Awkward

‘Tis the day before the night before Christmas, and I’ve made my list and been checking things off it as I go. Last Christmas card delivered to the farmer who lives about a mile and a half away – gave Dusty and I a long walk, slightly moist, but nothing like it is out there now – torrential.

Before that I zipped to Tesco to try to beat the rush. It was busy but not awful.

And got the potica set and rising in the warmish oven. A special sweet bread we always have on Christmas morning. It’s always a bit haphazard for me to make – only making it once a year, and with all these different types of yeast around now, and it being an American measurements recipe which I need to translate...however, today it is looking pretty ‘risen’ though I barely averted disaster. Nearly forgot to put the half pound of ground walnuts into the filling ...

Well, so finishing off that potica is fairly labor-intensive. A lot of scalding, grinding, rolling, etc, and as  I worked, little Indy the quirky cat seemed to be always at my feet. I thought she was hungry. But that didn’t satisfy.

Now as the potica bakes I have rushed upstairs to check emails and write this, and what do you know, here is wee Indy, no longer at my feet but now curled into a ball on my lap. 

That’s all she wanted. Me to slow down so she could curl up on a warm lap.

I believe God must feel like that with most of us. Certainly with me. Not that he’s round our feet but he is certainly nearby, waiting, hoping we might slow down and stop long enough that we can just sit together and bond, as they say.

I’m sorry, God. Just as soon as I finish this, upload it, and get the potica back out of the oven...

Of Dead Sockets and Live Wires

So, after two and a half weeks without the internet, so few blogs, tweets, or emails ... today another engineer arrived and we were full of hope.

Three and a half hours, two cups of tea and some Christmas cookies later, he left, and yes, we are back on line.

All those consolations I was trying to find for being unable to connect to the world can now be forgotten as I plunge back into the world of cyberspace.

And all it took was moving the plug in the exchange from a dead socket to a live one.

The lesson there is pretty clear. If you’re plugged into a dead socket – dead superstitions, atheism, religiosity, whatever, and find Christmas a glittering sham of materialistic frenzy – try unplugging from those old habitual thoughts and plugging into the live wires of Christianity.

The thing about Christianity is that it’s more than a theory or a dogmatic list of do’s and don’t’s. It’s a relationship with the source of life itself, through the live wire of Jesus, whose birthday we are about to celebrate.

Merry Christmas!

Thanks for the muck today...

We both heard the throb of the diesel engine and anticipated seeing the BT engineer’s van pull up outside. No.

Then I noticed the neighbouring farmer, out in the field across the road, mounding muck onto the hard, unploughed ground.

Dusty and I walked past it awhile later, and the smell reminded me of the muck in the field. I thought about it. The field is hard now, unproductive during the cold winter months. Its nourishment was spent last summer growing the barley crop. And so, the farmer is collecting up the organic wastes of his animals and creating a muck mountain out there, in preparation for spring ploughing.

It is steaming and rich. And smelly.

I returned from town a few hours later, having delivered Christmas cards, to be greeted by Don’s statement, “I hope you have a good sense of humour.” 

The way he said it, I knew I didn’t have that good a sense of humour. Not today. Not two weeks into being without internet connection.

BT had just telephoned to say they wouldn’t make it today after all, and it will now be three or four days hence. 

No. I don’t have that good a sense of humour. 

Then I remembered the muck earlier in the morning. The hard, resource-depleted ground. 

Anything like my heart? I’ve been doing too much in this pre-Christmas season, and not allowing enough time to sit with the Saviour and think about what really matters.

How much time is being recovered by us being off-line? How much time do we waste on the internet every day? If I were able to weigh wasted hours in the same way one can weigh cattle’s waste...

So, I am going to make a deliberate attempt to redeem the wasted time. I am going to continue ‘doing’ things as I get ready for Christmas next week, but I am going to do things while I worship God, singing along to praise and Christmas CDs, thinking of Jesus.

Spending time when I might have been busy online writing emails, blogs and tweets, focusing on God instead.

It’s as if I am wresting back the time I might have wasted shopping on-line – the time wasted on materialism – to spend it consciously in the presence of God. 

So, Lord, thank you for the muck today. I wouldn’t have chosen to have it dumped on my life, but now that it’s there – thank you.

Life

Advent, the season of preparation. Preparation of one’s heart to welcome the Christ child in, if you are a Christian. To ponder afresh the meaning of God incarnate, of Jesus laying aside the majesty and glory he had in heaven and becoming a vulnerable human being. To wonder and marvel at this truth, so that on Christmas eve and day, when we really celebrate, there is that meaningful dimension of amazement and love and joy.

The run-up to Christmas, the season of preparation. For those whose thoughts of Christmas are confined to the eating, drinking, exchanging of gifts, a time of hassle and rush, of expectations and expense.

And for those facing imminent death, also a season of preparation. Preparing to meet their Maker. While all the world rushes round in a flurry of tinsel and glitter, some have stopped, confined to beds perhaps, waiting. 

Walking Dusty this morning, I stopped behind the woods and gazed at the rosy hued dawn. I tuned my ears to the noise – mostly birds, though a dim whoosh of traffic could be heard, too, and a plane flew overhead. I had just poured out my heart to God – been brutally honest about how I feel about a young woman in the prime of life languishing at death’s door, a young woman who has much to offer, not least her incredible faith in the face of adversity and pain. I feel upset. I feel angry. I feel confused as to how this can be.

So I listened. And this young woman’s own words came to my mind. ‘It’s not about me. It’s about Jesus.’

Courage. Faith. She’s done more – in her blog and her relationships – to show the love of Christ than most of us will though we live a full four score and ten.

http://iwontbewanting.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/the-bucket.html

Be still

The Minutiae

I think someone has put me on a High Speed Rail Link. Except there doesn’t seem to be a start and a finish; rather it is a loop of intricate curves and patterns but which essentially just keeps going round and round.

I’m frustrated because I had hoped to introduce a more sedate speed to Advent. Maybe that sounds like a joke, since Advent is the lead-up to Christmas, but I don’t plan to run around all the shops being driven crazy by those dreadful modern Christmas songs. I thought that I would be able to slow down and focus on an advent meditation to really prepare my heart for the coming of Jesus into the world, which we mark at Christmas.

But instead I’ve been on a whirlwind tour of hospitality, of cooking and cleaning and volunteering for various things, interspersed by the Dog Walks.

Perhaps in the end, it will be Dusty’s dailies which keep me sane.

So fractured has my time been, though, that even on these daily walks I’ve struggled to focus, to find a peaceful cohesion to my thoughts, to really slip into the presence of God. 

Be still and know that I am God.

A wise man (or woman?) wrote that thousands of years ago. Sometimes I fear that if I am still, I am unproductive, and therefore the world may collapse round my ears. 

It can seem almost sinful to be still. 

But it doesn’t say just Be Still. To just Be Still might imply I have gone to sleep. No, it says Be Still and know that I am God. 

Be still and know. If I’m too busy, I don’t have time to know. To know that God is God. And to know him.

I must find a way to be still tomorrow, and know that God is God.