Sunday 14 October 2012

Sunday morning ponderings . . .




As surely as one day follows another . . . the seasons must change. New life is always coming, a sure reminder that one must never dwell overly long upon the past.  As soon as a crop is harvested, plans are being made for the next years garden . . . when petals fade upon a rose . . . there is pruning to be done, which results in another,  lovelier rose.  As sure as lilacs bloom and die in the springtime . . .  we know that it won't be long before another colourful bloom takes it's place in our hearts.  Life goes on.

I sat for a brief moment of warmth in the garden yesterday, the sun had peered through the cloud and for a few minutes it beat down upon my head . . . shedding upon me  the last warming vestiges of it's waning  summer power.  I thought a bit about the days which have followed one another over the past year, and all the things that have happened . . . the mundane and the miraculous. It seems as if it were only yesterday that I had been afraid that I might have cancer . . . and yet . . .




It was a full year ago.  The fragility of life became very real for me in those few frightening weeks.  Everything became that tiny bit sweeter,  and a very valuable lesson had been learned.  There is nothing which can bring one up as short as the thought that our days may be numbered, and yet it is a reality we all must live with . . . for, from the very day that we are born . . . we are marching towards our death.   I thought about all those that I had loved through the years that were no longer with us . . . who had never walked upon the grass of our back garden, and yet . . . they  have always  been here with me, walking in every one of my footsteps . . . I carry them  in my heart. 

More young soldiers killed in Iraq . . . it seems there is at least one about every second day or so . . . and my heart goes out to their families.   I remember the dead fallen long ago . . . their bodies laying beneath white crosses in foreign soil, and at once I am their mother, their sister . . . their lover.  I do not consider myself to be a very wise women.  As I have these thoughts I wonder why it is that I am still here, alive in this garden . . . while others are not.  I breathe in the smell of damp and rotting leaves . . . wet grass . . . the wet earth that now lays fallow waiting for the springtime planting.  I know not why the flowers must fade and die . . . why young lives pass away all too soon, and yet . . . still here am I.



But . . . there is something which I do know with a surety . . . in this world there is always something of new beauty, of grace, of loveliness.  There is a meaning to this passage of days, of seasons, of months, of years . . . deep under the vestiges of the external lays something which goes on down through the deep ways of time.  There is a beautiful immortality built into each living and breathing thing.  Something very tangibly forever in the first cool crocus of early springtime, the beauty of the green of a freshly podded pea . . . and in the slow fall of the first golden leaf against the breast of an autumn wind.

I sit there alone . . . drinking all of this in, and pondering these thoughts in my heart . . . and there comes to me something else which I know with a surety.  There is a God, and He is real.  We . . .  and even the smallest of his creations . . . do have a meaning, even if we do not know why, and He loves us, and that love is real and tangible.  Everything else fades amidst that knowledge, merely being shadows in the sun . . .

And I am glad to be alive and to know these things are true.

Source: tumblr.com via Marie on Pinterest
 
It will be good to be at church today.  I love Sunday's.  They are the day of the week which I use to recharge my spiritual battery.  It is always nice to see people we have not seen since the Sunday past . . . and to sing and to praise and to partake of the sacrament together.  I love the hymns . . . and the way they make my heart swell with love for my Saviour.  I love the talks . . . and each pearl of wisdom and thought that they bring into my heart.  I love the lessons, again . . . which bring me knowledge and help me to ponder the deeper meanings of the scriptures.  I just love the pause church  brings to a week which is always otherwise busy and sometimes hard to hold on to . . .

"I believe in Christ like I believe in the sun . . .  not because I can see it, but because by it . . . I can see everything else."
~C S Lewis

 

A delicious pudding for the weekend in The English Kitchen today . . . Cranberry, White Chocolate and Waffle Pudding.  Decadently deliciously moreishly wanton . . .

Happy Sabbath to you all.


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