Cement is not meant to be walked in! However, these steps and pawprints reflect the love and faithfulness of this dog for its master which is saved for posterity! In the old carol about Good King Wenceslas, we see the monarch and his page stepping out in harsh cold weather to show kindness to a household in poverty. They set out together to take food, wine and logs for a poor man. The King makes it easier for his servant in making a safe way through the thick snow:
This tree is seen in its natural beauty before being cut to become a centrepiece for Christmas festivities – unlike the chicken laying an egg, the Christmas Tree is more akin to a pig sacrificing everything for the bacon! Every year, many households across the nations like to bring in a conifer like this to decorate as part of celebrations for this season, although Russians were forbidden to do this during Marxist times so used it to celebrate the New Year. The origins of adopting a fir tree for Christmas are disputed although it seems that celebrations in pagan times involved the worship of trees, sometimes with them being decorated and then burnt. Perhaps it is not so different these days!
If you were to ask Vincent Van Gogh about his life story, you would either get a complex answer or a picture like ‘The Starry Night’. He was the son of a pastor and wanted to become a minister but his complicated road led him instead to serve God through artistic expression, as he said: ‘to try to understand the real significance of what the great artists, the serious masters, tell us in their masterpieces, that leads to God.
The world-famous Kew Gardens holds many wonders from the natural world which are easily missed because there are so many of them in one place. It also has beautiful and thought-provoking internal exhibitions within the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art. This photo shows one of them – thousands of tiny metal intricately shaped trees are placed in sand. On one side they are black. As you walk alongside, they become invisible, but when you pass them and look back you see each one is painted in colours.
Life on the edge is where explorers, astronauts and extreme athletes choose to live. It is demanding and risky which is why they are so admired. Yet in another sense, we all live on some edge – it could be financial constraints, health limitations, emotional well-being or our personal abilities. These all will ebb and flow like the tide through our lives. The edge is always on the move. There is another more important edge – the edge of eternity. All human beings share one thing – we are all one heartbeat away from knowing if eternity exists beyond the grave.
There’s a pithy saying: ‘If in doubt, don’t!’ That is the safer way to play it, especially if it comes to working with electricity as you may have discovered. Rewiring a house is a job for a trained electrician and not for a willing amateur! The opposite approach is taken by some with likely dire consequences: ‘If in doubt, do!’ If you look at the bigger picture of ‘do’ and ‘don’t’, everyone needs something to do.
There is no doubt that we can sometimes feel wretched – if only we hadn’t done that thing, had that thought or said those words. It can be tough to reconcile how you’d prefer to behave with what you find yourself being tempted to do, as if there’s an inner battle. When we slip up, that’s when regret, guilt and inner condemnation pour in and wretchedness ensues as we hang our heads in shame.
Some people are born into families where there is no shortage of money and the advantages that it can bring – housing in a ‘nice’ area, lifestyle and educational opportunities. Others are born into poverty or war-torn countries, perhaps with physical disabilities that make life even harder. It seems an injustice that some have an easy life full of advantages whereas others have few or none.
It’s pretty costly to make a boat of any size. Whatever size, they all need a solid anchor to guard against drift that usually leads to shipwreck. Yes, the rudder and keel are vital, but those are both integral to the ship whereas the anchor’s role is to secure the vessel to something independently stronger, the mass of the sea bed. Lying off the many coasts around the world are sunken shipwrecks, many being preventable if there had but been a secure anchor in a storm.
We live in an age where recycling and restoration are both important. And so you have the popularity of media shows where antiques, old cars and houses are restored. Harvesting of crops has always been important and, with an ever-increasing number of hungry mouths to feed, will continue to be vital. So what is a ‘harvest of restoration’ would you say? Possibly it’s only a small group that can truly describe it for it is very costly!
