The Oz Magpie

 

Talking to my siblings on Zoom reminded me of a time we were visiting John and family in Oz and we met an Australian magpie with her baby.  We were in a beautiful reserve, near Sydney I guess, and it rained suddenly, so we took shelter in a sort of open pavilion, just the four of us.  Then a magpie and her baby came in.  They settled down on the back of a bench, and I saw the mum watching us.  After a while she flew off, leaving her baby there, and kept returning to it with food.

I felt she had decided we were safe babysitters, which we were. Smart lady.  I have no idea why some people use the expression "bird-brained" to mean scatty. Birds are very smart creatures.  As I remember it, we stayed there, on duty, until mother and baby left.

Col and I have both come down with bad colds - and are both back to coughing non-stop.

At the moment I am in the middle of attending the Brighton Convention - in pixel form. I have the American version - the teaching of course is all the same, just the Speakers are different.

The drama is wonderful.  Well it is, so far, the best Convention ever. They always are, as they get better and better.   

I have been studying the Bible among Jehovah's congregated people for over thirty years now, and don't know how many times I have read through it, as we study 2 or 3 chapters a week. Yet I keep finding new things, and getting a deeper and deeper insight into what Christlike behaviour is.  And I also often get a painful, but necessary, reminder of how I seem to heading in the opposite direction, rather than improving.

So here is an interesting point, one of many, that was brought out at the current Convention.  Jehovah told the Israelites this:

For Jehovah your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of streams of water, springs and fountains flowing in the valley plain and in the mountainous region, - Deuteronomy 8:7

God was not only bringing his people into a beautiful land, but he was also going to care for that land. His eye would be upon it.  And the Speaker used the comparison of a young couple, expecting their first baby, who are decorating a nursery for it, making everything not only right but lovely.

Jehovah was going to entrust his only-begotten Son, the firstborn of his creation, the most precious of his creation, to a faithful young couple living in this land. He was making sure that both the people and the land were in the right condition before he did so.

The drama also bought home to me how young Mary and Joseph were - and yet how faithfully they cared for the child entrusted to them, even though they too were the damaged children of disobedient Adam.

So, quite coincidentally, this blog has turned out to be all about trust.