Do Not Enter

Chatting to a new acquaintance at a supper party over the holidays, she asked me why I hadn’t pursued some of my writing ambitions. I floundered. I prevaricated. I stammered out that there were so many distractions, so much to do.

Lame.

This morning therefore I took a walk with the Lord, and asked him to identify the blockages. I quickly understood that it isn’t so much the physical distractions which I allow to eat up the time. It’s the mental distractions. The concerns which I meditate on rather than meditating on God. The anxieties for those I love which pop back into my head over and over again until I am ruminating on them. 

At least when a cow ruminates on her cud, it becomes digestible and does her body some good. When I ruminate on worries, they expand and I dig deeper ruts to ensnare my thoughts.

Each concern becomes a cul de sac which leads me back to where I started from and accomplishes nothing. 

God directed my thinking that if I will only take these concerns to God once and leave them with him, trusting that he does have the answer and is actually working in the situations, I can put up a Do Not Enter sign at the opening to the cul de sac of thoughts and then obey that sign.

Hard to do. I found that as I continued my walk my thoughts kept zeroing in on those old familiar cul de sacs, so I had to admit defeat – ‘I can’t do it, Lord. I need your help. Please remind me every time I start to head into a cul de sac that the Do Not Enter sign is still there and relevant. 

Once I’ve asked you to do something, I can just skim over it in prayer – hey, don’t forget about that situation, Lord, lying down that cul de sac in X’s life. 

Then eventually my brain will be freed up to think creatively again, to focus on the writing ambitions I’ve still got. 

I can head down a road less travelled rather than encircling my familiar mental suburbs again and again. 2015, here I come!

Feeding

Patrolling the four trees we call the orchard today, I see that they are much healthier looking than they have been for the last few years. Although the plum doesn’t show any sign of blossom – therefore no plums – its leaves look fresh and whole, unmarked by brown scabs, and the branches also look better than previous years. The apple trees are beginning to blossom, as is the little pear tree, which has so far never borne fruit.

They all look healthier than I remember in the past. 

A couple of months ago, I scattered food pellets around their bases and roughly scraped them in. Perhaps for years now the poor trees have been starving, lacking some necessary vitamin. The apples have fruited, but small apples, and the plum has produced a dozen or so delicious specimens.

Now I don’t know – watch this space – our weather is so unseasonably, unreasonably cold (I heard the highest road in the UK, not far from here, was closed last night due to snow!) we may yet have no harvest from those trees. But today, I think they are looking good.

There’s a line in the Episcopal service of communion in which is prayed that we would feed on Jesus in our hearts, by faith, with thanksgiving. Jesus called himself the bread of life. When we are nurtured and fed by him, we bear good fruit, full-sized, free of scabs and disease. 

I’m sure much of the fruit I may have borne in my life has been mis-shapen and small. I’ve not fed as much as I should have. Feeding on Jesus is a bit like the way a cow feeds (I’ve just walked past a pasture of cows and calves). They take a long time over their eating, chewing, digesting, ruminating, ‘chewing the cud’. 

I’m going to go do that now. Read some of Jesus’ words, and then chew over them throughout the day. Today I want the fruit I bear to be healthy and free from disease.

Fast Food or Feast?

Snacking or grazing? 

Snatched morsels of nourishment don’t always contain much nourishment. Fast food can be nothing more than chemicals and calories. Wholesome food is that which is grown well and prepared with care. It takes time to make and time to consume.

Taste and see that the Lord is good. Feed on me in your heart, Jesus says. The richness of God’s word is released in our lives as we ruminate on it. Snacking on the odd verse of scripture may hush our consciences but doesn’t always do much to feed our souls. 

We are challenged to train our spirits, to train ourselves like athletes train themselves. It can’t be done in minutes. We can’t really be all that God has designed us to be unless we linger in his presence, suck on his words, savour the taste and allow him time to speak, to heal, to console, to guide, to love us.

Today I arose early to spend some time grazing. I hope that during the day, I might ruminate on what I have read this morning.

There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Hallelujah!