It’s not often that Cape Town will see a full day of rain. Today is that day.
This is when retirement REALLY works for us. We woke up at 7-30am. I made coffee and did my Bible reading. By 8-30am, I as dressed and in front of my computer. The rain fell. A few emails drifted in. I Skyped with a colleague, answered a few emails and then Mike and I met in the kitchen and cooked breakfast. I put the wheelie bin out and got a little damp. We finished breakfast and had tea and returned to work. All very ordinary. My work is quiet. The overseas schools are all on vacation. The teachers here are all back at work. It will pick up later.
I do have other work to do. I write three blogs for a website that highlights the Maldives. I’ve written one and have two more to go. So that’s next.
These are the days. The slow ones, the rainy ones, the ordinary ones and the hard ones. It doesn’t matter what kind of day it is, God is with us. In William’s Story, which I have fully got into, his mother reveals her deep heartache at having her son dying from leukaemia and the excruciating pain she carries in not being able to properly share the difficulties. She goes into her room and succumbs to the misery in her soul. She writes,
“I threw myself on my bed and buried my face in the pillow when I had the strongest sense of not being alone. There was a sympathetic presence standing by the bed, rather in the way a nurse would attend to a patient, just observing and waiting for the bout to be over. I couldn’t go on crying like that, for myself. I felt too self-conscious under that patient observation. I got up and went downstairs again. I think of that experience when I read of the crowd of witness with which St. Paul says we are surrounded. After that I didn’t care to give in to self pity; it was a useful lesson.”
I have read in the past of people who have lost loved ones and how they have allowed themselves a short time each day to grieve. 5 minutes or 10 minutes to cry and wallow in misery, but after that they have determined to get up and get on with the day. It takes a lot of strength to get up and carry on when the deepest heartache imaginable happens.
Most of us live ordinary days. Days where we are not in the limelight – not doing something spectacular to change the world – just mundane things – putting out the garbage, cooking, cleaning, washing – all very ordinary, but essential for a normal life. There is comfort in the ordinary. God is always with us – in the ordinary too.
Hebrews 12:1 New Living Translation (NLT)
God’s Discipline Proves His Love
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.
I am grateful for the ordinary. I am grateful for this rainy day.
These are the days!
Keep the smile going.
God bless you!
In His Grip,
Helga xx 🙂