Daytime view

John 8:12-20

The first time I went to Salt Lake City we arrived at night. Our hotel was on South Temple, just down the street from the towered and steepled temple. It was December. The streets and temple gardens were illumined by many Christmas lights which added to those of the temple. It was an awesome sight. I let Stephen have the room on the front of the hotel and took the one one the back with no spectacular view except a long low office block for myself.

Next I grouchily opened my curtains. I like a nice view from my bed. That is one reason we bought our current house - our bedroom window looks onto a cliff where blue-tits and blackbirds play. I was amazed. The backdrop for my dismal city view was snow-clad mountains.

How different the view was in the daylight. How different our view of life will be if we look at it in God's light.

This photograph was taken on a later summer visit to SLC. It shows the splendour of the temple lighting, without the added effect of the Christmas lights. Unfortunately I do not have a photograph of the magnificent mountains which I saw that morning which attested to the natural beauty of the place and my bad judgement!

What can be done about?

Romans 4:13-25

Uncle Steve died last December, he was 102 years old. Auntie Clem once said that she thought he was a vegetarian because he was too lazy to chew meat. For years he was the only vegetarian I knew. His family were the only Quakers I knew –apart from people they introduced me too. In their house I met Waldo Williams, another Quaker who I had heard about on the news for being in prison for refusing to work until conscription was finished. Uncle Steve went on Aldermaston Marches.

The meeting house in Milford Haven was overflowing for his memorial. The reflections attested to his brilliance as a captivating physics teacher, his literary ability in both English and Welsh – he was a Bard of the National Eisteddfod. He was still raising money for the local branch of the United Nations when he was 100 years old. He refused his telegram from the Queen (much to his wife’s chagrin). When he retired he came home and announced that he was going to Ghana to teach for two years. Letters were read from Ghana. Tales were told of letters and emails he wrote to bring awareness to little known problems. He liked Popeye the Sailorman. All the speakers said that they were the better for having known him. In a gentle and mischievous way he helped people to realize their gifts and potential. He asked questions that you did not want to be asked and always with a twinkle in his eye.

My family was small, his was big, he included me on trips with his daughters. I felt included and loved. He did not rely on ‘works of the Law’ he lived the underlying principles of the Law (Love the Lord your God with all your heart and your neighbour as yourself).

When he spoke in a Meeting it was not to tell us that we are sinners – we know that already - but “What can be done about...?”

Mighty Waters

Psalm 93

Ocean swell, crashing waves, mighty Mississippi, towering waterfalls or just a bubbling brook gently washing moss grown rocks- I love them all. Each is a reminder of our Creator God. Whenever I can I spend time just watching the miracle of the flowing watching, whatever the speed and strength.

Stand on a ledge above the incoming tide at Druidstone- their is a special ledge that our family loves, we line up and watch. When the tide is out the ledge seems to be a nothing, a kink in the cliff. The magic of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. I took every opportunity to walk beside them on my journeys between Houston and Champagne. How can a river be so wide? Seven falls near Colorado Springs, we visited many years ago but the glory of the rainbows in the falling water is etched in my memory along with other waterfalls, big and small hiding in the Rockies or Grand Tetons or clinging to the Pembrokeshire coast. Bubbling brooks- the first to speak to my heart is in Port Lion. I met it as a teenager. There are many others including the little Ry de Baudemont passing near our house but the special part is only on view from a rocky footpath.

v2 Your throne was established long ago;
you are from all eternity.

By myself I can do nothing

John 5:30-47

This is Jesus talking. The man who started his public ministry by headline making miracle of turning water into wine, the man who returned the Jewish leader's daughter to life when everyone knew that she was well and truly dead. Here he is saying that he can do nothing by himself.

I get up in the morning, I go downstairs, I fill the kettle with water, I make tea, I drink tea, I start to think, I read my Bible and say my prayers and sometimes in all this- even the reading and the praying I think about the fact that God is with me and that he might have a plan for my day. I am not a miracle worker. My tea is tea. How much more so than Jesus should I take God into my head. Jesus wants my relationship with God to be the same as his. An awesome challenge for a control freak.

¹⁹ Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. ²⁰ For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed.²¹ For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. ²² Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, ²³ that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him.

Now if you call yourself a Christian

Romans 2:12-24

A good Jew kept the Law. It was the guide for all actions. God had given the Law and it was perfect. To go against the law was to go against God. To love God was to love the Law. To fail at keeping the Law was to sin.

So I call myself a Christian. What is my guide? The Bible? Christian tradition?

How did Jesus keep the Law? By following the underlying principle of the Law - to love the Lord your God with all your heart and your neighbour as yourself - even if what you are doing is not conventionally correct.

Little Miracles

John 4:43-54

The royal official's son was healed the moment that he asked Jesus to heal him. I do not have any experience of this but I do know that there are many times that I have thought "Ah I must contact...." ... a friend or a student. Then they contact me without me making any effort.

An amusing situation happened to me last week. I was shopping in Waterloo, the same place of battle fame. I idly thought that perhaps I would meet some of the people who go to our church and live in Waterloo. It was unlikely since I was going to the pet food shop and they do not have a pet. I went to the electronics store for playtime. I like to wonder round and decide what kitchen appliances I might buy to replace the ones I had to leave in the States. I was on the hunt for a toaster. The electronics store shares a parking lot with Tom and Co. I did my business, the necessary and the unnecessary.

Then I thought I would give my husband a treat and attend to the chore that he had to do in Waterloo the following day. The tire depot was just down the street, it would not be out of my way and it would be a lot less busy on a Friday afternoon than a Saturday morning. The queue was not long, I handed in my keys and a voice said "Jane". We know few people in this country and not many of them in Waterloo. It was indeed the people who I had wondered if I would meet at the other stores much closer to their home. It was a pleasant way to pass the time which otherwise would have been tedious. Why were they at the tire depot? They had had a flat tire. Instead of a relaxing walk in the forest they were

towed to the store. I think that God works in very peculiar ways.

The branch of an almond tree

Jeremiah 1:11-19

What do I see? Not the branch of an almond tree.

Today I see my ordinary everyday life, nothing extraordinary. A few cars and lorries passing by the window, the sun warming the grass, the melting frost, twigs bulging with budding foliage, the cliff with last year's brambles, there is nothing unusual or special today. Just life.

I do not see the gentle man at the monastery where I go to buy beer and jams made at a neighbouring abbey. I am told the beer is good. I know the bramble jam, the rhubarb and apricot is good and the apricot is the best I have ever tasted. I do not see Bob Felice but I remember his comments about laundry frozen on the washing line- frozen washing gives me a kick too.

The cliff is not at the coast, we do not have an ocean for a garden but the sedimentary rocks of Ittre resemble those of the Pembrokeshire coast. Those rocks which are battered daily by the mighty Atlantic. We have spent many hours as a family walking the beaches and cliff paths, marveling at creation.

I see golden forsythia, everyone except me has a forsythia bush. I wonder if Lee Jackson still has the one which I gave him?

A small amount of scree transports me to the majestic hills of the English Lake District and the mighty Rocky Mountains.

Sometimes a fence will remind me of a barrier between God and I but today nothing special, just the ordinary things bringing to mind the extra ordinary life that God gives us.