May Update

BLOGSPOT

MAYDAY – The hedgerows are full of blossom and at last we can cast a clout. Well, now I am in my nineties I don’t cast many clouts for I am a chilly soul these days, but I well remember as children, the joy of wearing our summer dresses for the first time and celebrating John’s birthday which was 26^th April, and then Mary’s, the 4^th May.

The holidays are over and the children reluctant to be inside now the sun is shining, but I want to write my blog-readers a few lines before my faithful ‘Magic Margaret’ appears to coax me outside. I call her my good shepherd for I don’t venture far without her steadying hand beside me. 

How good is the Lord, that I am living so near to the sea, and with the incentive of a cup of coffee able to walk as far as the kiosk.

‘O yammy yea,’ is the song I thought we were singing, until I at last had arrived as a missionary in Ghana and learned that it is Onyamy Yea , ‘Yes, God is good.’

I can no longer dance as I used to, but we who have been blessed with many years can still acclaim, Yes, God is good. And with David we can also say, ‘He renews my youth like the eagle.’

God is renewing my ability to join in our daily Bible reading scheme. What a joy to be reminded of how God not only called Bezelel, but gifted him to make all those wonderful furnishings for the Tabernacle.

And now he is reminding me of how the same wonderful God called me to write, and is urging and encouraging me, still today to keep in touch with my very special friends by writing something of his goodness.

‘Onyame yea’ Yes, God is good indeed. And I am so grateful to those friends some who are still there for me, and other multi-skilled ladies who gladly help me sort out my muddles, so I had better get our poor reluctant prophet back to Nineveh.

THE RELUCTANT PROPHET

Poor Jonah had no compassion for the terrible armies of Nineveh. The sooner God wiped them out the better. That was why he had refused to deliver God’s warning in the first place, but now the terrible complexion of his prophet, saved from drowning by being swallowed by a great fish. 

But nothing now could prevent God’s message from being delivered, for the story was being passed from mouth to mouth until it reached the courtyard of the king himself. 

It was as the message reached to the class learning Hebrew that Judah realised the need of his sister, and that the mercy of their wonderful God needed to be shared with men and maids and so it was that a red-headed maiden was helping her brother to bring God’s mission of mercy and repentance.

But what of the reluctant prophet Jonah? Where was he? 

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I was unable to type for a few weeks because of a badly bruised arm, but once again my computer is my good friend, and I trust you are able to join me in the streets of the terrible and vast city of Nineveh.

It wasn’t Jonah alone who caused a stir, though the effect of 3 days and nights in the stomach of a great fish would affect the complexion of any traveller, but it was Judith too, for hopeless as it had seemed to the twin sister to join the party to help the prophet accomplish his mission, but it was her own Mother who made the way for Judith to leave her.

Once the news had reached to Joppa that not only had Jonah reached Ninevah but that they had indeed met up with her beloved Twin brother for how could they be kept apart?  Her brother was already known as the Red Head so now when another appeared word soon reached to her brother, and there was no difficulty in being employed as a teacher in their multilingual school.

So now, not only was the message of judgement and wrath being proclaimed by Jonah, but of a God of mercy and love and who calls us all to repentance. Thus it was that by the time that Jonah had eventually reached this previously unapproachable monarch, his heart had already been softened by the ministry of two orphaned red-heads.