Today, November 19th, is World Toilet Day!!! And here is quote from The UN’s website about why they have decided to call a World Toilet Day.
What is World Toilet Day all About? Toilets save lives, because human waste spreads killer diseases. World Toilet Day is about inspiring action to tackle the global sanitation crisis. World Toilet Day is celebrated on 19th November every year. It’s all about inspiring action to tackle the global sanitation crisis and help achieve. Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6), which promises sanitation for all by 2030.”
How much do we think about our toilets [apart from when we need to clean them] and our indoor plumbing? It is a luxury we take for granted, especially when most houses in the West have more than one toilet. And we also take our public toilets at sea-sides, parklands, woodlands, shopping centres, etc for granted.
Or at least we did until lockdown. Here in the UK when lockdown eased and people started being able to travel a bit more they started visiting beaches, woodlands, going on hikes in areas they used to visit, but what they came to realise was that even though it was possible to visit these attractions now, many of the toilet blocks had not reopened. The media enjoyed sharing tales of human faeces being found in used McDonald boxes on the beach, or similar stories to gross people out. Why was this a story? Because, even though the first public toilet for both sexes did not come about until 1848 with the First Public Health Bill, in less than 200 years, we have got used to being able to use a public toilet whenever necessary. [The history of public toilets is fascinating and I would suggest you Google it to find out more, and also check out what it is like in your own country.]
As more was learned about disease and sewerage, houses were given their own toilets as opposed to a shared toilet at the end of a block of slum dwellings. I have lived in a few houses built between 1870-1930 where there is a building inside the walled backyard where a flushing toilet used to be. Those outhouse toilets have become garden sheds as indoor plumbing is now the accepted norm. The thought of having to go outside in the cold and wet makes me grateful that I can use an indoor loo. Although when travelling, I spent three months in a house in Greece, which I shared with three guys, with an outside toilet and dodgy plumbing, which help me to appreciate the luxury of indoor toilets and locks on doors.
At least this was my dodgy plumbed Greek toilet, inside our own backyard and I only had to share it with guys I knew. There are many women across the world who do not have this luxury. Whether it is day or night, light or dark, they have to use to a shared hole in the ground, often with no privacy or locks on the door, and definitely with no flushing sanitation. At night, this hole would be in the pitch dark where there are all kinds of dangers which would not encourage the women and girls to want to get up in the night; of being bitten by poisonousness insects and snakes; of falling in the dark and being injured and not found until morning; of being out alone where rape would be an often realised fear; of being kidnapped and sold by people traffickers. So the women and girls hold on, not going when their bladders tell them to, which increases the risk of urinary infections, which if left untreated, can lead to death.
Let us use today to give thanks for our indoor toilets and plumbing that we take so much for granted, BUT also to remember those who do not have those facilities and do something about it. It is so inexpensive to sponsor a toilet or a clean water tap and yet so often we do not think about. Both the toilets in my house sponsor toilets in the developing world via Toilet Twinning, and organisation with the strap-line “flushing away poverty one toilet at a time” and there are many other organisations that do the same. Here are two other examples TearFund and WaterAid but do a Google search to find others agencies in your country.
Let’s use today, World Toilet Day, to help those who are not blessed with what we take for granted.
by Kate Kennington Steer, all images by Kate Kennington Steer
As I was journalling this morning about a blog post I recently finished writing and what more planning I needed to do for my own Advent series on imageintoikon, I found myself reflecting on the exact words Christine chose for the Godspace Advent theme this year. The verb ‘to lean’ caught at my attention. As a physical movement forward, back or to the side, up or down, it could range from anything from a slight inclination up to a definite bend, and the resulting visible change could be infinitesimal or dramatic. And I reconnected with a mini-mantra that came to me a couple of years ago after a particularly acute year of physical ill health:
sit in the mess
listen to the pain
lean into the discomfort.
It struck me this morning that leaning towards the light could also cause discomfort. The comfort that most of us derive from the lift of spirits a sunny day can bring, can cause torture for a migraine sufferer. As a photographer, I know very well that light can blind as much as it can reveal.
The more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable the nature of light became.
So if one believes, as I do, that all light comes from God, and that one of the names of God is Light, and that this name describes something particular about the character of God, then one is forced to confront the knowledge that the Light who invites us to become whole in her, is not a cosy, reassuring figure. Light has a power beyond my wildest dreams. Light is Power. But the amazing reality of the invitation to lean towards the One who is Light, is that I am invited to become one with this Light. Indeed, Light longs to share every aspect of what light is with me.
I wonder, what would happen if I were to truly accept this gift and become a light of the Light?
I would have to be prepared for the real nature of Light. Not just the soft focus, fuzzy haze of bright cloud light, but the sharp brilliance that shows up exactly where all the shadows are. Accepting the light of Light would mean accepting the dark of Light too.
As a sufferer of depression, I am only too aware that there are plenty of shadows already out there in my life, and they cause plenty of painful stories to rise up in me, most of which I am highly reluctant to let see the light of day. So, why would I wish to open to the potential of experiencing even more? And yet, reading Russ Harris’s book, The Reality Slap, I was reassured to read this:
This pain tells you something very important : that you’re alive, that you have a heart, that you care, and there’s a gap between what you want and what you’ve got. And this is what all humans feel under such circumstances… What would you have to not care about, in order to not have this pain? (102, 106)
The shadows tell me that I care about the Light. They tell me that I really am a “light-baby”, attracted to the mystery of what light conceals as much as it divulges. They tell me I want to be present to the Light in as many ways as I can, in all areas of my life. This is what I care about, and so this is what hurts when, for so many different reasons, I fall short of realising this is my purpose.
Leaning towards the Light then is going to mean leaning into whatever and wherever discomfort comes this Advent, learning to listen to what wisdom the shadowed messes of painful places wish to bring to me.
I know The Light will speak through my dark.
guest post by Bethany Dearborn Hiser
Excerpt from From Burned Out to Beloved by Bethany Dearborn Hiser, Taken from Chapter Nine, “Moving From Shame to Self-Empathy”
Although I’ve been attempting to identify my emotions and practice self-empathy for a while, I’m just beginning to incorporate Welcoming Prayer into my life. It has been like tapping into a wellspring of water as I welcome the Living Water to work within me and receive my emotions. I invite you to learn from the work and wisdom of Contemplative Outreach and my spiritual director Lorie Martin, who has contributed to explaining the Welcoming Prayer practice throughout this exercise. (1) Together with these skilled practitioners, we invite the Holy Spirit to guide us.
Welcoming Prayer: An Emotional Awareness Practice
1. Notice and allow your feelings. Pause, breathe, and invite the Holy Spirit. With love and curiosity, begin to notice what you are feeling and allow yourself to feel it. Contemplative Outreach guides the practitioner:
Using your intuitive eye, move gently through the body, scanning for any discomfort, pain, uneasiness, itching, heat, cold, tension, tingling, or other sensations. . . . Rest (stop) there and sink into (experience) it. . . . All feelings, whether perceived as positive or negative, are welcomed. Feelings may intensify, dissolve, or change as we are present to them in the moment. Simply follow their movement.
Becoming aware of what’s stirring in us requires slowing down. When I’m moving fast—or in recovery language, sped up—it’s very hard to be aware of what I’m feeling and needing. I become disconnected from myself. I am also unaware of how the emotions of others are affecting me. My body might desperately try to communicate that I’m stressed, too busy, and near burnout.
Our body does communicate to us if we listen. Bessel van der Kolk says that if we avoid listening, we’re unable to detect what’s dangerous, harmful, and “just as bad, what is safe and nourishing.” We end up turning to other sources to help us regulate or calm down, such as “medication, drugs like alcohol, constant reassurance, or compulsive compliance with the wishes of others.” As codependent workaholics, we return to our need to be needed, to have impact, to please others, or to not fail. It’s too easy, as Brené Brown says, “to steamroll right over emotion.”
Welcoming Prayer encourages us to notice and to allow our emotion without figuring it out in the moment. Brown echoes the importance of just recognizing that we are feeling something. However, if you’re like me, you often want to know what you’re feeling and why. She offers some “Rumbling” questions that are part of the Rising Strong process:
- Why am I being so hard on everyone around me today?
- What’s setting me off?
- I can’t stop thinking about that conversation at work. Why?
- I’m having a strong emotional reaction. What’s going on?
We might consider exploring these questions after engaging in Welcoming Prayer.
2.“Welcome” Consent to God’s Presence. After allowing ourselves to feel, the second step of Welcoming Prayer is to consent to God’s presence with us in our feeling, emotion, thought, and experience. As Lorie Martin described to me, we let the feeling be an invitation to receive God’s love. We aren’t welcoming anxiety but rather welcoming God’s movement in us as we experience anxiety. This is a key distinction. According to Father Thomas Keating,
[Welcoming Prayer] embraces painful emotions experienced in the body rather than avoiding them or trying to suppress them. It does not embrace the suffering as such but the presence of the Holy Spirit in the particular pain, whether physical, emotional, or mental. . . . [In] giving the experience over to the Holy Spirit, the false-self system is gradually undermined and the true self liberated.
I want to acknowledge my anxiety, let myself feel it, and receive what it might be communicating. However, I don’t want to let anxiety take over me. I want to invite God into my anxiety.
3. Let Go: Release Needs to God. Now that we’ve let ourselves feel what we feel and welcomed God’s presence in us, we can release our desires and needs into God’s hands. Contemplative Outreach encourages letting go through saying: “I let go of the desire for safety and security, esteem and affection, and power and control. I embrace this moment as it is.”
When we let go of our desires, we aren’t saying that they’re unimportant or that we don’t have a need for security, affection, and control. We also aren’t saying that we have no reason to fear and that the circumstances we face are safe and healthy. For a person caught in an abusive relationship, fear is justified. We aren’t saying to just get over the fear or let go of the emotion.
Equipped to Extend Self-Empathy
When I notice I’m feeling a negative emotion, I want to jump quickly to letting go of that feeling because it doesn’t feel good. I want to be rid of it and then to connect with God and experience peace. Yet Welcoming Prayer invites us to notice the emotion and feel it in our bodies, to sit with it, and to welcome God with us. It invites us to not reject, deny, or react from the emotion but to say, “God, I need you. Come be with me in this. It feels awful. Hold me.”
In that place of pain—not after—we experience God’s loving embrace. Transformation happens there. We experience God in our darkness, in our trembling fear, in our paralyzing anxiety. God isn’t afraid or judgmental of negative emotions. Jesus himself said he was “crushed with grief ” in the garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:34, The Passion Translation). Yet he also followed this with letting go of his need for security, affection, and control. In the presence of his Father, he relinquished it all and embraced the moment for what it was.
After we have come aware of God with us, in the muck and mire of our emotions and our lives, we take a deep breath and are able to trust and surrender our normal human needs. We are able to extend the empathy we often give others. Practicing self-empathy and compassion is common in resilience and self-care work. Marshall Rosenberg calls it “emergency first-aid”; we listen to what’s going on in us, being present and attentive to others. This may look like checking in with ourselves: “Oh, look at me, feeling that fear of rejection again. Yet it’s okay; it makes sense given the circumstances. It’s okay to feel what I feel.” The key is to notice gently, with compassion and not judgment.
By inviting God into our inner work, we can receive God’s grace and perspective. It isn’t just up to us to extend grace, empathy, and love toward ourselves. Without first consenting to God’s activity within me, I struggle to offer myself empathy. It feels awkward, or I get frustrated and feel ashamed that I’m so hard on myself, jumping right back into the shame spiral. Instead we can receive God’s love into our pain, hear how God sees and feels about us, and experience God’s presence with us. When we connect to the Living Water and extend ourselves grace, shame loosens its grip. We can let go more easily, wash off the mud, and feel the freedom that’s available to us.
As we cry out to God, God leans in, hears our cry, sets our feet firmly on solid truth, and gives us a new song of praise (Psalm 40). God breaks into our spiral of shame and lifts us up out of the miry pit. God is an active God, responding to our cries for help and freedom. In Psalm 18, God rescues the psalmist, who feels caught in the spiral of death, perhaps a spiral of shame and addiction. The psalmist, presumably David, calls out to God from a tormented place, “The cords of death encompassed me” (18:4). God powerfully responds, tearing through heaven and earth, lightning and thunder, fire and hailstone. After racing toward earth, he wrote,
He reached down from on high, he took me;
he drew me out of mighty waters.
He delivered me from my strong enemy, . . .
He brought me out into a broad place;
he delivered me, because he delighted in me.
(Psalm 18:16-17, 19)
God reaches down and takes hold of us in our suffering, when we are drowning in sorrow and pain. God delivers us from our enemies and frees us from the liar who leads us to believe false ideas about ourselves. God goes to great length to deliver and restore us—not because of pity but because God delights in us.
Welcoming Prayer is a practice that we can engage with at any moment: while leaving a meeting feeling angry and frustrated, while listening to a person share about their abusive partner, or while driving home, staring blankly into oblivion. In these moments, instead of tuning out, shoving, or running, may we tune in to what we’re experiencing with grace and compassion. May we allow our emotions to connect us with God, the tender, loving liberator. By grace we are saved—daily, if not moment by moment.
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(1) According to Contemplative Outreach: Contemplative Outreach, “Welcoming Prayer Tri fold,” Contemplative Outreach, accessed January 8, 2019, contemplativeoutreach.org/sites/default/files/private/welcoming_prayer_trifold_2016.pdf. Used with permission.
Taken from From Burned Out to Beloved by Bethany Dearborn Hiser. Copyright (c) 2020 by Bethany Lynn Dearborn Hiser. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com
Bio for Bethany Dearborn Hiser
Bethany Dearborn Hiser is the director of soul care for Northwest Family Life, a network of therapists trained to work with survivors of domestic violence and sexual trauma. As a bilingual social worker, chaplain, and pastoral advocate, Hiser has worked in a variety of ministry and social service settings with people affected by addiction, sexual exploitation, incarceration, and immigration. She and her husband, Kenny, live in Seattle with their two young children.
For Such A Time As This:
From Burned Out To Beloved Launch
Saturday, November 21st 10-11am PST
Bethany Dearborn Hiser will share about why she wrote the book, lead some experiential exercises, and engage in a conversation with some of the book’s endorsers and soul care leaders about the relevance of the book to today’s times. She will be joined by:
- Christine Sine, founder & facilitator of Godspace Light,
author of The Gift of Wonder
- Jude Tiersma-Watson, associate professor of Urban Mission at Fuller Seminary & Inner Change
- Joanna Douglas, founder and member care provider at Mindful Member Care & Servants to Asia’s Urban Poor
- David Westerlund, Unlocking hidden resources by facilitating meaningful engagement. Be Present Discover Joy, LLC
This event is free and open to all. Although reading the book is not necessary to participate, you can find pre-order links here: www.bethanydearbornhiser.com/book
by Christine Sine
The light can’t come too quickly this year. As Lilly Lewin mentioned on Friday, Christmas trees and Christmas lights are already up around the neighbourhood and those of us who feel we should wait until the beginning of Advent, to set those lights glowing just can’t wait.
Celtic Advent Is Here.
Isn’t it great that we don’t have to wait? Celtic Advent began yesterday which means that it is time to set up your sacred space for Advent, pull out your copy of Lean Towards the Light this Advent & Christmas and sign up for the Advent retreat, a six module online retreat of contemplative exercises that you can go through at your own leisurely pace.
My Contemplative Garden Is Here.
I have really enjoyed putting together my Advent garden this year and in keeping with the unusual season, my garden is a little different and you might think quirky too.
Over the weekend, I pulled out my favorite contemplative garden bowl, filled it with cactus soil, covered that with decorative stones and planted my cacti – all of it is recycled from previous gardens. Then I filled it with candles, not traditional, blue or purple and pink candles. They will go around our traditional Advent wreath that sits on our dining room table every year. This is my special contemplative garden, designed for my morning contemplative times, so I felt I could have some fun with it and as you can see I chose colorful candles that I will light every morning – yep, every morning!!!! And as if that wasn’t enough I have wound a string of fairy lights around the garden – reminding me a little of the colorful aurora borealis that dominates my Lean Towards the Light contemplative video from a few years ago.
Each week, I will paint one of the rocks to help me meditate on that week’s theme but I have decided that all the candles will be lit every morning as a symbol of my desire to really lean towards the light of Christ. As I said, this is a nontraditional contemplative garden that is geared more towards my own needs this year than towards any form of traditional celebration.
Lean Towards the Light Advent Garden
Creativity Outside the Box is Here.
If you have not already done so, take some time this week to design your sacred space for Advent. As you do so, I would encourage you too to think outside the box. Don’t think same old candles and Advent wreaths. Design something that responds to your special needs this year.
What are you craving this year that needs to be part of your sacred space? Do you own religious symbols you could adapt to help you focus? Are there other items around the house – like my lights and cacti – you could incorporate? Try to keep your purchases to a minimum. It is a fun and creative exercise to engage in.
I also put together a Celtic Advent playlist on Spotify, and then planted a bowl of narcissus bulbs. They will be flowering by Christmas – a wonderful reminder that growth begins in the dark but grows into the light and flowers with beauty and fragrance for us to enjoy.
Narcissus bulbs
Now unless you feel a little overwhelmed by all this demand to be creative, be assured that it is OK to be traditional too. I am also adding my Advent icon and beautiful Taize Magnificat picture to my desk. I cannot imagine Advent without them.
So now I feel that I am really ready for Advent. Not surprisingly as I worked on all of this, a song of hope and longing and praise rose up within me as I begin the season:
Lord God Almighty,
Who made the sun
To light our world by day,
And the moon to illumine the night.
I wait for the coming of your light.
I wait in anticipation,
For your light to penetrate the darkness.
I wait with longing,
For the light of your justice to shine.
I wait in silence,
Inviting your light to fill my heart.
May it shine
On me,
In me,
Around me,
And out into the world you love.
© Christine Sine
And here is a glimpse of what my garden looks like each morning.
Another beautiful contemplative service with music in the style-of-Taize for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost from St Andrews Episcopal Church in Seattle. And as November 15th is the beginning of Celtic Advent it seems fitting that the final song “Deep Peace” is a beautiful Celtic Blessing.
Carrie Grace Littauer, prayer leader, with music by Kester Limner and Andy Myers.
Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-710-756 with additional notes below.
“The Kingdom of God” and “Nada Te Turbe” are songs from the Taize community – copyright and all rights reserved by GIA/Les Presses de Taizé.
“Step by Step ” – This song was written by the American folk musician Pete Seeger, and appears on the album “Songs of Struggle and Protest 1930-1950”, released in 1964. I believe it’s currently in the public domain, and if it isn’t, I think Pete would have wanted us to share it anyways.
“Kyrie for November 15, 2020” – Text and music by Kester Limner, shared under the Creative Commons License, Attribution (CC-BY).
“Deep Peace (Celtic Blessing) – Text: Celtic traditional, adapt. Ray Makeover
Text and music copyright 2009 Ray Makeover, Augsburg Fortress. All rights reserved.
by Tom Sine
We have just witnessed one of the most divisive elections in America’s history.
I am particularly concerned at how divisive this election has been for those of Christian faith. Now that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been elected as president and vice president, whatever our political views, we as Christians need to find ways to work together for changes that promote the common good.
I urge Christians from all traditions to reach out in a spirit of love to those who voted differently than you did. We all need to also pray that God will give President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris wisdom as they seek to lead this country for all Americans in these difficult times.
I also urge Christians, in all our communities, to start gathering with church members and neighbors, not to discuss political differences, but rather to start working together on how to reduce the increasing COVID contagion, illness and death of a projected December Pandemic Crisis!
All churches need to start planning with community leaders, before Thanksgiving, to consider important steps to reduce the threat of this new Pandemic Crisis:
- Consider a “virtual” celebration in your own family for both Thanksgiving and Christmas this year as in the example that AARP describes in my last post;
- Encourage your church and leaders in your community to contact the CDC and secure some of the resources they offer to communities to more effectively address some of the concerning challenges with COVID-19 coming our way this winter.
Since I wrote that post on a virtual Thanksgiving, Christine and I have decided to have a Zoom Thanksgiving to avoid gatherings in our home unless we are able to gather out of doors with masks. Christine and I are going to celebrate a Zoom Thanksgiving with her nephew and wife and their two preschoolers in Australia. We will not only plan to visit as we eat but will also plan some activities after the meal by way of Zoom. “As Thanksgiving approaches, this might be the first major holiday in which families hold a beloved traditional meal together via an online teleconference, rather than around the same table, which ups the stakes for hosts.”
There is a real danger that Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings in 2020 could become contagion sites for spreading the Coronavirus to our dearest family and friends. The reason for this warning is that we seem to have lost control of the vicious pandemic in the United States as we head into the holidays.
Waking up to a Pandemic Crisis as we race into the holiday season 2020!
As of November 5, more than 9.6 million people across every state, Washington DC and four territories have tested positive for the virus, more than 235,000 with the virus have died.
With coronavirus cases surging across the country, we’re solidly in the midst of a “third wave of COVID-19, which is shaping up to be the worst yet. Last week alone, the U.S. saw a staggering half a million new cases, and more than 20 states reported record daily levels. On Thursday, the daily caseload reportedly topped 115,000-116,707 new infections.”
Connecting Your Churches and Community to the CDC
Given the growing COVID-19 as race into the holiday season we urge you and leaders in your church or community organizations to contact the CDC and invite them to show your community to create a process to both:
- Identify the ways COVID-19 is projected to spread in your community
- Learn from connecting to leaders in the CDC how your community, can join communities all over the US, in developing practical ways to enable people to reduce exposure as well as secure help when they may need it.
Here are some practical instructions the CDC has posted to help communities anywhere in the United States to reduce the vulnerability of people where you live. Read what they offer. Then if you and others in your community feel these resources might be valuable for your community as we head into a very concerning winter, contact the CDC and they will explain how to secure their good help.
“As some communities in the United States begin to plan and hold events and gatherings, the CDC offers the following considerations for enhancing protection of individuals and communities and preventing spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Event planners and officials can determine, in collaboration with state and local health officials, whether and how to implement these considerations, making adjustments to meet the unique needs and circumstances of the local community. Because COVID-19 virus circulation varies in communities, these considerations are meant to supplement—not replace—any state, local, territorial, or tribal health and safety laws, rules, and regulations with which gatherings must comply. Organizers should continue to assess, based on current conditions, whether to postpone, cancel, or significantly reduce the number of attendees for gatherings.”
With coronavirus cases surging across the country, we are solidly in the “CBOs (community-based organizations) work at the local level to meet community needs. They include social service agencies, nonprofit organizations, and formal and informal community groups, like neighborhood groups or recreational or special-interest clubs. Depending on the nature of their work, a CBO’s stakeholders may include volunteers, members, clients, supporters, patrons, program participants, and event attendees.
These considerations are meant to supplement—not replace—any state, local, territorial, or tribal health and safety laws, rules, and regulations with which organizations must comply. CBOs can determine, in collaboration with state and local health officials, whether and how to implement these considerations, making adjustments to meet the unique needs and circumstances of the local community. CBOs should continually assess, based on current conditions, how to modify their operations and programming to both advance their mission and protect their staff and stakeholders.
CBOs may also benefit from reviewing CDC’s COVID-19 information focused on workplaces, events and gatherings, food service providers, youth sports, youth and summer camps, childcare programs, and people at higher risk of severe illness.”
If you, your church, and community draw on the resources of the CDC, as we head into a more risky winter, we would welcome learning what resources you drew on and the difference it made in your own live and those in your community. Email me with your responses.
by guest writer Lucinda Smith
The air is colder, the clouds denser, the green leaves are subtly turning and the crisper, browner ones already lie crunchy beneath our feet. Autumn is slipping into winter, here in England. The seasons come and go, bringing a rhythm and a structure to the years – they tell of things past and those that are yet to come – sun and sand and dappled grass recede, exposing us once again to dark mornings and central heating, thick jumpers and hot chocolate.
Sometimes though, we find ourselves unexpectedly in a season of life that feels out of sync – as though the order has been reversed or harshly interrupted, without either our knowledge or permission. It jolts us and catches us unawares. This is where I find myself today. This is where many, across the world, find themselves, due to Covid-19. We have been thrown sideways, and are struggling to find our feet, again.
It’s always tempting to ask God, the ‘why?’ questions, but He seems seldom to answer those. When we find ourselves facing an unplanned turn of events, it’s better to ask the ‘what?’ or ‘how?’ questions. A new chapter, an enforced season of rest or of activity, a pandemic – what can this unforeseen situation teach me about who you are, Father God? How can I be more like Jesus in it?
Solomon, in the book of Ecclesiastes (3:1-8) writes these wonderful words:
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
Our lives as well as the world of nature, are marked by seasons and cycles – birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age and death. When we are old we become childlike again – from dust we came, and to dust, we shall return. As Solomon says, nothing lasts forever, nothing is set in stone. Let’s choose to yield to God’s presence and leading, as we navigate the known and unknown, with Him.
The Lord of winter and spring, summer and autumn wants to be sought and found, in the changing and varied seasons of our fragile humanity. He is not shocked or surprised by what we didn’t see coming. His promise to us is always, ‘I will be with you’. Really, what more could we ask for?
Bio for Lucinda Smith
Lucinda is married to Steve, a GP, and they live in Preston, Lancashire. She has four children, seven grandchildren and a lovely chocolate Labrador! The subject she is most passionate about is IDENTITY, and, in the days before Covid 19, she spoke regularly at women’s breakfasts and small conferences. She is currently in the process of writing a book, The Red Thread, based around the story of adopting their fourth child from China. In a former life, Lucinda and Steve were medical missionaries in Pakistan. She loves mentoring young women on their journeys with Jesus, walking, books, good films and cream teas!
Thanks to Photerrestrial @photerrestrial for making this photo available freely on Unsplash.com
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