Knock Knock

I was typing away early on Friday morning - still in my jim jams - when there was a knock at the balcony door. The builders had re-appeared, and clearly had finished as they were asking if we wanted them to put the panels back. I accepted gratefully.

I am sure there is a joke there if I could only think of one.

We now await the removal of the scaffolding. And the return of our sea of plants to the outdoors.

I was a householder in the Ministry School on Thursday night, and Pen came along too - via Zoom. I hope she enjoyed the whole meeting, as she stayed nearly to the end. We are in the books of Kings at the moment - and some of the Hebrew Scriptures, or Old Testament, can be quite frightening and hard to understand out of context.

Yet there are wonderful lessons to be learnt. This was the commentary on just one verse we studied at that meeting,  The context was that King Jeroboam was misruling Israel, turning the people to idol worship, and behaving very badly.  One of his sons had become so sick he was about to die, and Jehovah sent this message to the King, by one of his prophets.

The verse was “All Israel will mourn him (Abijah, the son of the king) and bury him, for he alone of Jer·o·boʹam’s family will be laid in a grave, because he is the only one of the house of Jer·o·boʹam in whom Jehovah the God of Israel has found something good. “ 1 Kings 14:13

So the question is : What does this one verse teach us about Jehovah?

“Most important, the words of 1 Kings 14:13 teach us something beautiful about Jehovah and what he looks for in us. Recall that something good was “found in” Abijah. Jehovah evidently searched through Abijah’s heart until He found a trace of goodness. Compared to his family, Abijah was, as one scholar put it, the lone pearl “in a heap of pebbles.” Jehovah cherished this goodness and rewarded it, granting a measure of mercy to this one member of a wicked family.”
https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/2010492#h=8:0-9:0

Jehovah is looking for the good in us, he treasures every bit of it. That is so reassuring. And also isn’t it a lesson about how we should treat each other?  We live in a world that is training us to look for every fault, to take offence at everything, but we can make a choice to follow our Creator's example and look for and appreciate the good in everyone.  We are all in "the valley of the decision" - so which way will we choose?

We shopped Friday afternoon, bumped into Jen and had a chat, and I made an apple crumble for Captain B.  And I am now exhausted, I am so feeble these days.

Our lift is out of action again!  We had a power cut for about 3 hours on Friday afternoon, and while everything else has come back on, the lift has not.  If this is going to take another 3 months to fix, I will just have to walk down the stairs VERY carefully and slowly. I can usually walk up - but down is scary as I am petrified of another fall.  Plus walking up and down the stairs takes its toll on my feet.  If I do it more than occasionally, they swell up so painfully that I can hardly bear to touch them to the ground.

So far only one foot goes at a time. I do not like to think of the pickle I will be in if they both flare up.

I am keeping my Zimmer on standby, fuelled and ready to go, as if the lift is not repaired asap, I will be needing it just to hobble to the loo and back.