The Ash Bud Moth

 

The little Ash Bud is one of the recent visitors to our balcony.   I hope it is prospering somewhere out there after its stay in our Moth Hotel - an AirBnB indeed. Will it be (a) eating ash buds, or (b) looking like them.

I find I don't know. Yet in my childhood, I feel sure I would have known what an ash bud looked like.

John, from Oz, sent through a wonderfully scary short story he has written for a competition.  

Like my "Till They Dropped", it ends up in the dark part of the cellars of our old family home - 5 Disraeli Crescent in the book. Clearly it remains a powerful memory for all of us.

It is quite a different story though.  Mine is the Alice-in-Wonderland version.

Col and I are both down with bad colds - I can't talk, only croak.  And Col is not wonderful either.  He did his stewarding duty on Sunday though, at the boat race thingummy near Lancing, and I attended the last day of the Convention, in pixel form.

Here, from a demonstration at that Convention, was a thought provoking question, from an older sister (like myself) to a younger sister, who is very anxious about something.

The context is the reassuring advice at 1 Peter 5:6,7, in which Jehovah tells us that he will help us if we will only listen to him and tell him all our troubles in prayer:  "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time,while you throw all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you."  

The older sister then asks the younger one: "Are you prepared to throw all your anxiety on Jehovah, or just some of it?"

It is a question to make all of us think.  And it reminded me of a previous talk, I think from a Circuit Overseer visit, when he cited the same Scripture and asked us another pertinent question. When we have tackled whatever the problem is to the best of our ability, do we then "THROW all our anxiety" about it on Jehovah, trusting in Him to help us through.  Or do we put it down, and then pick it up again?

It is still something I am wrestling with. Its not, I hope that I have any doubts about Jehovah's ability to solve whatever problems we have, its that I doubt myself. Am I really doing all I can to solve it? Am I really doing all I can in Jehovah's service?

While I am someone who lives with high anxiety levels, that does not mean that my anxieties are not valid...  what a stressful world system this is.

If I - if all of us - have the privilege of being on the earth after Armageddon - whether we come the long way round via the resurrection, or find ourselves sitting dazed in a heap of rubble a couple of seconds after the event, won't we feel even then, so early in The Thousand Years, as if an immense burden has been lifted off us?

And that will just be the beginning of the increasing happiness that lies ahead.