I'll be honest, I've got no idea what to write today. The days have been freakishly short, of late, full with work and rest - less work today though, too hyped up about my driving test today (I passed, thank goodness!)
School holidays - I do love them. Always such a welcome change of pace.
A chance to settle down again and enjoy the calmer side of life. The side that permits book reading and TV watching.
Call the Midwife... that's what has engrossed much of my free time these past few days.
Mum's had the book lying around for a while now, and I've thumbed through, slightly curious. A memoir from a midwife in East End during the 1950s - it appealed to my love of history, if nothing else.
Still, it wasn't till Mum watched a couple of episodes of the show that's been based on the book that my interest was really piqued. The whole world was so different from anything I've been exposed to.
Nuns and lay people living and working together as nurses and midwives to the underprivileged of London. People who lived, worked and played near and in bomb sites and buildings that should have been destroyed, with a surplus of children and a shortage of food and clothes. Nurses 70, 80, 90 years old who still ride out in rain and in fog and in cold and in heat, and the drop of a hat and the ring of a phone to tend a birth, to care for a sick man or to ease a dying woman.
A world where a mother of 24 children refuses to let her premature baby go to hospital and keeps her alive through the strength of her love.
And running through this world, through the story of Jenny Lee and the midwives of the East End is a thread, one golden thread that weaves a tapestry: Love.
Reckless Love, abandoned Love, giving Love. A Love that hurts and a Love that heals.
A Love that is insane and bewildering, a Love that comes only from a Love of God, the one who Loves.
And Ann Voskamp, that wonderful Canadian mother, write about radical love that gives no matter what pointing out that all those around as are Christ, because it was when we clothed the naked, fed the hungry, torn down the walls around our Esther palace and loved the men women and children around us with our words and our actions that we served Christ.
And the words of Sister Monica Joan in Call the Midwife swims before my eyes: "How can you love ignorant, brutish people whom you don't even know? Can anyone love filth and squalor? Or lice and rats? Who can love aching weariness, and carry on working, in spite of it? One cannot love these things. One can only love God, and through His grace come to love His people."
And both these women, one long dead of old age, another still very much alive and well, open my eyes to the core of radical Love.
Loving God.
Trusting God.
Letting God fill me up with His Agape Love to the point of over-flowing.
Sitting with God. Speaking with God. Giving to God. Thanking God. Experiencing God.
And immediately all the usual obstructions come to mind: not enough time, not enough finances, not enough energy...
Truth is: I'm just lazy.
I'm comfortable where I am and I'm not willing to change it.
Which is bad.
Because where I am is starving for more of God's Love.
I'm starving to sit in His arms and listen to His voice. I'm starving to be His arms, His voice, His eyes.
I'm starving to Love Radically. To Live Radically.
And how can I say I don't have enough time, when it's my King knocking on the door?
How can I say I don't have enough finances and resources, when it's the One who GAVE me everything asking to come in?
And I'm returning to my knees, reaching for my God to feed me, that I may feed His sheep.
To Love me so Fiercely, so that I can Love so Fiercely.
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