Thursday, April 30, 2009

Pocket watch

I have a pocket watch. It' s a kind of burnt bronze with an antiquated lid that pops up at the slight press of the button. The same button that when pulled up moves the clock's hands.

There's also a small chain attached so I can dangle it from my pocket, like the Fat controller in 'Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends'. But there's a small hitch. The battery is dead so the hands remain at the last time I put them on. And that's the odd thing, instead of getting a new battery, I've taken to simply moving the hands to the correct time every now and again.

The pocket watch goes everywhere with me. In my jean pockets or in my brown leather satchel. In my jacket pocket or in between my fingers. On anything I can hook it on or under my pillow when I sleep.

The attachment crept up so stealthily I didn't know it had happened. My fierce loyalty to this little round bit of metal is clearly more than a mental hiccup; I think perhaps it's my way of having Anna close. Maybe that's why I like nothing more than to slip it out of my bag's side pocket and pop open the lid just to look at it and all it's detail. There's history with it, there's the story of how she acquired it, how she gave it to me and more of, the long lost age that pocket watches speak of.

I feel a bit like an old man when I take it out. No one has commented on my mild malaise yet, but that doesn't really bother me because I have secret stories and pictures all dangling off a very small chain.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

The Shack

You've probably heard the huge hub-bub surrounding this tale of a man called Mackenzie Allen Phillips whose daughter is kidnapped on a family camping trip and then brutally murdered. His daughter was six years old. Three and a half years later, Mack receives an invite from, 'Papa' or God to return to the shack where the last remnant of his daughter Missy was found.

There was so much hype all over this book I was most aggressive in resisting to read it. But floating about Target last Friday I came across it and dropped it into my basket. Unbeknown to me God would use those 250 pages to wreck all I thought I knew of Him.

I shan't spoil the experience of being a fly on the wall in Mack's unusual weekend with the Lord of the Universe. But I will tell you that during it you may just grasp the ridiculous depth of God's sheer pure love for His creation. You will never see such a devoted heart as God's own. And so I imagine you too will be wrecked, undone and pieced back together again in fear and trembling for the one who loves only you.

And that's the key thing here I think I learned. It isn't solely that God loves the world and the people in it. It's that He loves only you.

He loves only me.

Wine nose

My younger sister has a gift. She can smell and taste any wine, whether white, red or rose and tell you what year that wine was produced. It's an odd talent and in the early years I thought she was cheating her way into our awe. But years later and several bottles tasted she can still astonish us into silence by telling us the year.

On my most recent trip home I was thinking unsuccessfully how to make money off her gift (horribly capitalist of me I know) but ever since 'You Bet' ended years ago I have really come up dry. So perhaps her gift is just for our entertainment and to make her merry and giddy. Perhaps it's just another example of the random wonderfulness of our God's power to offer and implant the strangest gifts to his children.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Hairaisers-not the holiest thought today

I was cleaning out one of the folders in my Hotmail account and came across a press release sent to me by some PRs a good while ago (11th July 2006 to be exact). It was a brief paragraph about how the packages that contain 100% Human Hair are in fact from reliable sources, namely Hindu volunteers who shave their heads in honour and worship of their gods.

Now not only has this thrown me off in the sense I have maintained the staunch argument that no corporation can have that much access to flyaway hair of all colours, but it's now added the added trouble of a spiritual dimension.

Of course if we remember Christ's words to Peter when our fisherman friend was staring at a picnic blanket teeming with all kinds of critters, that praying over things makes them clean and acceptable; but what of hair? Hair dedicated to Hindu gods that now has a new journey being tied and woven to my fro?

I'm as yet to wrestle with that one and hear what God's thoughts are and do a bit more research and prayer and perhaps get a bit of an answer.

Why this is taking up valuable blog space on Easter Sunday when I am remembering that my hero is alive and well, I have no idea. Perhaps that's what happens when you've been oscillating between health and colds, deep sleep and early starts, reading in silence to too many lunch dates.

Either way; London has been a fun time.

Hope you've had a happy, 'He is Risen' day.