Graham Chastney's Blessings

I love being part of an extended community that is full of colour and character. Whenever I get full of myself I think about the sparkling rainbows that God has placed in my life and smile. These gems might not be the people that our society regards as stars, or celebrities, but I tell you they are just as sparkling, and just as colourful.

“Diamonds in the rough” would be a good way of describing them, but there’s more to it than that, these diamonds are becoming sparkling gems before my eyes. I don’t know whether they realise it, but they are changing day by day. Sometimes the refining comes with laughter, at other times it comes with tears, and sometimes it comes in the most peculiar of ways,

Sue and I sometimes sit opposite each other and smile wryly at the events that are unfolding before us. Through this smile we are saying to each other “is it me?” this isn’t an accusation, it’s an affectionate phrase we use when we haven’t a clue what is going on.

The community in which we find ourselves is spiced with a whole set of characters, adding extra ingredients to the recipe of our life. Community is a bit like a recipe, if all of the ingredients were exactly the same then meal times would be quite a dull experience, it’s the variety that makes the meal interesting.

As an example there’s a lady with learning difficulties who has become, in many way, an extension to our family. Life is a complicated thing and she needs help to navigate its pitfalls and landmines, sometimes she falls in and then she needs help negotiating her way out. Some people might regard her as “difficult” but she is special in many, many ways. Listening to her pray is like listening to a  child talk directly to its dad, and while she’s conversing her face shines. She goes somewhere that the rest of us can only dream of. The recipe of our community would be missing something without her.

There are also people of learning who have insights as a result of their knowledge that enrich the life of the rest of us. Their learning doesn’t make them better, it just makes them different. They bring another different ingredient.

I have a friend who is wonderfully practical. He can make and mend things that I look at in puzzlement. Another wonderful ingredient and a different set of colours.

Jesus disciples were a mixed bag of individuals too, some of them were societies misfits and outcasts. Jesus didn’t pick them because they all fit some kind of psychometric test, he looked past the exterior and saw something inside that he was looking for. We’re not told, but I’m also sure that the disciples had different academic ability, they had different occupations, some of them requiring book learning, some requiring practical learning. I’m also sure that they had different physical builds, they were from a single ethnic group, but after that they would have been very different.

We aren’t called to live in pristine uniformity, we are called to be part of a body.

I love walking at this time of year, actually, if I’m honest, I love walking at any time of year. One of the things that I particularly like about walking in the spring time is what I’ve come to think of as heaven’s spotlights.

Heaven’s spotlights are those flashes of brilliance that light up sections of the countryside for a few moments and then move onto somewhere else.

As I was walking in the English Lake District over the weekend it was prime heaven’s spotlight time. The clouds where high in the sky and quite sparse as I walked my way up Dale Head turning around every now and again to survey the view of Great Gable and the Scafell range of mountains the scene would be ever changing (Actually, most of the time I was turning around to catch my breath, but that doesn’t sound as philosophical).

Sometimes the spotlights were radiating light from the few patches of snow that were still resident on the north side of Scafell. At other times the spotlight would be eliminating one of the lesser hills making it stand proud while being overlooked by it’s larger neighbours. Then the spotlights would make there way down into a valley picking out some of the detail there, perhaps a  river, or a house, or a wood.

Sometimes the spotlights would scan across a ridge highlighting it’s undulations. Occasionally the spotlights would merge together in a florescent dance.

I love it that this changing light seems to make the countryside come alive in a way that it just isn’t on a grey dank day. The light gives it life.

Sometimes I stand in a crowd and look around and I get a similar feeling. I see conversations that are in spotlights. I’m not talking about real light, I’m talking about something that is happening in the conversation that even from a distance seems to make it shine.

I can see other conversations that are just ordinary almost dull looking, but these conversations seem to me to be iridescent. The conversation, not just the people, seems to be alive.

We all have too many conversations that are just a passing of information and have no life in them at all. But I know when I’ve experienced a conversations that is full of life, making me fell more alive too. These conversations are like spotlights from heaven.

Sometimes I’m sure that we create our own version of a dark dank day by not bringing everything we have to our interactions with others, we make them grey. When we bring ourselves then we bring the light, and that light makes us more alive.

If you click on the image below and view it in large see how many different heaven’s spotlights you can see, it’s not just one or two. If you look really closely you’ll see that one of the spotlights is lighting up the sea in the distance:

Perhaps if we tried to bring more light we’d get more life in return, or perhaps it’s the other way around?

There have been times in my life that still today make me laughter, some of them are bizarre, some of the are surreal, but all of them are hilarious to those of us who treasure them.

Even as I think about them now I’m smiling with the humour of the situations.

I’m sure that if I tried to describe them to you they would barely make you smile, but I know that if I retold the tale to the right group of people that I wouldn’t even get to the end of the story before we were all doubled up. Sometimes just the start of the story is enough for the shoulders to start to bounce and the giggles to flow.

I sure that you wouldn’t believe that some of the situations were real, you’d think that I’d made them up. Bizarre is something that seems to follow us around, pouncing out on us when we least expect it.

There’s nothing guilty or malicious about these snickers we are remembering fond situations that we treasure.

A few stories must have been shared hundreds of times and they still reduce us to gibbering gigglers. Sometimes I’m sure that it’s the expectation of the laughter that makes us laugh more than the story itself.

Laughter is such a tonic and I keep these memories stored away like little treasure boxes. Over exposing them would take away their shine so I keep them under wraps ready for the right time and the right place.

One of the most famous passages in the Bible comes from Ecclesiastes 3 and starts like this:

There is a time for everything,
       and a season for every activity under heaven:

This same passage goes on to say:

a time to weep and a time to laugh,
       a time to mourn and a time to dance,

There’s a well known statistic that compares the amount a child laughs (300 times a day) with the amount an adult laughs (15 times a day).  As we get through life we should have more laughter treasures, not less. Perhaps we aren’t very good at looking after them. We need to remember that there is “a time to laugh”.