Tag: father

Feeling Invisible?

Posted on by Olaf

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.

just CLINGING ON

Posted on by Olaf

Sometimes it seems that your faith is hanging on by a thread as life falls apart – a spouse deserts you, an illness is diagnosed, a loved one dies.  It can be as sudden as one of those tragedies that hits you out of the blue or it can be a sustained ‘East Wind’ prevailing against you – lack of support from church, loneliness in your faith, depression.

Despite strong roots, a tree can be bent sideways by prevailing winds – and yet, they can still hold on.  A limpet will cling on, but one sudden tap from a seagull when it’s not prepared and it’s history.  If you’re reading this, you may identify more with the tree than the limpet.  God seems to allow ‘prevailing winds’ into our lives of many sundry kinds but they do shape us.  Take Jacob – using sleight of hand to deceive he was always on the move, suffering family traumas and personal insecurity, he learnt to sleep using a rock as a pillow!  

Orphan Living

Posted on by Olaf

What do John Lennon, Marilyn Monroe, Steve Jobs and Eleanor Roosevelt have in common?  They were all orphans and yet they went on to achieve many things.  Living with the knowledge of being an orphan has deep effects on a person’s psyche – to have feelings of rejection, insecurity, abandonment and poor self worth would be typical.

‘I’m trying to find myself.  Sometimes that’s not easy’ – Marilyn Monroe