East

N.B. This has been a strange kind of week for me, and probably for a good few around me. But the more I reflect back on it, the more I appreciate the need for the world to hear about Jesus, and to know his love and acceptance for themselves. To experience it in all its fullness and truth, to live it in my words and actions, to "love it out" in the everyday people that I meet. So much of the time recently, I have been experiencing for myself a personal darkness. But in that, I am learning to appreciate the magnificence of the dawn, and the hope that Jesus brings of salvation. I learn to stand by my friends, and to be sensitive and tolerant towards them in their pain, and to put my troubles in perspective with theirs. And maybe most importantly, I learn to look up when I need to be looking up, and trust whole-heartedly in the God who has my best interests at heart.

This is a quote that is painted on the roof of the counselling hut in my old senior school. I always thought it had beautiful words, but maybe never realised how much so until now.

"I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year

'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.'

And he replied,

'Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God

That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!'

So I went forth and finding the Hand of God

Trod gladly into the night

He led me towards the hills

And the breaking of day in the lone east.

So heart be still!

What need our human life to know

If God hath comprehension?

In all the dizzy strife of things

Both high and low,

God hideth his intention."

Minnie Louise Harkins 1875-1957