The sun is shining here in North Wales and it was shining last May on the Isle of Bute where we holiday this time last year. The sun is really welcoming in the season and the weather feels different. We are again about to go on holiday [so no blogs for abut 10 days]. This year we’re off to the North Yorkshire coast, to a place I’ve wanted to visit for a couple of years. Not the area but the cottage – hot tub, gin bar, 2 mins walk to the beach, properly dog friendly. I’m hoping it is as wonderful as my expectations.
I’m not sure about you but a new month always comes with expectations to me. I love to turn over the calendar, see what the picture is, see what we’ve got planned. After 20+ days the current month starts to look jaded. I’ve read what we’re doing enough by then. Many events have passed. But now we are on a new month with the first week of it taken up with holiday!
But I wonder what happens when we don’t have things to look forward to, when we don’t have expectation about some planned event.
Where there is no vision, the people perish…
Proverbs 29:18
Proverbs tells us that without a vision, without a hope for the future, people perish or cast off restraint, which can mean they just go their own way, get caught up in things that will take their minds off where they are now – drugs, alcohol, binge watching, mental health issues, etc. And I am sure it is what leads to greed, wars, fear, hatred.
As I look forward to my holiday I think about those migrants whose fears for themselves and their families outstrip even their desire to stay in their homeland. All I can do is pray for them, realise that not everyone is as privileged as I am, but also not allow myself to get drag down into that place of no hope. If I don’t have hope for a better future when I go on holiday all I am doing is escaping – like the person who gets wasted on drugs or alcohol.
Strange as it sounds, I believe, that if I can hold that juxtapose position of praying for migrants, for those who don’t have, etc, along with enjoying my holiday, my life, the sunshine, then I can be of more good to the world around me, have a more sustained prayer life than if I was either miserable and depressed about the world or totally pollyannaish about it all or escapist.
So as the sun shines, as I pack for my holiday, I hold those who don’t and can’t do this up in prayer to God. And I have found the most wonderful thing is that if I am truly trusting God then I can give this stuff I am led to pray about to God knowing that God will do what God knows best to do – day after day after day.
Aspirational Adventures 