Time and the Child

I was getting a bit of sun, on an overcast Friday, on the balcony, after lunch, watching a tiny little girl in a mulberry red frock running across the Green to the playground.  And it reminded me of my earliest memory, walking with my father, hand in hand, on Hampstead Heath by the Pond.  I would have been about 3 years old.  It is a window that opened in time, nothing else stayed with me of when I was 3 years old.  And I can't even remember that now - I just remember myself remembering it - if that makes sense.

So seeing this little one, running happily to the playground, mother in pursuit, I wondered this. Was there an old lady in her seventies watching me happy by the Pond with my father?  If so,  she would have been born in the 1870s (if my maths is right) - an era that even in my childhood seemed like the distant past.  But it wasn't.  No more, no less, than than 1940s are to children of today.

Not only are our lives very short now, but human history is much shorter than we are told it is.  And the past is not nearly as far away as we might think.

Saturday - hot sunny - beach busy - lots of people and cars.  Did I achieve anything?  I got to the field service meeting, stayed for the group afterwards and (importantly) got some more territory for my letters. But somehow it was a very Aspergery day and I felt rather depressed and downcast by my inability to fit easily into any group. Which of course is why schooldays were a nightmare. And I feel for all such children now being forced through similar horrors.

On the doubleplusgood side, I got a lovely email from one of my congregation sisters in the afternoon, which came just at the right time.

I also managed to turn the rhubarb into a crumble for Himself - clean the bathroom and wash the bathroom mats. plus do my Watchtower studies.   And today, Sunday, was very hot indeed. A wonderful meeting in the morning - a great talk, followed by a great Watchtower - all about how to walk in Jesus' footsteps.  That talk was "Do you recognise Jehovah's Sovereignty in your life?" - and of course walking in Jesus' footsteps is how we show we recognise that he is the one Jehovah has chosen to be the King of the Kingdom.

Captain Butterfly had a SUSSAR training session scheduled today, but instead they were called off on a real hunt for a person who had gone missing in the Camber Sands area.  It was a sunny Sunday, so the world and his wife were also heading for Camber sands and he spent most of his day in traffic jams.  There is no way I would head for a popular beach on a sunny weekend, or bank holiday. But most people clearly don't agree.

The missing person, sadly, remains missing.