I Like Days Like Today

This morning the sea-front was cooler than yesterday. A steady breeze blew grey clouds across the sky; there was a hint of rain. Morning conversations about the weather are often a complaint – it’s too hot, too cold, too dry, too wet…

I said ‘Good morning,’ to a woman looking out to sea. ‘I like days like today,’ she replied. I reflected… At the end of yesterday, what would have made me say, ‘I like days like today?’  

‘…Learning’ We visited the Longshed in Woodbridge where they’re reconstructing the 88-foot Saxon ship that was found buried in Sutton Hoo in 1939.

A knowledgeable volunteer told us about Raedwald, maker/owner of the original ship,  king of the East of England… his Saxon palace at Rendlesham… his possible meeting with St Augustine and Ethelbert, king of Kent… his conversion to Christianity… his death c.624.

We learnt about Saxon tools and methods of boat construction as we watched skilled craftsmen re-constructing the ship…

‘Laughing…’ Beside the river Deben crabbing lines hung over the end of a jetty. I laughed at a group of boys, gathered round a bucket, excitedly discussing the size and ferocity of the crabs they’d caught.

I heard about Dave the dachshund visiting a family with a cat called Penguin. Dave doesn’t like cats. I laughed about pet names and the potential results of their encounter.

Reflecting on my reputation as a grumpy old man… thinking about particular older men I know who are happiest when they are grumpiest. I laughed.

‘Living…’ I’m reading ‘Life Sentence’. Charles Colson describes folks who find Christ ‘…in prisons, at deathbeds, in hospitals, in the gulags, in rat-infested ghettos. The richest spiritual experiences I have known have not been in vaulted cathedrals surrounded by stained-glass windows but in the filthiest prison cells…’

I like days like today because I’m learning, laughing and living in the real world. Colson continues: ‘Christians will miss the greatest blessings if they isolate themselves from the reality of the world in which God lives.’