17th. October. 2020. Daily Devotion.
14th October 2020 A Candle in the Window Courtesy of Peter Millar.
Words to encourage us in tough times. ionacottage@hotmail.com
A Notice seen recently in a bookshop: The Post-apocalyptic section has been moved to Current Affairs. (share this with friends – it says everything!)
You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the whole ocean in a drop. Rumi.
*** When the pot breaks, the soup goes with it. An African village saying.
Centuries ago we were reminded that the first Bible was not the written Bible but CREATION itself – the cosmos. (Romans chapter I verse 20 – “since earliest times people have seen the earth and sky and all God made and have known of his existence and great eternal power.”) This is surely true: but you have to sit still for a while, observe it, love it without trying to rearrange it by thinking you can fully understand it. You simply participate in what one person described as a – Long Loving Look At The Real. Richard Rohr.
And comforting words sent to me by a friend this week:
Circle me O God – Keep hope within – Despair without.
Circle me O God – Keep peace within – Keep hatred out.
Circle me O God – Keep love within – Keep evil out.
Circle me O God – Keep light within – Keep darkness out.
Christ – stand in the circle with us… today and every day.
May the God of Peace inspire us.
May the God of Justice empower us.
May the God of Hope encourage us……
To live the Good News.
Hope means more than just hanging on. It is the conscious decision to see the world in a different way than most others see it. To hope is to look through the eyes of faith to a future not determined by the oppressive circumstances of the present. To hope is to know that the present reality will not have the last word. It is to know, despite the pretentions and cruelties of idolatrous authorities, that God rules. It is God who will have the last word. We need more than resistance; we need hope and a positive vision of where we are going. We begin to live out new possibilities in our daily living. Jim Wallis, theologian, writer and campaigner for justice for many years.
The consolation of nature: (An extract from a book coming out this month.) If there was one mitigating circumstance about the coronavirus that first hit Britain in January 2020 it was that the virus struck in the early part of the year, when the northern hemisphere was entering into springtime. The coronavirus spring that followed turned out, in fact, to be a remarkable event, not only because it unfolded against the background of the calamitous disease, but also because it was in Britain the loveliest spring in living memory. It had more hours of sunshine, by a very substantial margin, than any previously recorded spring; indeed, it was sunnier than any previously recorded British summer, except for three. It meant that life in the natural world flourished as never before, just as life in the human world was hitting the buffers. I have loved wildlife and the natural world since I was a small boy, but I never recorded a spring before. Yet the Covid spring was different. It seemed unlike all others, not least because it was proving exceptionally beautiful, yet by unfolding in parallel with the disease it was producing a sort of bizarre and tragic incongruity. Our beloved summer migrant birds – the swallows and cuckoos, the swifts and the willow warbler – were returning from their winter in Africa; the spring butterflies – the brimstones, the orange-tips and the holly blues – were emerging with their flashes of brilliance; and the spring flowers were each day adding new colour to the landscape, which was only intensified by the sunshine which seemed to pour down uninterrupted from morning till evening. Yet even as all this was happening, people were dying every day in their hundreds, often away from their loved ones, alone and in distress, and the health workers and care workers who were trying to save them were also dying, while millions of others were struggling to cope with the loss of jobs and the stress of being confined to their homes. You almost felt that nature should have switched off, out of sympathy. Yet it went blithely forward, as nature has always done. As the spring evolved, so did the pandemic. Yet there was something more; spring in the time of the coronavirus felt not just unusual, not just paradoxical and incongruous in its character, but important somehow. What we could see initially was solace. “There is no salve quite like nature for an anxious mind,” wrote Richard Deverell, the director of Kew, as he reluctantly closed the world-famous garden as the pandemic took hold. The idea of the consoling power of nature goes back many centuries, but it is strange how recently the beneficial effects of the natural world on our physical and mental health were proved to be real. From: The Consolation of Nature: Spring in the Time of Coronavirus by Michael McCarthy, Jeremy Mynott and Peter Marren. (Hodder Studio, part of Hodder.
Loving God,
If we are ill, strengthen us.
If we are tired, fortify our spirits.
If we are anxious, help us to consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air.
Help us not to stockpile treasures from supermarkets in the barns of our larders.
Don’t let fear cause us to overlook the needs of others more vulnerable than ourselves.
Fix our eyes on your story and our hearts on your grace.
Help us always to hold fast to the good,
See the good in others,
And remember there is just one world, one hope,
One everlasting love, with baskets of bread for everyone.
In Jesus we make our prayer,
The one who suffered, died and was raised to new life,
In whom we trust these days and all days, Amen.
The Revd Barbara Glasson, President of the Methodist Conference
Vintage butterfly on wild flower