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Reflections

12/31/2019

Another year has become part of our past.

If your year was like mine, it’s had its ups and downs; joy and sorrow, achievements and disappointments, rich and meaningful relationships and those that have required patience and grace on a regular basis, good decisions and those that were not so wise. But in between were moments, … moments of wonder, of beauty and those moments you treasure forever in your heart … “I miss you grandma”, “I miss you too darling”, “But I miss you more than you miss me”, moments.

Whatever the year brought for you, 2019 was a chapter in your life. A year you’ll never have again. We are not the people we were at the end of 2018. Maybe we have changed in small inconspicuous ways or maybe for you this year came with monumental shift.

Maybe it's a year you'll always look back on fondly, or maybe you are just glad its over.

But before you go rushing or wandering into 2020, can I encourage you to take some time to reflect on the year just gone before it becomes a distant memory. Find a quiet place, some uninterrupted time alone with a journal or digital notepad and use the time to let God unpack for you the blessings and lessons that were tucked into 2019.

So often it’s only on reflection that we see what was there all the time and we were just too busy or preoccupied to see. Hindsight is filled with wisdom.

Here are seven questions to ponder. Cherish each one – don’t dismiss any, that one might just be the one that holds the gold. May God give you insights and understanding as you consider the ways 2019 unfolded for you.

What was the highlight of your year?
What two lessons from 2019 will you take into the year ahead?
What was your greatest achievement?
What was the lowest point of the year for you and how did you handle it?
What was the best intangible gift you received in 2019
What did you learn about yourself?
What are you most grateful for as you reflect on 2019?

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The gift

12/24/2019

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image: Greyson Joralemon

My firstborn arrived unexpectedly for Christmas. Born on 23 December, he was a month premature and weighted only 2.2kg. Our old Scottish minister sent a telegram, “To the wee stranger who came for Christmas”.

I didn’t get to take my wee stranger home for three weeks. They were difficult weeks but the homecoming was wonderfully exciting … and just a little scary. I’d never handled such a tiny baby before and now he was my responsibility.

Suddenly all the books I’d read and classes I’d been to in preparation for motherhood didn’t seem to help. He had trouble feeding, didn’t sleep and suffered with severe colic. Month after month without sleep, I felt helpless and inadequate.

Who was this little man who’d been given to me for a few short years to nurture and to love? What qualified me to be the mum he needed? Absolutely nothing. But parenting is something you learn on the job, there’s no apprenticeship, just walking by faith, one step at a time.

I guess it was no different for Mary. Amidst all the glory and wonder of the birth of Jesus, I often think about her. The journey she and Joseph made to Bethlehem was approximately the distance from Sydney to Lithgow (140kms). Whether on donkey or on foot I couldn’t imagine making that trip while heavily pregnant, especially over rough dirt roads and hilly terrain. It would have been demanding, exhausting and oh so uncomfortable.

And at the end of the trip there was no comfy bed with ensuite. Contrary to the common belief that she gave birth in the stable of an inn, Mary and Joseph are believed to have bedded down on the lower floor of a house of one of Joseph's relatives. It's thought that they stayed in the area of the house where the animals were brought in for the night because the house was already filled with other guests.

Image: Phil Hearing

I wonder how Mary felt as she cradled her baby in her arms for the first time. Grateful, honoured, and maybe just a little overwhelmed? God had chosen a young village girl to be mother to His Son, to feed and clothe him, nurture him, bandage his knee, wipe his tears and love him to the end.

She could not have known or even begun to comprehend what lay ahead for this baby she’d just birthed. Like Abraham before her, who could not have imagined that obeying God and leaving Haran would set in motion a stream of history so vast and one which would include this moment in the manger.

Mary helps me grasp just a tiny bit more, the reality of the Incarnation, the incomprehensible truth that “The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us”.

There’s something extraordinary about being a first time mum, the unknowingness of it all, apprehension mingled with irrepressible excitement and the can’t-wait-to-meet-you sense of wonder that wells up inside you. Mary must have experienced that too, along with a crying baby, sleepless nights, the everydayness of childhood, the joys and sorrows of family life and the embracing of humanity in a carpenter's shed.

Many glorify the event, even more commercialise it and somehow the sheer magnitude of the
ordinariness of it all is lost, the reality that God works through the simple things, the mundane and the unrecognised, then and now.

I hope that the wonder and truth of the Incarnation dawns on you with a new freshness this Christmas Season.

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A table of surprises

12/10/2019

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Image: Alan Wigginton

I can’t remember how many times I declined the invitation. My son’s scouting experiences had made him passionate about the outdoor life and he wanted us to go camping as a family. The problem was I don’t have a tent-shaped heart, its more bedroom-and-ensuited shaped. The thought of trudging somewhere-out-there-in-the-wild to a bathroom and toilet filled me with dread.

But one day I decided that my love for my son was immeasurably greater than my love of comfort and I accept his invitation with considerable trepidation.

We arrived at the Warrumbungle National Park along with what felt like half of Sydney, all vying for a spot. My son made a dash for a place right at the furthest edge of the camping ground looking out over the bush, giving us a room with a view.

What none of us knew was that the Warrumbungles was in the grip of a mice plague. Some old train carriages at the other end of the park that had been turned into cabin accommodation, now lay deserted by their paying guests who objected strongly to a cavalcade of mice running over them all night as they tried to sleep.

Mice were everywhere, around the tent, over the tent and when we took down the tent several days later, there were lots of dead mice under the tent. We mouse-proofed our food by hanging it from the tent pole and walked between scurrying mice wherever we went, not a happy prospect for someone who hated mice almost as much as she hates spiders.

The trek to the bathroom paled into insignificance compared to the mice, but even they couldn’t spoil that first morning when I sat around an open fire with my son at dawn. The air sweet and still, the rising sun lighting up the bush before us and even the mice stayed well away from the fire. Suddenly I caught sight of why my son was so passionate about this outdoor life. It was a sacred moment.

He cooked us breakfast over the open fire and we sat around that camp table eating one of the best breakfasts I had ever tasted. The most basic table and the simplest food but its up there amongst my most memorable meals.

And I nearly missed it.

That table introduced me to a life I’d never experienced before and helped me understand my son’s heart in a way I’d never have known had I not ‘tasted’ his passion.

Image: Judychristie

That’s the thing about sacrifice, its costly but the rewards are often incalculable.

In so many ways a table is a symbol of sacrifice. Someone has to plan the meal and oh dear how often I’ve been exhausted just trying to decide what to cook; indecision, stuck in a rut or just not feeling very creative. Then there’s the shopping, queuing, carrying it home, putting it all away and the cooking hasn’t even started!

And although cooking is one of my favourite things to do, there are days when the temperature soars, when even I lose the enthusiasm to throw myself into meal creation. And when we came home as a family after a long day out, feeling really weary, it was hard to summons the energy to be the one to get up and cook so we could all sit down to good food. It was very much a sacrifice of love, frequently unnoticed, because that’s just what mum does (or maybe dad in your household), but the reward was enjoying a family meal together, the laughter, the stories and the togetherness.

I guess each one of us has the choice to sacrifice each time we come to the table. To be involved, to choose to listen and give someone else space to share their story and to contribute in a way that makes the time more than a mere meal, but a meeting of minds and hearts.

I’ve sat around tables large and small, timber tables aged by time and candle wax, glass tables, camp tables, scrubbed tables, polished tables, indoor and outdoor tables, some bare and some topped with the finest table settings, but always the meal is a gift, a sacrifice of someone’s time and energy, a giving of themselves. And I've had some amazing conversations around those tables, simple folk who've shared their heart, their challenging thoughts and sometimes their tears. And that too has been a gift; a gift from the table.

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The most generous table

12/3/2019

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Probably the most generous table I’ve ever encountered was on the edge of the Sahara Desert. It was one of the most memorable meals of my life, a gift from people whose store of maize was running low. The next harvest was months away and with little rain to that point, the chances of any harvest looked decidedly grim.

But with great generosity of spirit they shared what little they had. As we sat around that steaming pot of maize gruel that day, I pondered on how little we comprehend what it means to give out of lack.

It wasn’t just the sharing of their dwindling grain supplies, but the giving of themselves. It took all afternoon to prepare and cook the meal. There were no kitchen appliances just a human-size mortar and pestle to pound the grain and it was exhausting work in the blazing sun, I know, I tried it and how they laughed at my feeble efforts.

I walked with them to the well, some 15 minutes away and was in awe of the strength they had to pump the water and carry it back in heavy buckets on their heads. They lit the fires and moved the large iron pots into place to cook the gruel that would feed the extended family, maybe 35, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents.

My transportation out into the desert

Pounding the grain

As we sat around on the warm desert sand in the dying light of day, our very different cultures and lack of each other’s language failed to separate us. I’ve never felt more humbled or honoured than I did dipping my hands into that gruel with those women. It was a banquet such as I will never taste again, a table of generosity and kindness, connecting strangers who met so briefly yet in that moment our souls united.

That night I shared their mud hut. One room. Bare earth. Given with much love.

That day I shared a table without form and yet a finer ‘table’ it would be hard to find. It was an experience that challenged my thinking about how our tendency to stereotype can deny us the experience of tasting beauty at the extremities.

Frank Mullins is someone who knows a lot about those extremities and the beauty locked in them.

For 44 years he has trekked the two and a half hours from his home in Anglesea to North Melbourne to man the St Vincent de Paul soup van, providing meals for the homeless. He’s 81 now and about to hand over the baton, but he’s seen a thing or two in those 44 years.

He once discovered an old school chum who’d become an alcoholic and fallen on hard times. Facing the number of young people sleeping rough never ceased to trouble him, but it was the families who had nowhere to go that hit him hardest. He ached for them, especially the children.

Week after week and year after year he would lay out a ‘table’ before them, homemade sandwiches and soup, warm nourishing food to ease their hunger and keep them healthy. But he knew food wasn’t enough, they were starving for more than physical sustenance, they needed relationship and connection and to know they were of value.

He began to spend time with them whenever he could, sometimes to chat and often just to listen to their stories and their fears. He saw the difference a short conversation could make; he understood well the crippling disease of loneliness. He got to know their heart.

The ‘table’ he offered was as real as any you and I ever sat at and who can know how many lives he changed over those years, giving nourishment of body and soul, hope and dignity. Maybe some lives would have ended but for his presence in their lives. His was truly 44 years of extravagant hospitality. He offered so much more than food, he offered himself.

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Reflections

The gift

A table of surprises

The most generous table

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