April 16th 2020

I tend to be a glass half empty kind of person, I don’t know why? Just personality I guess. I’m often castigated for it by Karen and the kids. “If anything can go wrong it will” is my motto!  Well, this morning sitting with my toast and thinking to myself it’s another lovely morning my mind went back a day or two to a comment I heard from someone to the effect that “it was just our luck to be stuck in the house over one of the best Easters in recent memory. 

As much as some people might think that to be true there are of course always two ways of looking at everything and that comes from a glass half empty guy. Can you imagine what the last month would have been like if we’d be stuck in the house because of bad weather, and not even being able to look out at pleasant sunshine?  Imagine the kids fighting, the TV going endlessly on day time programmes yet another episode of Midsomer Murders that you could recite by heart and what about those dreadful funeral plan adverts. Oh great.... “I’ll give them a call.” Ahhhhh!  I know Alan Titchmarsh does his best to make it light hearted, but come on; it’s still an ad about making plans to die. If it’s not that it’s chair lifts for the stairs.

So the other way to look at it is with a grateful spirit.  The Lord has mitigated our misery in “lockdown” by giving us the best March and April that I can remember. We’ve had over a month of sustained good weather. If that doesn’t show us the mercy of God in exceptional straits, or at least the silver lining within the cloud what does?  Today, if you can, stop complaining about being bored, or wishing the kid’s school would start again last week, just go out and enjoy the good weather.
 
Jeremiah the prophet often gets a bad press for being gloomy he wasn’t strapped with the title “The Weeping Prophet” for nothing, but listen to this that is recoded in Lamentations a little read Old Testament book ascribed to Jeremiah.  Lamentations 3: 22-26
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“Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.’ The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”
 
Maybe today we’ll see it differently!
 
A PRAYER. 
Heavenly Father, your compassions never fail and your mercies are new each morning. Forgive me that sometimes I forget that and complain endlessly. Give me a grateful spirit and enable me to see with fresh eyes the blessings you’ve poured out on me, especially the grace that’s mine in Jesus your Son. In his wonderful name I pray. AMEN.
 
LISTEN

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