On Thursday… I watched ‘Robin Hood’. It was the old story – Robin facing adversity in the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham… the old characters Friar Tuck, Will Scarlett and Maid Marion… but it was presented as a pantomime for young children with conjuring tricks, singing and dancing, a pantomime dame, water pistols, and the squirrel of Nottingham!
Facing adversity? Laugh! Make fun of it!
On Friday… Our Lowestoft Journal reported on the Claremont Pier. Taken over by new owners in 2020, the 150m-long pier was damaged and inaccessible. They had dreams to restore the famous Lowestoft landmark. Facing adversity… laying the first wooden planks in 2022… raising over £100,000… a 60-metre stretch of the pier has been re-decked… handrails are installed. It’s accessible for the public!
Facing adversity? Persist! Be determined!
On Saturday… 88-year-old David was telling us about life as a boy in wartime England; his dad was an air-raid warden. Losing their football pitches to air-raid shelters… fearing doodlebugs… bombing of local factories… climbing through a fence, examining damaged planes on a local airfield… throwing frogs at Italian soldiers… memories of evacuation – to Liverpool!
Facing adversity? Evacuate! Flee from it!
On Sunday… Minister-Lou preached on Jesus’ cry from the cross, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Facing the most extreme adversity Jesus questions God. He feels abandoned by God. She talked about Martin Luther’s ‘Deus Absconditus’ the absent God… times when we may feel God is absent – sickness, relationship breakdown, grief, debt, doubt, disappointment…
Facing adversity? Question! Don’t expect answers!
On Sunday… Reading Rachael Woldridge: ‘Hope in Suffering’. Describing tough personal experiences of bereavement… trusting the who of God when we don’t understand the why of our suffering… ‘Christian hope is not a naïve hope. It doesn’t grow in a greenhouse, sheltered from the painful realities of life. The Christian hope is a wild, evergreen hope that can’t help but grow in our lives when Jesus is present…’
Facing Adversity? Hope! In a person, not an outcome!
malcolmsmusings.org 
Hope…in a person, not an outcome. So good, Malcolm!
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It’s not original, Wynne. I’ve read/heard it several times recently, and it makes so much sense. I think it says something about prayer as well – prayer being answered when it’s about who we pray to, not what we want to get out of it.
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