Driving Blind

Driving back from Banchory this morning, I pulled the lever to wash the windows. The wipers went, but no water came out. Empty.

The windscreen wasn’t that dirty, but I remembered the first time I drove a distance in the snow. My father-in-law insisted on accompanying me, knowing a California girl had no experience on the ice. Very sweet, but only added to my anxieties. Back in those days, cars did not carry windscreen wash. So by the time we’d gone twenty miles on a road with just one lane each way, my screen was filthy with grimy snow and I had to stop and wash the windscreen in order to see and carry on.

Most people are navigating their way through their lives with no windscreen washer. As self-preservation and greed are voiced and acted out, their vision is obscured and they are driving blind. 

Thank God for Jesus, for his Word, written and made flesh, for his Holy Spirit, living in us and clearing our vision.

The Saviour

One of the drawbacks to warm summer days is the number of fly spots on the windows. Open doors, open windows, hundreds of yellow spots polka-dotting the glass. They don’t really obscure views but once one is aware of them, they certainly spoil the vision.

I thank God that I have been blessed with a big, wonderful family and a group of amazing friends. Recently, there have been situations in the lives of those close to me which have spotted my view of Jesus. Each spot represents a moment when I thought it was up to me to ‘fix’ something. To say just the right words to heal. To give the perfect advice. To do the right thing. To pray the right prayer.

I assume responsibility to ‘fix’ things beyond my ability. The motive is simple: I want the best for those I love, because I love them. But as long as I leave those spots there, I will never see the complete love and faithfulness of Jesus. An accumulation of spots distorts the truth of who Jesus is, polluting my understanding of the vastness of his love and his mighty power.

Jesus invites us to give him all our cares. This is so hard to do. But today I scrub the window of my soul again and pray that as I contemplate the King of Kings, I will relinquish my self-assumed duty to save my loved ones from every pain, to make the perfect decisions always and right every wrong. Jesus is the Saviour. Not me.

Gritty Eyes

Four am and gritty eyes, not just dry. Nine am and the optician and chemist diagnose: conjunctivitis in both eyes. What? Praise the Lord for such good health care, available when we need it. God bless the NHS.

I’m eager to see what the Lord has planned for us on this pilgrimage. There are so many impediments to our comfort and travel; perhaps the opposition doesn’t want us to be open to God, but feeling sorry for ourselves.

Nope, it won’t work. I’m excited to draw nearer to Him and rely on Him to get us over the mountains and down onto the plain.

Going forward

Driving back from Glasgow after dark last night, I became scarily aware that my low beams didn’t seem to throw their light as far forward as usual. That left me, especially when overtaking lorries, feeling as if I were speeding into the darkness without sufficient vision. I found the button which raises the light and though its scope is still more limited than high beams, it felt much safer.

God’s word is a lamp to my feet (and tires), but I have to invest some time in reading it if it’s going to give me any security going forward. He doesn’t tell me the end from the beginning, though he knows it, but he does give me enough light for safe navigation. Too much self-absorption can lower the beam and limit the vision.

Just out of the prayer window, where I was raising the beam. Hope to move forward with confidence today.

A Singing Father God

‘He will rejoice over you with singing.’ 

I was sitting in the prayer window this morning, enjoying the beauty of the fast-falling golden leaves and noticing that the barer the trees get, the clearer the view. In the profusion of life, vision can be blocked by the lushness of relationships, responsibilities and requirements. Hemmed in – though many of the obstructions are much loved and enjoyed – we can lose sight of what lies beyond. It’s as the leaves begin to drop and the profusion is stripped away, that we can see the view and anticipate the journey.

So Scolty has reappeared, as the Norwegian elm drops her summer attire. And Clach na Ben.

Oops, that was a wee diversion. I was actually going to say that while asking God this morning if I could please hear him singing – wouldn’t it be awesome to hear his voice? Would it be operatic, hip-hop, pop, reggae, chorister?  – I was suddenly aware of the trilling, chirping and chatter of the birds in the larch tree. Singing. Singing.

Sometimes when I ask for the supernatural, I’m answered in the ordinary. The beautiful ordinary becomes extraordinary. My hearing of the birdsong has acquired a new depth, a greater meaning.

He’s rejoicing over you, too.

Shoulders back!

Tendonitis in the shoulder. Maybe some damage to the rotator cuff. Maybe the beginnings of a frozen shoulder. The physio’s diagnosis was clear.

But why? (the question always on Flick’s lips...) Maybe this, maybe that; nobody really knows. As I lay on my stomach, though, she remarked that she could see from muscles in my upper back that I was beginning to get into a habit of slumping. Posture! 

It horrified me. When I was growing up, my mother drilled it into me. Stand up straight. Shoulders back. Tummy in. The gym teacher repeated the mantra. The instruction took root within me and I thought that is what I do. But it seems I’m beginning to slacken. 

So now I’ve got some exercises, and the instruction that whatever I do, from lifting shopping to lifting children, I need to remind myself to keep those shoulders back. 

We easily become frozen in our stances towards issues, towards people. Why? Big reasons and small and no reasons at all. Some valid and many prejudiced. As we freeze up, our vision narrows and becomes myopic. 

Perhaps because of the shoulder pain, the muscles on my upper back are hard, locked in spasm and as painful as the tendonitis. I’m sitting here with heat on the muscle, hoping to encourage it to relax.

So with stiffened attitudes: they are accompanied by stiff necks. God often called the Israelites a stiff-necked people, and he wasn’t pleased. 

Sitting with God’s Word warming my thinking is the best way to relax and let my eyes be opened, my vision expanded, my love deepened. 

Shoulders back. Eyes up.

Planks

First impressions can be misleading. If we have a different point of view, we can dismiss others as narrow-minded, bigoted, or worse. This man and his wife came in to our house and were outspoken in their opinions, which muted us both in silent horror. But as the week has progressed, we have got to know this couple, to hear their reasonings, to listen to their experiences of life – very different from our own. We haven’t been persuaded to share their world view, but it has definitely broadened our understanding of how others can arrive at such a world view. And now, we would both say we like them. We appreciate their kind-heartedness. We admire their erudition across a broad sweep of subjects. We are amazed at their energy and their enthusiasm and positive outlooks.

People are nuanced, rarely are they black and white. But the world and I are quick to see in stereotypes and caricatures.

Jesus told us to take the plank out of our own eyes if we are to see clearly. Sometimes we’re not even aware there is a plank in our eye. But there is at least one in mine, and with God’s help we can get it out.

Always hope

Just back from a walk. The sun is burning off the early morning mist and it looks like it’s going to be the sort of day where I scrap my To-Do list and head out to the garden.

Everything in the garden is screaming ‘HOPE’. Even beneath the bed of leaves (which I still haven’t cleared up since November), snowdrops and crocus and daffodils and tulips are breaking through the earth and stretching skywards. 

As winter’s grip lessens and the sun lingers longer, higher in the sky, the signs are all there indicating that warmer days are on the way. The monochrome of winter will soon be brightened with the lavish colours of spring. Already the white snowdrops carpet the lawn.

It isn’t just the weather that is seasonal. Our lives are, too. 

Ezekiel had a vision from God, a vision of a valley of dried up old bones. As Ezekiel spoke out the words God gave him, the bones came together and when the Lord breathed into them, they became truly alive.

Time to come out of hibernation, to open ourselves to God and be filled with his Spirit and live. In God, there is always hope.