the adventures of retirement
It seems to be hard walking in this warm weather, even before summer’s really got into its stride. We started earlier this morning to avoid the greatest of the heat, and still lay knackered and sweaty for a while at the end.
Nevertheless, great to be out in creation.
However…
A moment or so where the water is hard and the landscape is soft rolling downland. I mentioned another time how odd it is to see Scandinavian place names in a landscape I associate with the chilterns.
A pleasant place here – the cry of the curlew to the backdrop of departing thunder.
Timetable today depends on hearing from fridgerepairperson. Maybe more later.
A cloudy day with a little grudging rain. A bit humid with it.
The Gospel for the Lectionary on Sunday 13th includes the mustard seed as a picture of the Kingdom of God. It starts tiny and grows huge. The power of an idea! People who work in the world of ideas need to strive for what is right. It’s a big deal.
Four dams today – this is Torside reservoir…
As for tomorrow’s Lectionary, Psalm 138 is a kind of antidote to the thinking of the Israelites who wanted a king like everybody else’s. Just rely on the steadfast love of God – though note that it can be a rocky journey that way – also remember the helicopter story!
Just saying
As to the Lectionary, I admire the honesty of Psalm 130… “Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD.” We can do that too.
Smell is underrated – I’m glad I’ve not had COVID and dysosmia.
Sunday’s Lectionary, the passage from 2 Corinthians… “5:1 For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” The writer is using the tent/building metaphor to express the difference between our transitory life on earth and our eternal life in Christ. But it seems to me that sometimes we Christians care more about the metaphor than about the reality behind it: we build buildings, thinking these will last, and all the generations to come will worship here.
But buildings don’t last. And this generous legacy from earlier generations may feel like an unnecessary weight on the shoulders of the Christian community. If we put bricks and stones together to represent the eternal community of Christ’s people, what does it say when the roof starts to leak, or the building eventually decays and tumbles?
In Sunday’s Lectionary, the second of the Psalms includes this… “…my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.” It’s not necessarily very easy for a twenty first century person to understand the power of that comparison. Going back in time, the darkness of night would have been intense. It might have been filled with wild animals and dangerous people. Starry skies are also beautiful. Cloudy skies would have been dark in a way that my experience of clouds lit up from below does not match. The only thing anywhere near that I have experienced was my night in the open by Scutchamer Knob when I was walking part of the Ridgeway (a long time ago). I couldn’t sleep properly because of the April northerly, and I kept waking up and wanting the sky to begin to get light again.
