Waiter! Waiter! There's a flower in my tea!

There wasn’t much point ordering desert.  My long absent appetite had returned but left the taste buds behind.  I ate my soup with relish, not because it tasted delicious, but because it was the first thing I had wanted to eat since Friday night.  I ate my beef stew in hope that the strong spices might track down the taste buds and resuscitate them, but it didn’t happen that way.  Blind fold me, put a fork in my hand and ask me to identify what I was eating and I wouldn’t have had a clue.  So desert was off the menu.  Desert is all about taste and nothing about nourishment at all.

In the absence of desert, and more than half the newspaper still to read, we opted for a cup of tea.  Well, one of us opted for a normal pot of tea.  The restaurant was offering floral teas.  There was a leaflet with pictures of the varieties they had on offer.  A wine glass, filled with hot water, and something lurking at the bottom of the glass – the flower apparently.  To be honest, I could have passed on the flower part of it, but something to ease a chesty cough, something to restore harmony to the body and give my organs a bit of a breather – that was the selling point. 

“Flora Teas (Flowering teas) are,”  according to the Flora Tea Company UK Limited website,  “hand-tied individual tea (Green tea) leaves with selected dried aromatic flowers forming a tea ball/heart, which reveals its secret centre when placed in boiling water, blooming into an artistic and captivating flower display with an enriching taste."  They go on to promise “an artistic and high quality experience unlike any other”.

The tea arrived.  Joe’s came with the teapot, the cup and saucer and the milk jug.  Mine came in the wine glass with something lurking at the bottom.  I was given instructions to wait until the flower unfolded and then throw in some ice cubes to cool the water down.

I had the attention of the surrounding tables.  We all watched in fascination as the flower unwound itself – a tiny white lily in a sea of green spiky leaves and red feathery fronds.  It looked just like the picture on the leaflet as I pointed out to people.  It was a work of art in a glass but, at the end of the day, it was a cup of tea.

Cold tea, or luke-warm tea, has never held any appeal, so I passed in the ice cubes and sipped away slowly, the flower in its bed of leaves swaying from side to side like an sea anemone on the barrier reef. 

The taste buds remained mute, but the eyes enjoyed the whole experience. 

That said, I am unlikely to rush out and buy a pack of Flora Tea.  It made for an interesting culinary experience.   I might return for a repeat performance once my taste buds have come home.  It would be nice to find out if the tea tasted as good as it looked.

God's Word Spoken

I have just finished reading through the book of Joshua.  I have the last chapter or two to finish.  The aim of the study that I am following is to remind me that God keeps his promises. 

The book begins with God promising to give Joshua “every place where you set your foot.” The whole land it Joshua’s for the taking.  Forty years before that, Joshua had insisted, that regardless of giants and fortified cities, and being the size of grasshoppers, they could take the land because God was with them, fighting for them.  Forty years on, Joshua, crossed the Jordan and began to place his feet in the Promised Land.

What follows on from there is one battle after another, with the occasional blip, where cities are set on fire and the inhabitants are put to the sword – men, women, children, cats and dogs, sheep, goats and camels.  It makes for grim reading. 

God’s instructions are clear and not to be diluted.  There were times when the Israelites were allowed to take some plunder, but they were never allowed to let people live.  God was concerned that those spared, allowed to live side by side with the Israelites, would eventually lure them away from worshipping God to worshipping idols – which is what happened in the end.

In my work place, I don’t really have the option of putting anyone to the sword.  I work side by side with people who have very different ideas to me.  Many of the people I work with don’t share my beliefs and are all too ready to pour scorn on faith.  I don’t think it’s so much God they disapprove of but God’s people. 

I’m very much out numbered.  I know that the Bible promises that with God’s help I can rout a thousand and send tens of thousands running away, but that’s not always my experience.  Too often I feel like the routed one, the one that would very much like to run away.

More often, though, I feel lured away.  Their way of thinking and dealing with things slowly soaks in through my soul-skin and my spirit-skin.   I find I am not listening to God’s inner voice, but behaving just like them.  My thinking is small and petty.  My words have a slightly destructive edge to them. Love is not unconditional. I cease to be salt or light. 

I am glad that God tells me these things and that I listen, and I repent and I pray about it.

Our ladies Bible study group have just commenced a new study book.  We are about to dive into the book of Revelation.  The very first study suggested that we read through the whole book together, out loud, each of us reading in turn.  We needed, the book said, to see the big picture before we began to tackle chapters and verses.

There are places in the Bible where it speaks about God’s word being read aloud in the presence of all the people.  Ezra did it.  He read the book of the law while people stood and listened.

I took us an hour and a half. 

It was wonderful.

Scary!

A bit of a mystery!

Vivid!

Familiar in places!

Comforting!

Convicting!

As we read through one chapter after another, my spirit was stirred.  I am surprised that I didn’t leap up out of my seat at times, or fall down on my knees at other times.  Maybe I should have done, but I was aware we were dealing with a time limit.  There wasn’t time to stop and take a break and collect thoughts.  It was a roller coaster of a read. 

Through it all I felt, as I sat beneath God’s spoken word, I was being washed.  The stuff of the world that had soaked into my soul and spirit were gently washed away.  Sometime it wasn’t so gentle.  Sometimes it was like standing under a torrent of water, stripping away all that wasn’t Jesus. 

The word of God has been spoken over me – His transforming word:-

“As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.” Isaiah 55:10-11

Cars of Clay

It’s not a typing error.  It shouldn’t read “Jars of Clay”. 

I told you about the car magazine that I read the other day while waiting for Floozy to be equipped with winter tyres.  What I didn’t mention was that I asked the man behind the reception desk if I could take the magazine home with me.  He asked me if I was interested in getting a new car and couldn’t quite work out that there might be other reasons for wanting the magazine.

I don’t really know anything about cars.  I did an evening class many years ago to do with cars.  I think it was aimed at passing the driving test, but we were also encouraged to become more familiar with the car’s insides.  We didn’t look under a bonnet but were given lots of labelled diagrams.  This was in the days before powerpoint presentations.  From the diagram I knew where to look for spark plugs but not really what to do with them once I had found them.  The course didn’t do what it said it would do as I didn’t go on to pass my driving test. 

I don’t know the life cycle of a car.  I may drive a car around, but how it got to be a car is a bit of a mystery.  It would appear the computer aided designs and 3D images are only at the very start of it all. Then it gets all very interesting.

Car manufacturers are a tactile breed.  Cars provoke in people the need to stroke.  It’s not enough for a car buyer or a car collector to put their head under the bonnet and check out the intestines of the car.  They have to touch it. 

You can’t tell how it feels to stroke the bonnet of car by looking at a 3D image.  You need to make a model that you can touch.  So they make it in clay!

The article in the Spring 2012 edition of “Jaguar” explained the whole thing in detail.

It’s not entirely made of clay.  There’s a wooden frame and foam before a layer of clay is placed on top of that.  Over the next five days the clay is carefully scraped away by a machine until it matches the computer model.  What looks good on the computer image may not look so good in real life. 

The clay modeller can spend the next two weeks scraping bits off one place, adding little bits of clay somewhere else until it feels perfect.  They are dealing with fractions of millimetres and know when it’s perfect and when it’s not quite there.  Once they think they are there, they will paint the model and take it outside to see what it looks like in sunlight.  They see how light catches certain features and how the shadows fall on others.  They take it back into the garage, remove the paint and begin scraping or adding clay as necessary.

Eventually it is declared perfect and they move on to the next stage of making the car.

The modellers are so good at their job that they can look at a design for a car and they can know whether it will be a good car or not. 

By the time the finished car is at the motor show, two years have passed since the clay modellers got their hands on the clay.  They’re well into the next generation of car.

“Yet, O Lord, you are our Father.  We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.  Isaiah 64:8

This verse came to mind as I read the article.  Isaiah might be speaking of jars of clay on a potter’s wheel, but I was thinking of clay cars.  I thought about how the light plays on the painted car outside in the sunlight, and where the shadows fall – how does the light play and the shadows fall on my life as God, the clay modeller, scrapes away a fraction of a millimetre of something in my life? 

The clay car is not the end result.  We don’t drive around in clay cars.  The real car may look like the painted clay car, but it can do so much more.

My life now is mere clay.  It’s not the end result.  There’s a me to come, that looks like the clay me but it will be able to do so much more also.

Garages and the Absence of Anything “Girlie” on the Coffee Table.

We all know that we should not judge a book by its cover.  I would like to add that we shouldn’t judge a garage by the limited variety of magazines on the table in the customer waiting room either!

Getting my winter tyres back on the car has been on the to-do list for the last couple of months but I finally got around to it.  I am confident that winter isn’t over.  We may have missed out on the really heavy falls so far, but it doesn’t mean to say that we will escape entirely.   And anyway, if the snow doesn’t come to Inverness, I can always drive somewhere that has snow just so Floozy can play with her tyres.

It would appear that garages, in my experience, operate like doctor’s surgeries.  One might have an appointment for a certain time but is doesn’t mean one gets seen at that time.  They were running a little late.

I lamented the absence of anything “girlie” on the coffee table.  There was a selection of car magazines – only to be expected in a garage.  I flicked through page after page of photographs of cars in different poses and locations.   If you have seen one car you have pretty much seen them all.  There was nothing in most of the magazines to hold my attention. 

Then I picked up the Jaguar magazine.   Spring 2012.  Last year’s truths still have value for today.

I can’t believe that I read a car magazine from cover to cover.  I can’t believe, either, that I dug out a pen and a bit of paper to take notes!  I know…who would have thought it possible?

The first article posed the question – “Do you ever feel that you are not quite living life to the fullest?  Time to do something about it.” 

“Aha,” thought I, “they are going to tell me that what I really need to live life to the fullest is to buy a new car – a Jaguar.”  I turned the page expecting to see a photo of the car they wanted me to buy.  I did not expect to see a double spread photo of a crowd of people covered in red dye.  Apparently if I want to appreciate Spring and new life I really ought to travel to India to witness the Festival of Colours, part of the Holi celebration for Hindus.  I could have been reading National Geographic.  The pictures were amazing and there was no mention of buying the latest jaguar to live life to the fullest.  Swimming with humpback whales, running with bulls, watching the sunset in New York and climbing rock faces without any safety equipment were among the other suggestions.

Another article quoted Lucius Annaeus Seneca.  'Slight is the portion of life we live.  All the residue is not living but passing time.”   We all have times when we feel really alive.  For most people it’s not all the time.  Too often we are just “passing time”.  It’s only characters in stories that seem to be really alive all the time.  The following paragraphs skipped through a lot of books that I haven’t read pointing out what the heroes did.  Natty Bumppo was one of the few names I recognised mainly because I watched the film “The Last of the Mohicans” many times over.  People can live vicariously through books, but being really alive is about what you do in real life.  Characters in books should stir us to do extraordinary things in our everyday lives.

It is the poets who seem to be more alive than other people according to William Cowper.  They are more sensitive to the world around them.   They are people who are alert to the moment.

It has taken a while for me to accept and embrace the poet within.   To be sensitive to the world around me, to be alert to the moment – the poet within will rise to the challenge.

I just didn’t expect to be challenged by the contents of a car magazine.   

Just Because...Don't Presume

Just because

You have closed your eyes

And stamped on the spirit within

Just because

You have listened to the lure

Of reason and placed it on a pedestal

Just because

You believe you have evolved

Beyond the need for God

Just because

You cannot see heaven among the stars

Or hear His voice in the wind

Don’t presume

There is something wrong with me

Because I choose to pray

Don’t presume

I have laid aside all intellect

And embraced superstition

Don’t presume

My faith has built a prison and

I need to be liberated

Don’t presume

I want to be just like you

Blind and deaf to an unseen world

Know this

I choose to chase after God

And He graciously allows me the catch Him