Monday 3 July 2023

The One that Got Away







"There is a Magpie Moth on the balcony." Captain B greeted me when I got up on Saturday morning. I tottered out but could not see it, I thought because my eyes were blurry from the drops.  But no. It had flown off.

But not before Col had photographed it  - though the photo above is from a previous year.

There is a great cartoon in my current Spectator.  A kid is talking to his schoolteacher, giving him the Classic Excuse, updated: :  "The boy who self-identifies as a dog ate my homework, sir."

For the first time in recorded history - as far as I am aware - it is considered wrong to say that there is a difference between men and women, or a difference between boy and dog, or indeed between girl and cat - if, that is, it is true that some schoolchildren are self-identifying as dogs and cats and being allowed to get away with it.

In fairness, I have to say that the nuns of my 1950s childhood convent school would never have let us get away with that.

Are there even weirder things to come as the current wicked system of things on the earth comes to an end?

After a  lot of prayer, I did get out on the field service on Saturday morning, but it was a very stressful drive, going across the roundabout of terror. The traffic was really heavy.  I do wonder for how much longer I will be driving.

We are delivering invitations to the Exercise Patience Convention of Jehovah's Witnesses, which will be this month for us.  And I feel glad for having done it.  The afternoon was taken up with making a veggie chili, and sandwiches for the Captain's Sunday lunch. He was marshalling, not detecting. It was a fund raiser for SUSSAR. 

We have taken to sitting out on the  balcony every evening now watching the sea, and the children playing on the Green.  The little playground is such a magnet for them. Though we were both remembering that when we were tinies, the beach itself was the playground.  

A thought I took from the meeting yesterday:  

"Let someone else praise you, and not your own mouth.   Others and not your own lips." - Proverbs 27:2

Going back to my youth again, this advice did prevail. It was considered wrong and conceited to "blow your own trumpet".  But I notice that now we are encouraged to be proud of ourselves - in fact we are encouraged to say how proud we are of ourselves on every possible occasion.

Yet whatever good qualities we have come from our Creator, who made our first parents perfect. So perfect that even now after 6,000 years in freefall from that perfect state, we all have some good qualities, and some amazing potential.  So let us be proud of the work of Jehovah, our Grand Creator, but be as modest as we can about ourselves. 

It is looking depressingly as if this week too is going to be taken up with medical matters.  My special med, in the painful injection pens, has run out and I am having trouble getting the next delivery. The problem seems to be with Rheumatology at the Hospital, according to the Suppliers.  So we have spent quite a bit of the morning holding in phone queues, and I have left a message, as requested, and am hoping they will call me back.  The NHS seems on the verge of toppling from overload.  We will really miss it if it does go. It was a noble idea, free health care for all, at the point of need.

But in the end it all comes back to the warning in Jeremiah that "it does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step".

The heavenly government, the Kingdom of God, will do what no human government can do, as it will restore all its subjects to perfect health - something that none of us damaged children of Adam has yet known.  






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