Life’s Normal Ordinariness

We came back home from holiday yesterday. How do I approach this next chapter of my life– the routines, lists, people to see, things to do, plans for the coming weeks… Life’s normal ordinariness.

Patience: Behind our holiday cottage was a hill. When we’d visited in the past we’d seen red kites flying above the hill. Each morning we got up and looked. No kites. By the third or fourth morning it became a joke…

Yesterday – our seventh and final morning – we saw two. They came pretty close, as if to say ‘we told you so’!  

Some things are outside my control; I just need to be patient.

Power: I returned home in time to go to my ‘Music for Wellbeing’ group. Drums, shakers and ukeleles were out in force. Helen led us with her usual bonkers version of sanity. We sung ‘He’s got the whole world in his hands’ cheerfully and enthusiastically.

What some see as a jolly children’s song contains a deep truth. Although I think I control my world there is a greater power. He has everything in His hands.  

Performance: Yesterday evening watched the Lowestoft Players perform CATS. We joined an appreciative audience, thoroughly enjoying excellent singing, choreography and musicianship. I came out singing ‘Oh, well I never, was there ever a cat so clever as magical Mr. Mistoffelees’

Whether I like it or not my life is a public performance. I don’t live in a private bubble. I live my life in front of an audience – sometimes kind, sometimes critical…

Purpose and Priorities: This morning I read ‘Haggai’. Twenty-six centuries ago Jerusalem had been destroyed and its people taken into exile. Fifty years later they returned to rebuild the city and the temple. However families just focused on building their own houses…

Haggai said ‘You’ve forgotten your purpose and need to re-think your priorities. You need to work together to rebuild the temple.’

I need to re-examine my purpose and priorities beyond the self-centred, to involve others and honour God.