Well, here I am at home, Lord! No need to hide out in a café today! Everyone is right where they should be, including a fidgeting Jess who left early this morning to be in town on time to start work. It seems the downside of this new wonder job is the morning rush hour traffic which means Jess had to ask me to take Madison to school – something I’ve been doing for the last couple of weeks anyway.
Whatever the negatives are of this new job, at least it’s a start in the right direction; on the road to Jess and Madison regaining their independence. I guess only time will tell how things will play out and in this regard I continue to commit them both to you and ask for your hand to be on them. At the very least we have been a small port in the storm, and I will admit that we did manage to put on a very nice lunch after church yesterday and have a great afternoon of fun for Jess’s birthday.
Church yesterday was very interesting. Cameron and Ashley were conspicuous only by their absence. I could see Claire huffing and puffing like a dragon about the whole thing. From what Andrew said, Claire is somewhat alarmed at the recent trend of them not being there. It’s almost as though she’d rather that they were there and she was able to thoroughly disapprove than for them not to be there and for her imagination to get the better of her and her influence to be zero.
Claire wasn’t the only one to be breathing fire. There seemed to be some ding-dong fight going on between Abigail and Sarah on the sidelines yesterday. “Abigail the Airhead” (trophy wife extraordinaire) versus “Sarah the Saintly” (a woman with a mission to promote Mission). According to Libby it all had something to do with Daniel and what Daniel had promised Sarah that was in direct conflict with something he had promised Abigail.
They were like the two women in 1 Kings 3 (although in this case neither Sarah or Abigail is a prostitute – and I say so in spite of Abigail’s dress sense) wanting to cut Daniel in half. Luckily Daniel was wise enough to speak for himself and the whole matter was swept out of public view. It did make me feel a continuing sorrow for Daniel who seems to have his head and heart in the right place where you are concerned, Lord, but seems to pay a heavy price for it. I pray you would fortify Daniel and send him some encouragement – I suspect he badly needs it.
Meanwhile his talk was very good again, especially his explanation about John 15 and the vine and the branches. It was a timely reminder to me of some of the things Daniel had said earlier about not relying on our own strength. He talked about how we often think of ourselves as either displaying or not displaying the fruit of the Spirit and how we will often think, “I need to work on being more…” (patient, loving, self controlled) as though we can manufacture these traits on our own. John 15 makes it clear that this fruit comes from you. It’s as you said in verse 5:
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
There’s that little word again: nothing. Many of us don’t want to do ‘nothing’ but ironically often end up doing just that because we set about doing ‘things’ without you. Instead, by letting you do the ‘things’ we end up achieving because the end result (the fruit) is from you.
Sorry I am so slow to learn this lesson. I’m sure it’s one of the reasons I continue to stuff up so much. I pray you would continue leading me onwards and teaching me. I commit myself afresh to you, Lord. Amen.