Pure Gold

So I picked up a long-neglected cross-stitch and resumed where I’d left off a few weeks ago. As I worked, I realised that I’d faithfully stitched a golden trumpet, thinking I was using two shades of gold when, in fact, turns out I used the same shade twice. Hmm.

There are a few other wee anomalies so far, as there always are despite my best efforts to count carefully. 

‘It’s the mistakes that make it special,’ Don remarked, saving the day. 

Then I thought about the patterns of our lives. They don’t always – maybe ever – work out as we thought they would. But it’s as we offer the goofs and glitches and yes, even the heartaches, to the Creator God that he is revealed through those thin places where we messed up, or where life dealt us a blow, slightly altering the shades or shapes and giving us a depth of truth and understanding, love and compassion we would otherwise have never attained.

God has a plan, a plan for good, but if/when it goes awry through something in this fallen world, he reworks it to be uniquely beautiful.  Nothing can separate us from the love of our Saviour. Nothing.

And so that trumpet now is pure gold. Better than planned.

This is the Day

This is the day that the Lord has made.

Recently I heard of someone who had chosen an arbitrary number of years which he felt might be the length of his life. He did the sums and calculated how many days that left him to accomplish those things which he had on his bucket list.

He then gathered that number of pebbles and put them into a large jar, and every morning he solemnly moves one out of that jar and into what started out as an empty jar.

It’s a sobering reminder that our lives on earth in this form are not immortal, and that we do have a finite number of days in which to do those things which we – which God – has prepared for us to do.

I don’t know about you, but without a plan, I find it very easy to fritter away minutes, hours, and days, without accomplishing things which I do feel I want to do.

This is the day that the Lord has made. Whatever this day holds, it is the only day that I can be sure I have, and it’s important that I make the most of it.

I’m not sure I’ll go as far as a jar of stones – I’m afraid I’d be shocked at how small it might be! But I do intend to embrace each day as a gift to be enjoyed and used completely.

God bless you as you use your day well, too.

Of summer sun and wasps

Glorious morning yesterday for sitting outside and enjoying Saturday breakfast, which Don usually cooks. French toast with maple syrup (yes, I know that the Canadian warehouse where they stockpile maple syrup has been raided and we could face a serious shortage soon. Note to self: buy a giant one at Costco next time.). 

The sun beat down out of a perfectly blue Med-style sky (or Californian, for that matter), and the wind desisted for the day. It felt perfectly settled as we pulled the folding table and chairs from the greenhouse and prepared to enjoy a relaxed breakfast.

Swoop in the wasps, drawn by the syrup perhaps, or the shower gel or the shampoo or whatever. I resorted to the Aussie cork hat (as anyone reading this who is friends with Doug on Facebook probably already knows) – glad to have furnished others with a good laugh.

Well. That’s the way of the world, isn’t it? Not the cork hat, but the wasps zinging in to sting their way through a rare, perfect summer’s day and ruin it for the humans. 

I guess you might think the same about the Garden of Eden. There they were, Adam and Eve and God, in a place brimming with good fresh fruit, exotic plants and abundant sunshine. And for Adam and Eve, hanging out with the Creator of the universe. What more could you want? In slithers the snake, slyly suggesting that actually, there is more. And Eve listened.

We swotted as many wasps as we could (well, Doug did) and I have to admit, the allusion is pretty weak as we didn’t hear any of them whisper, “Did God really say ...?” 

But I have to end by wondering out loud – where would the world be today if Eve had stepped on the snake instead of listening to it? 

It’s a little like wondering where we would be today if Hitler had died as a baby. There’s no knowing, but it’s probably safe to say that behind every evil being, there are a dozen others waiting to step up to the plate.

Praise God that he had a plan. Executed at such a cost to himself. What a saviour!