Bluebells and Cuckoo Flowers

 

These are some flower photos Col took on Sunday.  Will we manage a bluebell walk this year?  If so, Jacks will certainly not be with us. It used to be a regular thing for the three of us, along with our trips to London and Chichester.

We talked to her very briefly on the phone, and she is not doing well at all. She does not want any visitors so we can't call in. Not that we would while we still have these lingering colds anyway - when Col isn't coughing, I'm sneezing and blowing my nose.

Her oldest son is living with her, so she is being well looked after. We have had some lovely friends in our time. But have we ever had a friend like Jackie?  Its hard not to think of, in the words of Janet Frame, "the sadness that belongs to the world".

Growing old is to travel into a strange new country.  And Jacks is a couple of years ahead of us in the journey. None of the medical professionals who help us with it - and for whose help we are very grateful - can know what it is like as they have not been there.

Many people have written about it, and poets down the ages have lamented the shortness of our lives, the inevitability of our death. The "world" - the current wicked system of things on the earth - is of course determined that we should believe that there is no problem, that we evolved - that the tragedy we are living in is normal.

It is not. It is a tragedy.  But we are not abandoned to it.  Our Creator's original intention was that our first parents should enjoy life forever in the earthly paradise. And that is what He is offering to every one of us, their dying, damaged children, right now.

Think of bluebell walks in the restored earthly paradise...

... and what about cuckoos?  When the Kingdom of God is ruling over the earth will they still be pushing other chicks and eggs out of their nest?  Will they be building  their own nests?  Or maybe their enormous chicks will be benevolent big brothers and sisters, there to help their adoptive parents and their younger siblings?

Anyway, the thing is, please let us all be there to find out. Because the very first chapter of Genesis tells us that nature was not created "red in tooth and claw with ravine", and both Hebrew and Christian Greek Scriptures promise us that the Kingdom of God will restore that peace earthwide.

And Jehovah always fulfills his promises.  Isn't that the very meaning of his name?  There will be so much to know, so much to find out.  And all of it will be joyful and wonderful.