Recent news has included distressing pictures of floods across the UK. For us on the East Suffolk Coast we’ve been spared the worst of the weather.
Yesterday the Carlton Marshes nature reserve reported: ‘Storm Austen and Storm Boelo over the weekend… minor tree damage and some higher-than-normal tides today… thankfully stopping just a few inches short of the river wall top…’
The Wherry Hotel, beside Oulton Broad, showed pictures of their flooded car park, commenting: ‘If you visit us today, please avoid parking on the water’s edge. The ducks however are loving it.’
The expression ‘Lovely weather for ducks’, around for hundreds of years, suggests that although the weather is unpleasant or disastrous for humans, it’s a good day for ducks.
This morning, reading some old notes, I came across Stella’s story…
When we moved to Lowestoft forty years ago, we got to know Stella and her husband Frank at church. Frank died some years ago; Stella more recently. In 2008 Stella told her story in our church newsletter, headed ‘Seventy Years a Church Member’:
‘After being baptised, I became a member of the old London Road Church on the 6th of November 1938… the text I was given was John 14.1 “Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God believe also in me.’
In 1942 Stella was called up for war work in a factory in Letchworth.
‘They were a mixed bunch in the factory… it was not always easy for a twenty-year-old girl away from home, family and friends to stand up for the Lord. However, the Lord was true to His word, kept me in his love, and I was thankful for good Christian fellowship. The three years I was away from home did me good in many ways.’
Stella often told me that story. The war, that for so many was about disaster, destruction and death, did Stella good! Stella was that metaphorical duck in adverse weather, experiencing the reality of her text, ‘Let not your hearts be troubled.’
