Tag: enjoying

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creation enjoying

Creation Sunday

Yesterday I asked my youth group a question based around the idea that God made the whole world and gave it to humankind …

If you gave someone something you had made how would you like them to treat it/to be with it?

My favourite, and most thought provoking comment was “to enjoy it”.

Too often we think enjoying our planet is to go and do some recreational activity in some unspoilt place; a way of using our spare time is to “enjoy” the world. But when you think it through this whole idea of mass leisure time is very recent. For many years humans were busy just dealing with surviving. So you couldn’t take a day off to go for a hike or hang out in the garden and read a book because you had to provide food for the family, or you worked in service and maybe you got Sunday morning off, but that was to go to church. Then you’d be back taking care of the family you worked for. This whole idea of a day off for most people is a new thing.

But I’m suspecting God didn’t just wait for the late 20th and 21st century for people to enjoy their creation. I am suspecting God wanted humankind to always be enjoying creation.

On Thursday we went to see Our Town with Michael Sheen in it [a must if you are able to] and two lines towards the end of the play stand out for me and fit in with this whole thing of enjoying creation just for what it is. Both are from Emily who has died in childbirth aged 26 – something that was not uncommon when the play was written in 1938

“Oh Earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you”

and then as she realizes how little people appreciate the simple activities of life

“It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another.”

We need to slow down, to really look at each other, to really look at enjoy our Earth.

The Creation poem ends by saying that God gives all their amazing creation to humankind to fill, to subdue, to care for – and also, as the young girl my youth group said – to enjoy.

So let’s not wait till our next day off – when too often we are rushing round “having to do things” and trying to fit in “quality leisure” – and take a moment to slow things down, to really see, and to really enjoy.

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enjoying time

Enjoying Time

Photo by Jordan Benton on Pexels.com

I feel led to write this post today, Pentecost Sunday. A day when we remember the Holy Spirit landing in tongues like fire on Jesus’ follower gathered in Jerusalem. What we often fail to celebrate is the patience of these 120+ people. We don’t know for sure how long they had been in Jerusalem but they had all gathered. It was a special day in the Jewish calendar, so not unusual for them to be gathered. But they didn’t know what was going to happen. Jesus had told them to gather in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit to fall but they didn’t know what would happen or how or what next.

Imagine this – they have all been gathered together, chatting, praying, eating, sharing their stories of the last 3 years or so and, I suspect they’d “got it” almost by now. I wonder if they thoughts “well life is short. There isn’t much time, we understand the whole thing Jesus was on about. We’re ready to go.” But they waited And to me that is the miracle. How often are we willing to wait? Wait until God really tells us it is time to go?

But this post isn’t just about waiting it is about accepting we have “enough” time, like we have “enough” of everything really.

The followers of Jesus knew their time was limited but, I hoping, that when they looked back on that time of waiting in Jerusalem that they saw it as special. A time of hanging out together. Of being together. Of, as well as hearing stories also hearing hearts.

So much at the moment is about not “wasting time”. We are brought up with it. How many of us have been told “go and do something useful. Don’t waste time.” Or as we’ve got older instead of being able to relax we are hold, or fear, that we “haven’t done ‘enough’ with our lives”, that we need to do things, “keep busy because we’ll be dead soon”.

We fit in “down time” but it is as an activity rather than a nothing time.

Many of today’s Pentecost sermons will point at how once the Holy Spirit fell all the followers were then busy and doing as if not doing that one isn’t being a “good Christian”. Yet I remember reading a book [can’t remember who it was by now] by an American charismatic preacher who was rushed to A&E with a heart attack. When he was asked his profession the medical staff said “we could have guessed. We get lots like you in here.” and went on to say how, from their experience Christians in ministry was that they were all overworked! Not a good look! Especially when you note that the early church was started by a large group of people waiting. Waiting till power came to them because they knew there was “enough”time to do all God wanted them to do

I’m going to finish with the the whole of Saturday 18th May’s post from Henri Nouwen because to me the whole of it says how hard it is for us to find 10 minutes minimum to just listen to God. Not as an activity but as a joy to be with the one you love and the one who loves you unconditionally

An aside before you read the quote – my husband and I spent yesterday afternoon and evening not doing anything other than hanging out chatting, drinking tea, drinking wine, eating, not planning anything but sharing thoughts and hearts and it was a wonderfully afternoon and evening. We need to be doing that more often with Jesus.

Listen to your heart. It’s there that Jesus speaks most intimately to you. Praying is first and foremost listening to Jesus who dwells in the very depths of your heart. He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t thrust himself upon you. His voice is an unassuming voice, very nearly a whisper, the voice of a gentle love. Whatever you do with your life, go on listening to the voice of Jesus in your heart. This listening must be an active and very attentive listening, for in our restless and noisy world God’s so loving voice is easily drowned out. You need to set aside some time every day for this active listening to God if only for ten minutes. Ten minutes each day for Jesus alone can bring about a radical change in your life.

You’ll find it isn’t easy to be still for ten minutes at a time. You’ll discover straightaway that many other voices, voices that are very noisy and distracting, voices that do not come from God, demand your attention. But if you stick to your daily prayer time, then slowly but surely you’ll come to hear the gentle voice of love and will long more and more to listen to it.

Listen to the Voice of Gentle Love
Categories
local Love

Love where you are

This is the view of my local park first thing in the morning. I walk I do probably five times a week if not six or even every day. Too often I forget how beautiful it is. I will then drive for miles to some National Trust organised garden to wonder at the colours of the leaves, etc, especially this time of year. But my local park, ten minutes down the road from me, is beautiful. I wish today I had brought my phone so I could have taken photos. Maybe tomorrow if the light is right and I’ll just share a load of photos?

But it got me thinking, especially as I’m in this down time of pondering and thinking, how little we appreciate what is on our doorstep – our friends, our family, our homes, our towns, our woods, our streets. I think we live in a world that is too often encouraging us to “reach higher” to “get out there” and to get away on holidays, with work, with life. But really everything we need is on our doorstep for many of us.

I know I have to travel to see both of my children and my mum and mum-in-law and old friends who live in different parts of the country. And I love the traveling. But if I go to them hoping they will fill some gap then we will all be disappointed.

I traveled a lot before I had children and I will always say that one of the things that spoilt my travels was that I took me with me. The me who was messed up and confused. The me who was seeking something to fill that gap. I came home and between meeting with God and letting them fill me and some real deep healing I now like the me I have with me now. But now that I like me I’m not running away from me either.

Perhaps that is why now I can see the beauty in my local park, my local beach, my local all – because I am not looking for something far away, something that will fill a space. Now I know that all around me is beauty from the autumn colours to the bare branches to the wild waves to the still grey of this morning. And then those amazing greens to look forward to in the spring.

My daughter and I always joke that there is a song for everything and I think today’s one would have to be “Everything is beautiful in its own way”

Also to let you know my Mum is doing okay at the moment. We had an awesome time together just hanging out together – something we’ve never done as adults before because we’ve always had partners with us. It was great just to be her and I – holding ladders whilst she changed light bulbs, buying laundry baskets, cooking meals, washing up, watching TV and realising we like some things the same and some we don’t. I’m looking forward to going for a visit again soon. Maybe too it was realising the beauty in what just was rather than in making it a “something”?