Top seed: Gill Sewell’s Thought for the week
‘I was struck by the awesome synchronicity.’
It was warm on Sunday. As I sat on my balcony, I remembered it was my turn to lead the ecumenical prayer group the following morning. I was slightly stuck for ideas so I searched the internet: ‘What does the Bible have to say about hot weather?’. A list of twenty passages came up. I discarded many of them but then found Exodus 16, which talks about the Israelites on their forty-year journey to the promised land. When they were hungry God provided quails and manna from heaven. ‘Morning by morning they gathered it, as much as each needed; but when the sun grew hot, it melted.’
I too receive many gifts in life, and sometimes they also melt away because they’re intended to be time-limited, or because I outgrow their usefulness. I believe that gifts of God’s love are unconditional, but there are perhaps some that are for a time and a season. I sat and counted my blessings.
I spotted a book on my shelf called The Four Elements, by John O’Donohue. Surely that would have something to say about the heat? As I browsed I was struck by a quote from the Russian director Konstantin Stanislavski. He said that ‘the longest and most exciting journey is the journey inwards.’ I moved on from thinking of the Israelites’ outward journey to their inward journey. Was it one they endured or enjoyed?
I then came across a passage by April Oursler Armstrong, about lifting our eyes to the stars. She says that whether you’re in the countryside, a city park, a backyard garden or a window box ‘there is still a seed and a sower.’ I found the Vincent van Gogh picture of the sower walking across a yellow-hued field, with the huge golden globe of the evening sun shining over. Would the seeds make roots, I wondered? The plants in the dry earth on my balcony seem to be crying out for a gentle watering.
I took all these ideas to the Monday morning group, closing with a prayer from Macrina Wiederkehr: ‘Make me your noonday sun, bright with passion, on fire with truth, enduringly courageous. Let me be light for the world.’ It seemed fitting since I’d also spent some of my balcony Sunday sorting through the final edits of the next edition of the Friends Quarterly, with its focus on outreach. Afterwards, someone in the group said that the passage from Exodus had been one of the lectionary readings in church that Sunday; I was struck by the awesome synchronicity, of manna from heaven appearing in our laps in a variety of ways.
Whatever our denomination, we are invited to notice the gifts we receive, and to be both the sower and the seed. This week, will I sow my Quaker truth? Or, as a seed, will I be open to transformation and new light from wherever it might come?
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