Feed Me!

The flock of birds were waiting for a refill on this snowy, below-freezing morning in February. Groundhog day, though that’s another story and not one that is observed in Scotland.

Peanut and grain feeders replenished and an apple cut and placed on the ground, and they resume their task: to eat enough today to stay alive.

As I prayed over our world, I prayed for those in refugee camps. I thought of those people, often without hope, purpose, or vision. I thought of them as they wait like the birds, hoping to be fed today. Nursing grief and anxiety, sorrow and loneliness and fear, living in substandard accommodation and dependent on hand-outs: it is not the way God designed it.

The birds don’t crave dignity and respect. They just focus on eating and staying alive so they can procreate and raise up the next generation to fill our world with beauty and play their part in the fertility of flowers, fruit and so on. 

The refugees must crave many things. Not least a fresh vision of where God fits into their situation. How hard it must be to hang on to faith when all has been swept away. 

There are examples in the Bible of those who did just that, though. Take Job, sorely tried and afflicted but he never turned against God and eventually God spoke to him. There are others, too, who kept their faith in their Lord to deliver, though as Daniel’s friends said, even if God didn’t save them from the fiery furnace they would still worship and trust in him.

How would I do under such severe testing? There’s no knowing. My task today is not to imagine how I would do but to pray for those who are in the testing times now, that our compassionate and loving Lord will deliver them, will feed and clothe and rescue them from the oppressors.

Our hope is built on Jesus Christ, who is faithful.

Brave

It takes courage to live life to the full. It takes courage not to let the set-backs crush you. But God is always for us, always with us, always willing us to invite him in to strengthen us. He enables us to live life bravely.

A worship song on the new album from Bethel church in California celebrates God’s faithfulness in making us brave. In calling us away from the safety zones we crouch inside and strengthening us to take risks, to live life on the edge, fully immersed in him.

I experienced what I can only describe as his miraculous enabling when Don and I visited the Great Barrier Reef a few years ago. An extremely nervous swimmer, I never swim in open water and the thought of slipping into the sea twenty-five miles out, with no land in sight, is enough to give me the heebie-jeebies. I didn’t want to steel myself to do what I felt was a ‘must-do’ on a visit to Australia; I wanted to embrace the beauty of God’s magnificent creation and be amazed. 

I prayed for courage for the twenty-five mile boat ride, sucking on ginger tablets to stave off any seasickness. (A hurricaine was due the next day.) By the time the boat reached the first anchor point, I was excited to get into the water and see what lay beneath. God made me brave. He removed all fear and replaced it with a sense of awe and wonder at what did lie beneath the waves.

God is faithful, full of love and yearning for us to experience more of life by letting go of our fears and trusting in him. 

Today, the grief for my wee Dusty goes on, washing in waves over me, but I know that God is even more faithful than Dusty was. He is always waiting for me, yearning for me to turn to him, to speak to him, to cry out to him, to trust in him and then to step out, or swim out, from the boat of security in which I usually recline and go where he calls me.

He fills me with courage.

Through the Desert

Moses sent scouts to check out the promised land. Go through the desert and on into the hill country, he instructed.

It seems that in every promised land, there are deserts. I am in one now, grieving for a very special dog whose bright eyes and wagging tail lit up my every day for the last 13 years. But I sense the instruction to go on through the desert, don’t set up a camp here and nurse the grief. 

We all face deserts of one sort or another. They are arid and lifeless places, monochrome even, and when the going is really tough, the temptation is to stop. To hunker down and live in the desert, live in the loss, live in the pain, live in the shadow. 

No. Press on. Press on through the desert towards the hill country, fertile and full of promise. Yes, there may be giants to face there, too, but as long as we stay close to God, they too can be overcome. 

Our lives become productive, feeding others the fruits which our experiences have grown as we encourage those lagging behind in the desert to press on towards the hill country.

I’m not in the hill country today, but I see it on the horizon. I will press on through, with God’s guidance, reassurance, comfort and help. My loss is so miniscule compared to the horrendous suffering in so many places in the world, but nevertheless, it is my loss and it is personal and painful. 

It has potential to become the compost for fruit to feed others, if I let the Lord use it.

With his help, I will.

Merry Christmas Eve

Weather outside is frightful.

The winds are whipping the trees into convulsive frenzies and driving the clouds through the sky. Occasional snow flurries blacken the day and then pass on to the next location. 

People all over the country are trying to get home for Christmas. In the south of England there are floods, trees on the rail lines and roads. All making for treacherous journeys. 

And I can’t control any of it. The weather will do what it will do, occasionally altered by a fervent prayer which times in with God’s plans, but more usually probably just the result of nature.

I can control the weather inside my head, though. Yesterday was the third anniversary of my dear dad’s passing on, and I was awake in the night remembering that night. I think about my ageing mother, thousands of miles away from me, grieving still. And I recognise I could give way to a raging storm of anxiety and fear for her future.

Or, I could focus on God. Psalm 63 says ‘On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night. Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings. My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.’

I can choose to think of God in the middle of the night rather than rehearse my anxieties. It isn’t an easy choice. The mind is notoriously rebellious and difficult to control. But again, the Bible declares that believers have ‘the mind of Christ’. He didn’t worry. He spent many of his sleepless nights out on the hills being close to his Father, from whom came his help. That’s why he could sing and worship as he headed towards the cross. He was in the shadow of his father’s wings, and he knew it.

So I have spent some time this morning in my prayer alcove, resting in the shadow of my heavenly Father’s wings. I have waited for his presence to be felt, for his peace to fill my heart. I have held those about whom I have concerns up before the throne of God, and entrusted them to his care.

My soul clings to God. I pray that yours does too. That is the way to perfect peace. Trusting in his faithfulness and love.

Merry Christmas Eve.

Gems on the Roadside

Morning by morning new mercies I see.

I found myself singing out this old favourite hymn this morning as I walked with Dusty down the road. Great is thy faithfulness.

Found myself singing, despite the sudden death of a dear old friend yesterday, the loss of a personality in this world who brought joy and cheer and wise words to many. The loss of a carer in her family. Heaven’s gain, is our loss.

Yet I was singing. I heard the birds singing, and wondered if they experience grief. How much more often they must suddenly miss a bird from a neighbouring nest, or even a mate or chick. Maybe I’m taking this too far, but I don’t think so. Animals have the capacity for emotion, too, I think. Dusty certainly does anyway.

I carried a punnet with me. Yes, as I admitted in yesterday’s blog, I’m a pack rat and the brambles are ripening nicely along the verges and in the hedges.

Was a time, thirty years ago, when elderly couples parked their old Morris minors precariously along the verges and could be seen picking all the wee sweet gems they found. No longer. The hazards on the country roads these days are in the form of packs of cyclists who range across the road widths, sometimes oblivious to traffic building up behind. They seek fitness and health. Do they achieve it in a better way than those who used to glean along the edges of the road, go home and make crumbles and jams and cakes from these fruits grown without chemicals? Debatable.

Now it’s just me, dotting from bush to bush as Dusty moseys along the road in front of me. 

Sometimes the plump black berries glint like deep blue sapphires among the willow herb. Easy to spot, easy to pick. Sometimes they lurk beneath leaves, over walls, under bushes, needing to be ferreted out. Not all are ready for picking. Some are still red and solid, waiting for the kiss of sun which will sweeten its taste.

Inside, I’m still sad. Grieving for my friend, for her family, so suddenly bereft of her sunny disposition. But I’m picking the fruits which God has provided. All I need, his hand provides. He knows the sorrow, and he provides for that, too. He knows the anxieties, and he has a solution for that as well.

Sometimes the gems he gives us are obvious and drop into our laps. Other times we need to linger, to look carefully, to listen, to glean. 

Today, as I came up the drive, a drop fell from the tree above. I thought at first it was a heavy droplet from rain the night before. But it was white.

A bird dropping, right on two of my beautiful brambles. (Don’t worry, anyone who might be served crumble at my house – they will be carefully washed!)

We need to take care that the world doesn’t soil the gems God gives us. 

May you glean diamonds from the treasury of God our loving father today. Just watch out for the birds overhead...