Wednesday, January 23, 2008

"like children"

Oh how often I have read the words of Jesus "unless you become like children" and yet, i still have not discovered the full richness of these words. It is now, watching my own child sleeping so peacefully that i discovered yet another little peace of this amazing truth:

As a family, we have been through an extremely turbulent times with lots of insecurities, hurts and frustrations. Till recently i have always boasted of my ability to fall asleep whenever my head touches the pillow, but in the last three weeks i have had many a sleepless night - stressing and worrying about things beyond my control.

Getting back to my sleeping child...

Even though he is aware of most of the worries and difficulties that faces us right now, my son has as attitude of: 'Well, i have prayed about this' and 'i trust mom & dad' and so he has been laughing, playing and sleeping - enjoying the adventure. Yes he has been frustrated at times, and yes he is missing the familiar sights and faces of those we love but he trusts unwaveringly that all will be okay.

I need to learn to trust more like him, to say: 'Well i have prayed about that and i know that my heavenly Dad will take care of me and so i can laugh, play and sleep and see this as a great adventure' ... if only i can become like a child again!

When is it that we loose our trust and faith, when is it that we become too cautious to become excited about that which we know our Heavenly Father can do, about His love and care for us?

Having spent the last to hours frantically trying to find my own solutions i hear God saying: Martha, Martha, you tail and trouble so, but only one thing is needed...

So this is me saying goodnight to go and practice becoming like a child again...
peace

Saturday, January 5, 2008

the parrable of the fallen pencil

A friend of mine tagged me to write the parable of the fallen pencil and I in turn would love to see what rock, gus, barry and the guys will do with it.

Here goes mine:

there once were two pencils: a beautiful upright conventional pencil and a rubbery pencil that seemed to lack backbone. Nothing about this pencil was conventional and it would certainly not be allowed in the grade 1 class where everything has to be proper and up to standard. The conventional pencil always looked down on the rubbery pencil and despised him for being different. Much to the dismay of both these pencils, they ended up together in a little boy's pencil bag.

One day, the little boy, in the carelessness of youth, dropped the pencil bag and both pencils fell painfully to the ground. When eventually they were picked up again, the little boy saw that the beautiful upright pencil's point was broken, so he started sharpening it, but no matter how much he sharpened the pencil, it's point kept falling out. The pencil's lead was broken inside and it has lost its usefulness.

In life we are often much like these pencils, some of us are beautiful, upright, conventional people who expect everyone else to fit into our 'conventional' way of thinking and doing things. Some of us never quite fit into the 'conventional' category and my feel unworthy at times. However to survive life's up's and down's - to survive life's falls we need to be a little more flexible, more open to change. It is often our uniqueness that makes us useful in God's hand.