Day 25 Climate

 Happy Christmas Eve!

Ive recently made a new friend who comes from the southern part of India.  She is a beautiful woman with a beautiful family and it has been a joy getting to know her a little since she started coming along to church.  A few weeks ago I was visiting her and her new baby girl.  The house was toasty warm and I commented on the difference between the chill weather outside and the cosy feeling within the home.  This led us on to a conversation about autumn and the fact that in India there is no such thing.  In India there is either searing, paralysing heat, or there are monsoons.  Nothing in between.  So when Elsa and her family landed in Ireland they couldn't believe the seasonal changes in the weather or indeed how cold it gets here.  They were completely unprepared for the winter and had to immediately go out and buy jumpers and warm coats.   Shortly after this conversation I went on a fortnights road trip round the south of England to visit a few friends and family.  It was full on autumn as I drove for miles through the English countryside.  I couldn't help but be so thankful that I live in a country that experiences the delights of the trees turning all their shades of reds and yellows. It was breathtakingly beautiful.  Seasons are amazing when you stop to think about it.

Yesterday there was a radio 4 programme dedicated to poems about winter.  A lady from Nigeria described her first experience of coming to the UK and feeling cold.  She had lived on the equator all her life.  She had heard about winter.  She had imagined the cold and the snow and the things she had seen on screens.  But she said that nothing prepared her for the actual experience.  And that reminded me of Narnia - always winter but never Christmas.   If you have always lived in one climate it is impossible to imagine what a different climate is like until you get there and experience it.

And I think that heaven will be like that.  We talk about it, we read about it, we imagine what it might be like.  But until we get there........  we really have no idea.   If the distance of a few hundred miles on Earth can make such a difference to our experience of the climate, imagine how much more the difference between Earth and Heaven.  Right now we are acclimatised to living in time and space in a broken world in which we age and get sick and die.  There we will not need our armour, our tissues, our 'self'.  There we will vibrate with joy, pulsate with peace, shine with righteousness.  And we won't even realise it because we will be utterly transfixed by the glory and the beauty of our Lord and Saviour. 

I can't wait.




Thanking you all for joining me this Advent. Praying that you all have the Christmas your hearts are longing for and that we all enter a New Year with less fear and more hope and joy and faith xx

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