This last weekend I visited the Isle of Bute for a friend's 30th birthday. We stayed in a fabulous castle/manor house and had a fantastic time. The local pun really is true, Bute is beautiful.
On the drive up to Glasgow, we headed past forest after forest of well maintained pine (or fir) trees. Though seen from a distance it was possible to see the formation in which they had been planted, the space between each tree being pretty much the same. Gaps of perhaps, 10 metres flowed down the hill where no planting had been done, presumably to allow access to the uniformly growing forest.
Elsewhere, seedlings had been planted, thousands of them, in long rows. Amongst the seedlings were rotting branches, leaf litter, stumps, all there to slowly return to the ground, allowing the nutrients to support the next generation.
Elsewhere still, were empty barren patches, left as fallow, resting in preparation for the next planting.
I was fascinated; theologically interesting, but also personally. When I was fifteen I was keen to be a forestry worker, I very nearly applied to Askham Bryn(?) to do 'forestry studies', but rather comically, I had hay fever that reacted badly to rotten trees and leaves.
Which got me thinking about the situation I find myself in today. Not to get into too much of the old, "if a butterfly dies in Hong Kong....." cause and effect thing, but it's interesting, how a relatively small situation or issue can change a life direction.
This is obvious, this is known.
But sometimes it's more noticeable than at others.
Right now I could have been a number of things, including:
A forestry worker in Scotland.
A translator in Germany.
A teacher for the visually impaired in Manchester.
A community worker in a Methodist church in Darlington.
A missionary in Kosova.
But I'm here, and it's where I am, where God has called me to be, doing what God has called me to do. And I find it all vvery interesting.
No comments:
Post a Comment