This week the tide is way out in the mornings, so that when we reach the edge of the waves and look back at the beach, there is a new perspective, a new sense of distance, so that I see with new eyes, how beautiful the world is, and how rich we are. I’m aware, with wonder, that God has given us life, and beauty, space, time, thought, love, laughter, grief, our beating hearts, our every breath. Given us all these things. How fabulous. How wonderful. How amazing.
A small drone flies on Mars and that’s amazing. Man walks on the Moon and we are lost in wonder. Luce walks on the beach and … wow.
All these photos have been taken in the last week or so, in my quiet time. Does that sound monastic? Don’t be fooled. My quiet time isn’t always ever so quiet! There are dogs scampering, and chasing birds, and yesterday Pico took furious umbrage at a buoy bobbing in the channel and had to be dragged away, and sometimes I’ll meet someone and we’ll chat for a while, sometimes we’ll even pray as their dogs and mine chase and squabble…. and sometimes there’s an inquisitive seal staring at us from the waves…..but mostly it’s peaceful, mostly it’s solitary, mostly it’s prayer.
It does seem to me that when we pray we approach Eden again. I don’t think we can know the full joy of Eden, because we carry with us all our worldly experience, good and bad, and there, at the break of time, there was only innocence and newness, but I believe that we come closer to God in prayer, so that we can share his delight and peace and savour his perfect love.
In prayer, everywhere we look, God’s hand is there, whether we look up at the sky
Or down at the ground
In prayer, we find God. Evidence of God, everywhere.
Today, trying to work out how to take a screen shot I inadvertently brought this up…. the information on that last photo, the sand ripples
Look! I was in the sea! That’s how far we had walked. And now, as I type this, the sand we walked on is under metres of water, rolling waves, teeming with fish and crabs and seals.
This is the world God has given us. When life gets between us and God, as it does, when there is illness and loss and pain, we can lose sight of all his gifts, forget to gaze in wonder at the fact that we even exist.
He gave us Eden. And he walked with us there. He walks with us still. He made us because he delights in us, and when we delight in him we are fulfilled.
Luce thinking 