Last night I slouched in the armchair, with my legs over the arm on one side and my head rested on the arm on the other, and read these words:

An orange sickle of new moon hung above the chimneys in a deep mauve sky. Autumn bonfires glowed in the mist and floated white smoke-rings above it. The beach shone in the gathering dusk as the tide fell and the sea grew less perturbed. I turned and swam on into the quiet waves.

And in so doing I concluded Waterlog: A Summer’s Journey Through Britain by Roger Deakin. Like many books that I read, I loved reading it, but I also loved concluding it. It was journey for a period that had run its course.

Life is full of beginnings and it’s equally full of conclusions. Each day has a sunrise and each day has a sunset. Each year begins with January and concludes with December.

Sometimes the conclusion can feel like a journey that’s ended before it’s really got going, at others the conclusion feels like one more unexpected summit higher than the summits already climbed.

It doesn’t matter where on the journey the conclusion lands, it’s still the conclusion. We might not like where the conclusion fell, but that doesn’t change it’s place.

Without a conclusion nothing ends. Without a conclusion life is an endless beginning. Without a conclusion we are doomed to endlessly revisit the failures of our past. Without a conclusion there is uncertainty.

With a conclusion we end the good and the bad. With a conclusion we give birth to the new. With a conclusion there is applause. With a conclusion there is clarity.

With a conclusion he said "it is finished".

This last weekend Sue and I decided to make the most of some spare time and to go away for a night. We decided upon York which is a city that we love, but it also gave us the opportunity to visit my parents for dinner and to look at some work they’ve been doing at their house.

While we were in York it started to snow, but nothing too dramatic.

By the time we had finished dinner it was dark and the snow had continued to fall.

It’s not far from my parents to the M62 motorway and we decided that while it may take us a while to get home that we’d be fine to travel.

So we set off.

It was slow going, but we never felt that we were doing anything too dangerous. Eventually we joined the motorway and the road, while impacted by the snow, still felt like a safe place to be.

Steadily we moved down the road, the snow continued to fall and we were becoming more remote.

As time passed we found ourselves in deeper snow, so deep that we could no longer tell where the edges of the motorway were – on either side. We had travelled beyond the street lights and were in utter darkness. The tracks that we were following became fainter and the snow became thicker. The snow continued to fall and the windscreen wipers became frozen. There was no one visible in front and no one visible behind. We were on our own.

It no longer felt like a safe place to be.

We wondered how long we would be travelling like this. We already knew that there wasn’t any snow back at home, but there was more than 120 miles between us and home. Having phoned a friend to see what information was available we concluded that things were confused.

It now felt like a very uncomfortable place to be.

Although neither of us said it but we could both tell that we weren’t happy.

After a while we concluded that it was time to turn around, go the other way and spend the night at my parents.

Having made the decision we spent anxious minutes waiting for the next junction to come into view, limited as the view was.

It felt like a long time before the next junction and it wasn’t easy making our way up the slip road and back onto the other side of the motorway. We still couldn’t see the edge of the road so had no idea where the slip road started. We made a short stop to clear as much of the snow from the windscreen as possible.

We were still on our own in the darkness. The road was a bit clearer on this side but we were still travelling on and through a lot of snow.

After what seemed like a very long time we saw some lights in the distance which turned out to be a queue of cars. As we caught up with them it felt good to be with others in the journey. We’d found some other people in the same predicament as ourselves, but that wasn’t the end of our worries we still had a long way to go.

Cars passed us trying to get to the front of the queue, covering the car with snow as they did. It was then that we saw something that made us even more relieved. As these cars went dangerously zipping down the queue some blue lights came on at the head of the convoy. We were being lead by a police car. If anyone knew there way down this road then a police car would.

Knowing that there was a police car at the front of the queue changed our outlook on the situation we were in.

We had a guide we could trust.

He quoted a proverb: "’Can a blind man guide a blind man?’ Wouldn’t they both end up in the ditch? An apprentice doesn’t lecture the master. The point is to be careful who you follow as your teacher."

Matthew 6:39-40

Even with a good guide it took us a long time to get back to the streetlights and eventually to my parents.

We followed the queue all the way to the end of the motorway and made our way back to my parents house. We spent the night there and made our way back the next day.

As I walk into the kitchen something looks different. Something is unfamiliar.

It takes me a second to realise what it is.

There is now a white fridge door where a cupboard door used to be.

We are the first and only people to live in our house. It wasn’t built when we bought it and it came with a built in kitchen. Along with the kitchen came a built-in fridge.

Apart from it’s ability to keep things cool this built-in fridge has always been something of a disappointment. It has a freezer box at the top of it that kept freezing up so we didn’t use it. That left a couple of shelves that you couldn’t see to the back of and a box bit at the bottom which was supposed to have a salad box in it, but that proved useless so we didn’t use it.

For years now it has been my intention to take out the built-in fridge and replace it with one of more practical use, but for some reason I never got around to it.

Part of the reason was a fear of what I might find. Other jobs I’ve undertaken in the kitchen have consistently turned into something bigger than planned.

And I never got around to doing something about it.

It hung there as a job that needed doing, but never got done.

Every time I couldn’t find something in the fridge I would wonder why I hadn’t got rid.

We even went to look at new fridges. You’d think it was an easy job to find a fridge to go in the standard sized 600mm wide gap that a kitchen cupboard leaves, but it’s not that easy at all. We did find one we liked, but it was expensive.

And the job remained as something that needed doing.

Every time I found something way out of date at the back of the fridge, that we’d forgotten about because we couldn’t see it, I would wonder why I hadn’t replaced.

We’ve lived in this house for 11 years now.

Then about 10 days ago I decided that enough was enough, it was time for a transformation. I searched around the internet for a deal on the fridge that we really wanted and I bought it.

(I was still worried about what I might find when I took the old fridge out so made sure that I could return the new one for free)

The new fridge arrived last Friday. Before doing anything I searched around to find the installation instructions for the old fridge and found them.

On Saturday I started to remove the old fridge.

Within an hour the old fridge was out and the new fridge was installed. AFTER 11 YEARS -AN HOUR!!!

The new fridge is fabulous. We can store things sensibly in it. It hasn’t got a redundant freezer box so has more room at the top. It’s got a new style of design so has shelves all the way to the bottom. The shelves are more like drawers and pull out all the way so there is no back for things to get lost in.

If I’m honest I’m quite excited about this fridge. When I go to get the milk out of it in the morning it’s a pleasure to be able to pull out the drawer at the bottom and pick up the milk.

A job well done.

Why did I put this off for so long I ask myself?

Why?

I have some reasons, but none of them very good ones.

As I look around my life there a number of jobs like this one, some of them practical, some of them a bit more personal. They’re sitting, waiting for me to do something with them.

I suspect that you are the same?

Work brings profit, but mere talk leads to poverty!

Proverbs 14:23

(For those of you that care about these things it’s a Bosch Logixx fridge)