Every few days Tjingapa makes her way down to the old mission hut to find me. She comes with her compliment of 5 dogs: two big ones (with excellent Kalgoorlie pedigrees) that look after her; and three little ones which, I have learned, are two brothers and a sister. In all our conversations Tjingapa uses more Ngaanyatjarra than English, which is how it has always been. Since I was a teenager she has insisted I learn some new pronunciations in every exchange; and she leads the talk gradually away from English and into the rolling and gentle cadences of her tongue. She is always sensitive to my comprehension and, in the winsome way of her people, keeps me well away from the trap of embarrassment; nurturing relationship above all else.

Much of our conversation is familiar; there is a liturgy through which we pass. It includes the declaration that she has followed Mama God since she was a little girl. “I can’t leave Him”. We discuss her husband who lives in a nursing home in another community; but this is her land and this is her home. I hear about the old peppercorn and gum trees nearby, some of which once shaded early mission buildings and others which were planted by significant people in her memory. And we confer about our families; with careful attention to the progress of one who might have been unwell, another who was getting married, or a grandchild. Especially grandchildren! Whenever we talk we also pray, as so many Warburton people do.

We have something in common, this sister and I. We are both on a journey from doing to being. Tjingapa because of her 75 or so years (as she often reminds me), and I because of other factors beyond my control. As we sit together I yearn to know what this journey means. I sense that Tjingapa is way ahead of me, her very culture is one of being, where as mine is one of relentless doing. I think of the many trips I have made to this and other communities in Central Australia, armed to the hilt with the tools of my trade, ready to make it happen! Building, renovating, managing; always working with veritable missionary zeal. I’ve always wanted to be a man-on-a-mission; in a rather dependant sort of way I suspect. Perhaps I can be her disciple.

When city dwellers visit communities the first thing they tend to notice is everything that hasn’t been done: the rubbish lying round, the disorder and general disrepair. What I have noticed on this trip is something entirely different. If I sit on the narrow strip of metal veranda outside my door in the cool of the day, like as not someone will soon come and sit with me. Why? Well, it’s important to be with one another. Coming from a culture riddled with loneliness, I find it sublime.

My own incapacity increasingly forces me to depend on others to do for me what I cannot do for myself. I feel guilty, and sometimes grossly irresponsible; and it is a terribly difficult thing to bear. My temperament doesn’t help. I keep my trusty Leatherman close by, because there just might be something that needs to be fixed! I’m good with my hands and within reason I can make just about anything … or so I think. My childhood was bracketed neatly by the slow completion of the Sydney Opera House, and I can still see its various stages of construction that fascinated me so much. Well … I could have built that! Or so I think.

I remember the enigmatic bible story of Mary and Martha: Mary draws Martha’s ire with her avoidance of the practicalities of hospitality; while Martha resents Mary’s idleness as she sits at Jesus’ feet. But, unexpectedly, Jesus affirms Mary: she has chosen the right path, being rather than doing. When I read the story I always have sympathy for Martha, after all somebody has to do the work. Don’t they?

Is it a matter of priority? Is it a season of life? Does being do any good? Should one do more being? And what of these intrinsic words: fruitfulness, value, and usefulness? If they are the measure of life, am I still locked in the mode of doing? I remember that the One I follow was a Carpenter (like me!) and must also have laboured hard, tools at the ready, to make it happen. Perhaps his finished work was enough for all of us. Perhaps if we become Mary to Christ; He somehow, in ways beyond knowing, becomes Martha to us.

And Tjingapa always, always, talks about happiness. The all important pukurlpa that comes when we sit down together: “Pukurlpalan nyinara mamala ngamu”. There is an undeniable spiritual dynamic, “for where two or three are gathered in my Name, there am I in the midst of them”. “Nyangka-tjananyarna ngururr-ngururrpa ngarama”.

The less I do, the more I become. The slower I go, the deeper I delve. In being I welcome Him; and in the business of doing I have sometimes overlooked His presence, or worse, His purpose.

I am inseparably tied to One who says simply of himself,

I AM.

 

_________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________

PS … On the same day that this photo was taken, I read most of my essay to Tjingapa.  The concept of a Blog is not within her world, however I did ask for her permission to share this story.

PPS … Early in 2011 Tjingapa went to God.  The world is a poorer place without saints such as her; but Heaven is not doubt a richer one.  I miss her, good friend that she was.

Eighteen months ago I was sitting at the very table where I write now, in the old mission hut at Warburton Ranges. It was Monday September 8th, 2008, and the most astonishing event in my life was about to take place.

Warburton is a place of enormous contrast. There are cool days of pristine colour in sky and earth. I have been here when joy and celebration could be tasted in the air. I’ve seen a flood run through. In the winter of 1980 the country was greened by wonderful rains, and Bush Turkey was on everyone’s dinner plates for months – even ours I recall! But Warburton is also, to me, a place of immense isolation, searing heat, oppressive tension, endlessly blowing dust, and a type of busy, draining noise that defies description.

This particular Monday was of the more desolate type, and I awoke with a bewildering sense of alienation. I was struggling to understand the things I was seeing in community life, and struggling even more to understand what in the world my place in them was. Why, God, am I here at all?

It’s my habit to read from the bible quite often, and on that day I read: “Look to the rock from which you were cut and the quarry from which you were hewn” (Isaiah 51). I responded to the passage in my journal; listing and pondering some of the many influences in my childhood and adolescence that led me to pursue Christian faith, and the many paths that followed. Feeling vaguely reassured I continued with the day’s agenda, which included a morning appointment with the Shire Clerk.

The Ngaanyatjarraku Shire building is a short drive out of Warburton, and on arrival there I happened upon a flock of bird watchers. It has to be said: they twitter. And they dress in a distinctive sort of desert camouflage that makes them easy to spot. I worked my way through the brood to the front desk, and announced myself to the receptionist. Instantly the bird watcher perched to my left let out an astonished squawk; and I turned to look into the face of my own Godmother. Well, jokes aside, neither of us could have been more stunned. Dumbstruck.

Marg, my dear Godmother, had been going into the building with the intent purpose of buying a postcard to send to me; being the only person she knew who had ever been to Warburton. Although in my childhood we had been together constantly, like close family, it had been many years since we had been in contact other than by a rare card or letter. Marg later told me that she had seen me walk past her and thought for a second that I was just as tall (5’19”) as the person she was at that moment thinking about.

The odds are ridiculous. To be in the Gibson Desert on the same day would be something, to be in Warburton astonishing, but to stand side by side at the same counter? A difference of minutes, and we may never have even known how close our paths had come. It is, simply put, the most astonishing moment of my life. In that instant, and reverberating through the hours that followed, it was as if I could hear the resonant, timeless and deep voice of the Almighty saying to me, “I know where you are”. In fact, I can hear it still.

A day or so later I woke up feeling a little unwell; and so it has been through to the present day, although to say ‘a little unwell’ might now be a little understated. This astonishing moment, and the revelation that accompanied it, brought stability to my Warburton visit. More importantly it brought stability and assurance to the weeks and months that followed. Throughout the testing times that ensued, I have largely retained the same sense of Presence: ‘I know where you are’. If it were merely the coincidence itself that sustained me, I could rightly be thought superstitious. But that’s not it at all. This was a sign, a confirmation, one of many but assuredly the best, that I am never alone.

I can’t begin to tell you what that means, how calming and deeply satisfying it is to know that this extraordinary pilgrimage of life is meaningful. It is ordained, it is timely and it is walked in company.

As a short postscript, let me tell you one more story. Some days later we made our way to Alice Springs and found a motel. Not being satisfied with our choice, we found another in the centre of town. This was our first opportunity to phone home in some while, and so I was perched on a cane chair on our first floor balcony speaking to my Favourite Wife, and telling her – among other things – of this remarkable series of events. I had almost hung up, in fact I had gone back into our room, when Karen said my daughter Ruthie wanted to say hello. So, I sat back on the outside chair to talk a bit longer, and I wonder if you can guess who, at that exact moment, walked out of the restaurant door directly below?

Thirty years ago I stepped into a public phone box in Chatswood as an idealistic and somewhat naive eighteen year old. “Hello, my name is Roderick Allen, and I’d like to be a missionary”. The woman who answered my phone call to the Uniting Church Board of Mission was both prophet and angel; surely a gift from heaven! Her unhesitating response determined my path in the weeks and months that followed; and in a sense the course if my whole life through to this day. “I think”, she said, “that you need to speak to Malcolm Hewitt”. Which I did just days later; and within the month found myself very alone in Alice Springs, waiting till sunrise to fly to Warburton Ranges, this amazingly remote community about which I knew nothing. I also knew nothing about flying, especially a 1000km flight in a single engine Cessna through seemingly endless hours of salt-pan turbulence. What a shock that was!

And here I go again. Once more into the desert. Once again the track leads towards sand and rock; spinifex and mulga; salt, dust and wonder!

I have an unsettling thought though: Why? Why do I go? Recently my daughter launched at me a barrage of direct and provocative questions: Why are you going Dad? Is it just ’cause you want to? Is Mum happy about this? Do you think you’ll get healed? Is it dangerous? Are you wasting the family’s money? Does God want you to go? These are all good questions.

I am also troubled by how I go.
Wherever I go I am white, and my whiteness will set me apart. When I buy groceries at the store from another white man (it’s always a white man behind the shop counter), he will look me in the eye; he will speak to me in a subtly different tone; without words he will say, “Hello white man.” It has all the feeling of a conspiracy. I may be offered a better seat at church. I will probably be offered a better room in the roadhouse. But if there’s one thing worse than being given preferential treatment, it is knowing I may well accept it. Of course these are generalizations; and of course there are obvious, mitigating circumstances behind the evolution of these realities. But this is true, none the less.

In so many ways the white fella is dominant; still lord and master in the outback. I feel him lurking in me, and I wish he would be gone. I long to say ‘brother’ without trace of condescension, and to share faith that is pure and universal, not just the white man’s religion.

Yesterday I was pondering these matters while struggling to pack for a month in a bag small enough to hang on a wheelchair. And, of course, I had to do the packing from a wheelchair. It was no small task. Taking a break late in the afternoon I parked under a favourite gum tree over the road, with a cup of tea, and read a “random verse”. Looking for guidance by sticking a pin in the Bible isn’t something I recommend: but very occasionally I indulge! I opened the iPhone Bible App, closed my eyes, wiggled my thumb around and tapped three times. This is exactly what I read:

“With what shall I come before the LORD and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:6-8).

It’s compelling, don’t you think?

So why go? Well, because I want to. The wander-lust and thirst for adventure are real enough things for me. And because there are things we must do: wrongs to right, people to love, walls to pull down. And because I feel a keen and undeniable sense of the Spirit’s leading. And because I have a great anticipation of being with friends, of receiving their gifts, and learning what God will say to my heart. I am compelled.

Rejoice!

“I thought they would send me a fax saying: Your brother is dead“.
My friend had seen bushfires on the national news, sweeping through the village of Gerogery about half an hour from our home. Thinking the bushfire was close to us, he feared we were in peril.  My friend told me earnestly that he refused to eat for two whole days because of his concern for our safety.

This conversation took place several weeks ago, but today I am humbled once again as I remember my friend’s sincerity. We live some 3000 km apart; we are from different cultures; it would seem we have little in common; communication is rare and haphazard.  We truly are worlds apart; and yet he cares for me.

I marvel at my friend’s journey through life.  Where my own grandparents were firmly grounded in the commerce and education of western affluence; my friend’s grandparents were among the first contact generation who could recount the moment they first saw a white face.  Where I take for granted the seemingly inalienable rights of a privileged, middle class upbringing; my friend has struggled throughout his life with the extreme challenges of isolation, poverty, harsh living conditions, cultural disintegration, the devastation of the lives of many of his family and friends, racism, and other trials that I barely comprehend. I marvel at my friend’s engagement with the world. He stands on the platform beside prime ministers and figures of influence in our nation. He is fluently bilingual. He has an enquiring interest in world affairs, and a wide ranging general knowledge. He is a leader, a deep thinker and a man of grace.

I am humbled by his care. Throughout the comparatively minor trials that I have faced in the last 18 months my friend’s voice has ever been one of reassurance and faith. When we talk by phone there’s always a lot of laughter, and my spirit is invariably nourished. He always asks, always listens, he always prays with me, and he prays with simplicity and faith.

My friend is a Ngaanyatjarra Aboriginal man from Warburton; an isolated Western Desert community.  I have known Livingstone since my youth, some thirty years ago, when I first went to Warburton as a junior missionary with the Uniting Church Order of St Stephen. I love the warmth and depth that he expresses when he calls me his brother, which has spiritual as well as earthly meaning. Livingston has told me that his father, who I had often worked with, used to speak of me as being ‘like a son’.   In the intervening years I have visited Warburton from time to time, usually with an overwhelming sense of bewilderment at the conditions of community life. I had absolutely no idea what the solution to the manifest problems was, and I readily admit to having little understanding still.  But I have learned that I have friendship to offer. A meagre gift perhaps, but I can encourage, I can listen, together we can laugh, we can cry and we can pray.

I will be out there in a week or so, spending Easter with many friends. It seems an enormous journey to make once again; the decision to travel has been a difficult to make.  I am more than a little apprehensive! In years gone by I have frequently travelled to Warburton and other remote communities to build houses or speak in churches; but this time there is no specific task to perform.  On this trip I feel I have little to offer; but offer it I must. And who knows what a little can do?

Rejoice!

All or nothing. This phrase is written deeply in our culture and on our souls. It motivates business, education, sport, and even faith.  And – in my world at least – it is wrong.  

For some months I have had a recurring sense that these are among the very best days of life; even as they are also the most challenging. There seems to be so much to revel in, so much to be grateful for. Today I am writing on the veranda of a stylish cabin, perched on the edge of a tree-lined lagoon with a glimpse of surf rolling against Sandy Beach in the distance. We are here to dote on our two grandsons, the newest just 21 days old! Right now a couple of my daughters are shopping in town with my Favourite Wife, while I hide and read and think. I’m a lucky man.

With a typically coastal downpour veiling the lagoon, a pot of tea to hand, and Classic FM on the radio, I’m trying to balance the trials and triumphs of life.  In an act of gross reduction I’m attempting to concoct a patently ridiculous equation of loss and gain in the hope – I guess – that I will come up with an answer vaguely in the positive. It’s a pointless pursuit, life is far too subtle for arithmetic, but one that I feel forced into time and again: Are we doing OK?

On the one hand there is some truth in acknowledging what we have lost as a family in the last 18 months. It is not inconsiderable; in fact it includes many of the things we would once have prized and been most grateful for. A car, my job, our home; that sort of stuff. And I guess I have to stick mobility on the list too. The infamous Bugger (my first wheelchair) has even been upstaged in the last week by B2, a battery powered version that I am finding more useful than I want to admit.

But in my other hand there is more abundance than I can readily write about; I am overwhelmed with provision and presence.  We live in a quiet and beautiful part of the world, adjacent to a magnificent timbered hill on which cattle and kangaroos graze. We belong to a great church where we have been made wonderfully welcome, and where I have the opportunity to speak and to help in various ways. Karen has a challenging and rewarding job. Nine year old Cassie is in the very best special needs school we’ve come across. Deep and rich friendships abound.  It seems we want for nothing.  I’m not sure that I’ve ever felt as content or fulfilled. I look at my family and I marvel at our astonishing diversity.  Our newest little grandson is so completely different to his big brother – and we laugh at the incongruous notion that they should for some reason be alike. I can’t imagine how my six children could be any more different: I sometimes wonder if they aren’t actually destined to live on six continents and become the ancestors of six cultures.  But I’m deeply satisfied by what I see in each of their lives as they grow; I’m even satisfied with all the things I’m not meant to see!  As they sometimes say to me, “Dad, it’s all good”.   

From where does this pressure to be upwardly mobile come?  Is increase really the single path of blessing? Human appetite is so rarely satiated that I wonder if it doesn’t take some form of divine intervention for us to glimpse the truth that contentment is found in much and little. There is definitely a feeling in contemporary churches that Christians can somehow have everything. But I hear Paul clearly saying he was content with plenty or with lack.

My growing conviction is that though I may have everything in one hand and nothing in the other, both hands come from the Lord. After all, who am I to judge which hand is actually full, and which is empty? I reckon we have everything and nothing at the same time. We can be unafraid of loss. A Christian can say with faith and great assurance, “The Lord Gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord”.

Rejoice!

“As an added precaution, smoke detectors have been fitted in the toilets”.  I love hearing the air stewardess say that line!  It’s so incongruous that grown men and women, having achieved the technological miracle of flight (and having paid hundreds of dollars to experience it), still need reminding that it’s NOT OK to duck into the toilet block for a ciggy!  And I love this bit too:  “On this flight the cabin has been pressurized for your travelling comfort”.  Comfort?  At 30,000 feet won’t we die without it?  Isn’t that why the next thing the stewardess talks about is the oxygen masks?  The world is a funny place, and I like it that way.

On board a Melbourne – Sydney flight a week or so back I read this:  “Humour is a prelude to faith, and laughter is the beginning of prayer” (Reinhold Neiburh).  I liked it immediately, and had a hunch that it was true; but it took a little longer to understand why.

On my whirlwind tour I found myself in stitches of laughter with friends and family again and again.  In Sydney a wonderful uncle greeted me at the top of a longish front ramp that had been built for an elderly grandmother.  “Aahhh, Bugger!” he exclaimed as I rolled to a stop, “Bugger, bugger, bugger!”  It was a perfect moment, acknowledging with outrageous and slightly inappropriate humour the incongruous tragedy and triumph that is our life.  I loved it!

I’ve been listening to laughter: mine and other’s.  I hope I don’t laugh at my circumstances in nervous avoidance of the truth.  I hope I don’t laugh at danger believing myself invincible: I’ve discovered that I am quite easily ‘vinced’!  I hope I don’t laugh in embarrassment, or in fear.  I don’t think I laugh to avoid tears.  And I hope I’m learning not to laugh – as we so often do – at the misfortune of others.  I’d like to think I laugh when things are funny!  But it goes deeper than that.

Laughter is very empowering.  Humour tacitly acknowledges that the game isn’t over; there is more to this than it looks; we still have a trick or two up our sleeves!  Paul was the master at describing the improbability of faith:  “Known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live  on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything!” (1Corinthians 9).

Humour is a prelude to faith because a good joke is the juxtaposition of improbables.  You put together two ideas that don’t fit at all, and laugh. Or, you put together improbable facts, and believe!  Faith is hope in the face of probability.

And so I have to admit that I sometimes chuckle when I catch a glimpse of myself reflected in a shop window.  I don’t immediately recognise myself in a wheelchair; t’s improbable, incongruous, ridiculous, and funny!

Of course there is both a time to laugh and a time to cry. But that’s a thought for another week.

Bugger* and I have been on the open road for two glorious weeks!  We’ve flown, driven and rolled through some of my favourite places, and spent rich hours with many of my closest friends.  We’ve been in Melbourne, in Sydney, and around the New England which still feels somehow like home.  Even the clouds in the sky are different there, not to mention the fabulous crackle of dry thunder in the afternoon.  We just don’t do that in Victoria!

Driving a wheelchair is a little like parenting, in so far as they both come without instructions.  In hindsight it seems obvious that if you hang a heavy back-pack from the rear handles it will dramatically increase the likelihood of flipping over backwards when you go up a ramp.  I’m embarrassed to admit a complete stranger had to point this out to me after three very close shaves!  And I learned rather quickly that it’s critically important to put your brakes on when sitting in your wheelchair on the back of a Qantas buggy, scooting across the Tarmac.  Again, it seems simple enough after the event.  Another tip for the trainee would be to expect the airport security folks to touch you in a number of socially inappropriate ways.  Needless to say, I was not expecting such a frisky encounter!

I’m not sure that I’ve ever enjoyed two weeks as much.  Sitting with so many of my closest friends, each meeting has been charged with an exceptional energy arising, perhaps, from the challenges involved.  Conversations have been fuelled with an unexpected and pure humour.  It’s been so funny!  I love finding myself well able to laugh with others in the very midst of challenge.

I’ve said many hellos and many goodbyes this fortnight, and on each occasion our parting words seemed ordinary and commonplace compared to the many ‘sacred’ moments we shared.  I began my trip with a certain apprehension about these farewells; based, I guess, in the knowledge that each journey during the past year has been significantly more difficult than the one before it. Frankly, I don’t know when I will see some friends again; in fact it has been hard to avoid the vague sense that my itinerary was a kind of ‘bucket list’.  I had particularly feared lifting off from Tamworth and Sydney, expecting a tide of emotion at any moment.  But instead of the sadness and bleak dread that I had anticipated, I found myself surprised – once again – by joy.  With the Sun now setting on Canberra 16,000 feet below the airplane I feel a sense of profound gratitude for the encounters of the past fortnight, and for the rich history that lies behind each friendship.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about two small words, leave and follow, that Karen and I had discovered.  During one farewell in Tamworth a friend of many years reminded me that it was when the nets were full that the disciples were called to leave and to follow.  Well, my nets are certainly full! I think our natural instinct is to cling to treasure in any form. It’s instinctive to stop where we find security. But the call of the spirit can be to move on into a new season just when the nets are at their fullest. I have an odd and undeniable anticipation for the season of life which lies ahead. I don’t know what it holds, but I’m ready to find out.

* Bugger, for new readers, is a recently acquired wheelchair with which I seem destined to travel for a season.

Tests, always more tests!  Did you know that to test your balance doctors don’t ask you to do some balancing – they blow warm air in your ear!  After another week of hospital investigation the answer is once again a blank.  The good news, the Neurologist said hopefully, is that there is no diagnostic evidence for Motor Neurone Disease.  It may be a ‘neurological anomaly’ that will resolve itself.  The bad news, said with more reserve, is that MND and a few other nasties can’t be ruled out.  It’s hard to know what to do with that.

I struggle to understand why no answer is so much worse than the worst answer.  It ought to give hope, and to some extent it does, but at the same time it empties me out completely.  The thirst for certainty leaves us ill-equipped to hold onto mystery.

On Tuesday I read an extraordinary story that has held my attention all week; becoming poignant as events have unfolded.  In Luke 7, John sends messengers to Jesus, saying, “John the Baptist sent us to you to ask, ‘Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?’ “  It’s an odd question, coming from the person who had devoted his life to crying with extraordinary passion: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord!”  John and Jesus shared such close connection, indeed it was John who baptized Jesus Christ in the Jordan river.  Yet there is doubt in John’s heart.  In his question I hear an echo of the fundamental uncertainty many of us face:  Is God real?

John has had to send messengers to Jesus because he is in prison.  Jesus, however, offers his cousin and friend no reassurance or condolence.  In fact rather than sending back a simple answer he almost taunts him:  “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.”

I would have thought Jesus might have said, “Hi John; yep, it’s me mate, I’m the one. Thinking of you!”  Far from it; in fact there is a terrible sting in his reply.  Jesus is quoting the ancient prophet Isaiah who spoke about the signs of the coming of the Messiah; but there is a line from Isaiah that is conspicuously absent from Jesus’ reply: “… to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners”.  The Messiah has come, miracles are happening left, right and centre.  But not for you John.  You’re in prison and you’re staying right where you are!

This story poses the hard questions that many people struggle with; they are certainly the questions on my mind:

Why does God sometimes not answer?
Why does he sometimes answer in riddles?
Why does he seem so distant?
Why does he set one free, but not another?
Why does he let us suffer?

I feel that I can imagine some of the pain in John’s heart when he get’s his answer from Jesus; the answer which is no answer at all.  I can sense the immense frustration he might have felt at being given a question in answer to his question.  I really ‘get’ the pain there is in uncertainty.

But alongside all that – and I wonder if John felt this also – there is a strange comfort that settles on my soul when I realise that life is beyond my control.  There is immense purposefulness in Jesus’ half-answer.  He doesn’t tell John what John wants to hear, but his response is exactly what John needs in order to continue on his allotted walk of faith.  No more, no less.  God’s non-disclosure is an authoritative reminder that there is a master plan. The players in the drama may not know how, why or when; but there is One who does.  The mystery is that within the appearance of uncertainty there is actually reason for great confidence.

That’s how I feel.

___________________________________________

Post Script
One of the questions I ask myself when I’m writing this blog is how much Christian faith should I include?  I know that some family and friends are reading along, and I greatly enjoy that.  I don’t want to be ‘preachy’.  And yet this is how I see the world; now and for many years Christian belief has been the substance of my life.