Dear Friends,
It doesn’t seem possible that Andy and I have been here only 1 month. The warm welcome that you have given to us has made us feel settled so quickly that we feel as though we have been here some while. Thank you for making us feel so welcome.
As you may know I had a sabbatical shortly before I moved here. It was a wonderful time to be quiet and focus on the Lord and to get a fresh perspective of things. At times, when I was away on retreat, there were times of silence, and in the silence there was so much to hear, especially in Ffald y Brenin.
There were the birds singing, the sheep bleating, the farm vehicles going over the cattle grids; there was laughter, the sound of rain falling, the hooves of horses, clip-clopping on the road as they passed through. It felt as though the whole of creation was proclaiming the glory of God and the Lord was responding to the worship that was being offered to him.
We can fill our days up with so much busy-ness that the Lord is pushed out. We certainly are seldom still long enough to hear what he wants to say to us. Yet it is those times that are so important in our lives. It is during those times that he drops little nuggets of wisdom into our lives that changes our perspective on things.
In Psalm 73, Asaph was looking at things around him and his faith had started to crumble. He was becoming envious and wondered why other people had so much while he was struggling – why was it that those who didn’t care about God seemed to be having the time of their lives and he was finding life so hard?
Even as he tried to understand this he became bogged down in it – but that was until he went into the sanctuary. Once he was in the sanctuary of God his perspective changed. As he sat quietly in God’s Presence, he no longer looked on what was superficial and temporal but saw instead the eternal God. No longer did his problems consume him – God did.
We are not called to look for God on the surface or in the superficial but to sit in his Presence – to make him our refuge and allow him to change us as he changes our perspective. Then our response can be the same as Asaph, ‘But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, that I may tell of all your works’.
May you come into a new perspective as you take time to sit with the God of eternity this month.
With love, Jane