Weekend in Review

I should be folding laundry and important stuff like that, but I thought I would first fling some words onto the interwebs in, as it were, a great effort to waste time and not do that which I ought to do.

As usual we've had another very busy weekend. The whole of it was largerly me slopping paint onto the walls of the parish hall, along with two other very dedicated and self sacrficing people, and also, at the end, Matt, who did it because I begged and made him feel bad. Oh! And two people who painted on Friday night all by themselves. Believe me, God cannot possibly be dead, because the painting of a room that size, when the whole world is out of town, and only a remanent is brought forth, is no small miracle. Not only is it all done but also, by grace, it looks nice too. And now the floor is being stripped and waxed for less money than was originally indicated, and so all the people getting married in the next two weeks, AND those that come to the Festival, can celebrate in a space that at least looks clean, if not also vaguely more restful. However, as Matt observed, having painted the hall, the stairwells have now been shown to be extremely dingy and gross. “I'm not painting any more,” I said.

“That's ok,” he said, “I'm sure I'll have time to do it this summer.”

Cough. Spitting out of my tea all over my keyboard. “Time to do it this summer.” That's really funny.

Where was I?

Oh yes. Also, I aquired unto myself a lot of nice plants from Frog Pond–vegetables and flowers and so on and so forth. AND YET, some weird creature, whether human or not, has been, every evening, digging up my peonie bulps which haven't even grown into anything yet. So that they are really really really not growing. I'm wondering if someone can tell me where to buy peonies that are already going and not ones that I have to make go from bulbs, because something or someone has it out for them. I long for peonies. I lie awake at night and wish and pray that someday I could have a peonie growing in my own garden and that, sometimes, I could sit and look at them blooming, and then, perhaps, someday, cut a single peonie and bring it in and put it on my kitchen table and forget, for a brief bright moment, all the sorrows of the age.

But maybe that is asking too much. After all, my grandmother prayed for a greenhouse for years and years, but she always added, 'but not, O Lord, that it send leanness into my soul.' Perhaps The Lord knows that me having a peonie in my own yard would make me prideful and self sufficient.

See, any non Christian getting on here and reading the above paragraph would think, or at least I think they would think,' Oh my Gosh” (maybe they wouldn't say Gosh) “Christians are so weird. Just go buy a peonie. What on earth is the matter with you.” But I expect that other Christians would understand the true anxiety of wanting something very much, but wanting God more, and therefore worrying often that in the aquiring of the things that we want, we are in fact losing God. Also, when God then sometimes says 'Yes, you can have a peonie' often he provides said peonie in a way that you wouldn't have expected, because you waited and you didn't go out and get it yourself.

Here I am spinning into the mire without any help from anyone. What else happened this weekend?

Matt made a delicious lunch after church, just for me, before the Return to the Painting. And he preached such an excellent sermon that once I again I found myself sitting in my pew crying, because God is so rich in mercy and grace. This time it was, towards the end, that Matt drew out the line from John 7, 'He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Now this he said about the Spirit' and then he, Matt, described Jesus being raised up on the cloud of God's glory and looking down at his church and blessing them all the way up until he disappeard from sight, and how he is still, his whole gaze, directed toward the church, blessing and blessing. And it occurred to me that that is the great sorrow of the Christian life. It is a long distance relationship, except very close. The Holy Spirit, a stream of living water, is pouring out of your heart. But you stand always looking up, longing to look at Jesus, to see him. And as you go on, the longing gets greater and greater, and in some ways more painful. But the Spirit is always there, so you are never so thirsty or hungry or tired that your longing is diminished. It ebbs and flows, but over time it gets to be greater and greater. In which case, the peonie is wanted not at all, except in such a manner and way that it makes you want for Jesus all the more.

And now I need to definitely go fold laundry, and maybe take a walk because it is such a pretty day.