Mysterious Ways

Pat Barker’s ‘Regeneration’ is set in a Scottish psychiatric hospital in 1917.

‘The congregation struggled to its feet… A preliminary wheeze from the organ, then:

‘God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform…’

Since the Somme, this seemed to have been the nation’s most popular hymn…

The horrors of First World War trench warfare… the physical and mental state of those returning… understanding God’s ‘mysterious ways’?

Thursday night… watching ‘Celebrity Traitors’… Stephen Fry and Mark Bonnar were banished; Joe Wilkinson was murdered.

The show’s full of ‘mysterious ways’… Claudia and the team creating the unexpected… the Traitors plotting who’ll be murdered next… the Faithful trying to identify the Traitors… the show’s final outcome.

Yesterday… Daughter-Jo bought a ‘bargain’ tent in an end-of-season sale. The family unpacked it, erected it easily on our lawn. It’s a lovely tent – just what’s needed.

They took it down. Then a problem: getting a large tent into the small bag it had come out of! After straining, heaving and complaining… discovering the tent’s  mysterious ways… it was finally bagged.

Musing… Friends for whom God’s ways seem to be mysterious… a recent dementia diagnosis, a breakdown of family relationships, a redundancy, a painful bereavement, a child with disability not receiving the necessary, promised support.

Returning… William Cowper’s old hymn ‘God moves in a mysterious way’:

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

God’s mysterious ways… I don’t understand. I can’t predict the final outcome. I ‘Trust Him for His grace’.