I woke with a start and the words "There is a crisis at the omelette station!" ringing in my head. My right foot is still so painful and swollen that I have been trying to rest it as much as possible, and after attending the Field Service Meeting this morning, getting a couple of new roads to work, changing the bed, doing the washing, and having lunch, I decided to spend the afternoon lying on the sofa, with my feet up, trying to get the swelling down. I have taken all the meds I can, and the new painkillers are not helping as their side effects just add to the problem, without any discernible painkilling effect. So I have given up on them.
Anyway, it turns out I had fallen asleep in front of a programme about a super-luxury cruise ship called, I believe. The Seven Seas Explorer. It is apparently super luxury and they were showing us something called Sea Day, in which a buffet even more lavish and palatial than all the other buffets served aboard was about to begin. It included what looked like trillions of dishes, dispensed on many glamorous tables, in a series of fancy rooms. It contained food of all kinds, from many cuisines. But not omelettes - as apparently the omelette station was unmanned. And the guests were going to start arriving any minute. The horror of it!
"Look chaps, no-one is going to starve for lack of an omelette" I wanted to say. "Let the poor omelette guy have a day off." But I realised that was not entering into the decadent spirit of the thing.
And decadent it was - the contrast between such luxury and such excess in a world full of such extreme poverty that many live their lives from cradle to grave not knowing for one moment what its like not to be hungry. How much we need the Kingdom of God. Under its loving rule, no-one will hungry.
And we begin our Convention Sessions tomorrow, the Friday morning session. This is the programme, which is on-line:
9:20 Music-Video Presentation
9:30 Song No. 5 and Prayer
9:40 CHAIRMAN’S ADDRESS: How Powerful Is Faith? (Matthew 17:19, 20; Hebrews 11:1)
10:10 SYMPOSIUM: Why We Have Faith in . . .
• God’s Existence (Ephesians 2:1, 12; Hebrews 11:3)
• God’s Word (Isaiah 46:10)
• God’s Moral Standards (Isaiah 48:17)
• God’s Love (John 6:44)
11:05 Song No. 37 and Announcements
11:15 DRAMATIC BIBLE READING: Noah—Faith Moved Him to Obey (Genesis 6:1–8:22; 9:8-16)
11:45 “Have Faith and Do Not Doubt” (Matthew 21:21, 22)
12:15 Song No. 118 and Intermission
https://www.jw.org/en/library/books/2021-Convention-Program/FRIDAY-2021-Convention-Program%E2%80%8B-Powerful-by-Faith/
I am re-reading Margaret Forster's wonderful memoir "Hidden Lives". Overall, of course, it is sad. Do all lives look sad when seen in retrospect? And yet if Genesis is right how can they not? How can we be free of sadness cut off as we from our Creator?
There is everything to hope for though - more than we can now imagine. And I hope that the Convention will help to convince you of it.
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