hearts, for now is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and shower righteousness upon you.’ 

I’m in the middle of the summer months and beginning to flag a bit on keeping up with my garden. It’s a lot of work. Planting isn’t easy in itself. The ground has to be dug over, weeded, manure dug in, and then the good seeds planted. It needs to be watered on the rare dry days. Even gathering in the harvest is tough: I’m about to head back out to pick raspberries – a joyous task as they are so delicious, but still, taking an hour or so every day, not to mention time spent making jam or freezing or baking with them. 

So how do we plow up the hard ground of our hearts? 

I’m looking back to Jesus, who advises his friends, ‘...if you remain in me and I in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted. When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples.’

How do we produce good fruit? 

I think it’s misleading to compare it all to the actual garden outside, because in the Kingdom of God the plowing and the breaking up of the hard ground all happens as we marinate in the Word of God, as we remain and abide in Jesus. He tells us his yoke is easy; he is the one pulling that plow through the hard ground of our hearts. 

As we learn to be still with him, to remain and abide in him, the hard ground of our hearts is softened. Seeds of righteousness from him drop into those fertile hearts, and watered by his presence, his Word, and prayer, they begin to grow and produce fruit, a harvest of righteousness which brings glory to God. He does it. We sit with him and allow him to do it. 

And the more we do that, the greater peace we know, the greater is our faith that when we race towards God and launch ourselves with great abandon in his direction, he will, indeed catch us.

These are the prayers that he answers. The ones he plants in our hearts. The ones we trust him to take care of. 

Lord, help me to fling myself at you today, knowing in my heart that you are just waiting for such enthusiasm and faith, and you will catch me.