A key to a door

A man sat thinking about how busy he could become and how hard he could end up trying to impress and please everyone with his efforts. To allow his thoughts to settle he picked up his favourite guitar and started picking a couple of chords and a line came:

When all is said and done, I want to hear you say, 'Well done!'

The man was reminded that his greatest desire was for God to say, "Well done!" when he finally stood before Him.

He finished the simple song and recorded it. When his wife came home he left her alone to hear it. He always plays his songs to her first. The man heard his wife laugh out loud, "What?!", said the man, "What's so funny??",

"Someone saying 'Well done!' ", she laughed, shaking her head...

The man left his wife to listen some more.

When he went back after a few minutes she was crying.
During that week an anniversary of the death of a friend had passed. The man's wife was remembering her friend's great hope that He would say, "Well done!" to her when she stood before Him, for she had known that soon she would die.
The man's wife misses her friend terribly. No matter what we say to each other, for a time the absolute of separation remains.

The man had not been thinking of this when he'd written the song and he was amazed again at the connectedness of God and His people.

So the simple song serves as a small key to a door that opens into a room where God can comfort the man's wife in her grieving.

Such is the wonder of song.

Here's the song, "When all is said and done"

Moved

Mark Markiewicz spoke at our church meeting a couple of weeks ago about Justice for Children International and Stop the Traffik.

Things he describes will break your heart.

He told me about Ten Shekel Shirt and Lamont Hiebert who co-founded JFCI. Mark told me that Lamont "thinks that it is time for a Worship movement that has Justice at the centre of it."

Billy Kennedy spoke at that meeting about us being called to be the message - just what "You are the hungry" is all about.

So I sat and strummed and "For these ones" came out:

For these ones will not be forgotten
For these ones will not be alone
For these ones will not be abandoned
For these ones they will find a home

For hope is here

In hands that reach
In hearts that grieve
In works of faith
In word and deed

For these ones you have not forgotten
And with us they won't be alone
For these ones you have not abandoned
And with us you will bring them home

Flying

Last night on the telly there was a programme about whether we should all stop flying around the world in all these jet planes.

It was outraaaaaaaageous!!

OK, first part about the eeeeeevil airplanes and the eeeeeeeeevil people who want to fly in them.
Next, shots of Venice "sinking" due to rising water levels.

HANG ON! Erm, excuse me, what exactly is the link here??

Venice is sinking because of the airplanes? Riiiiiiiiight!



What bugged me the most was the hidden implied certain link between the planes and the water levels.

So, you take two variables that seem to have a correlation (and, boy oh boy, you want them to...) and in your mind you draw a lovely straight line graph to prove it. This is a classic error we see so many times. It's rarely as simple as this!! Just because two variables are varying as though they were directly linked it doesn't mean they definitely are.

So far, so good!

Well, I've had two weeks at the slimming group thing and my losses have been:

First week: 2 and 1/2 lbs
Second week: 3 lbs

Excellent! It worked last time I did it (a few years ago) and so I'm not surprised but it's very nice to be enjoying success :-)

Just before stepping on to the scales down there I feel such trepidation - it's such a relief when I lose! Then I come home and have (probably) my biggest meal of the week, well, I've got seven days to shift that, haven't I?

The last sausage revealed

(Song details in the next one?)

So the last sausage (original post here) can now be revealed as my acoustic guitar seen here being modelled by Andy Fay. This is the second picture I took as the first one (without flash) was blurred as he was playing so fast. Can't he play!! Oh, sorry, that should read - Can't he play??

Anyway, she's called "Mertyl" and she's beautiful. The guitar. He's called Andy and...the guitar's beautiful.

No, seriously folks, Andy's a good friend of mine and he won't mind all this gentle ribbing and he played just fine once I'd shown him which side the strings and hole were on. And stopped him blowing into it.

:-)

"It's a beautiful day"

OK, I'll post about the song in the next one...

Very, very windy yesterday, lots of damage up and down the country (I confess I have been driving the car again...?) but today all is calm.

I took this picture this morning after school drop off - amazing!

I regularly need reminding to look up more frequently and see what's around me.

"I love it when a plan comes together"

Today was my annual "tax the car oh no where are the other documents Ali help can't find them please God YES at last oh no the MOT's expired and I still can't find the insurance letter I never opened well what's the point I know what's in it anyway right arrange instant MOT where's the nearest place......" day.

But, I PULLED IT OFF!! Oh yeah, oh yeah!! Go Marky, go Marky...

God helped.

I sat at my PC after school drop off and my heart sank. I'm trying to finish a song and that tends to be just when I'm interrupted the most, like today with the road tax. Not happy. I just want to get ooooooonnnn...

"God, please help me?", I said.

From then on, plain sailing. Googled a local place with 5 star recommendations, rang them and booked the car in for 12 o'clock. But the driver's side wing mirror's cracked (dangerous to park outside the Lee's house...). Hmmm. Googled and found that Halfords do stick on mirrors so I got one for our car (£6.25), recorded a vocal, picked up Becky at 11:30, went to Express MOT who sorted us out (stuck the Halfords mirror on gratis) in an hour (Becky was provided with an alphabet puzzle).

I knew I had no MOT when I tried to get a new tax disc online first thing this morning. We came straight back from Express MOT and already the test details had been logged and online I was able to get my tax!! I never even found the insurance documents!! GREAT JOY!!

Now I can finish the song.
More about that in the next post...

Old enough to be amazed

I picked up Esther from a party at 4pm today and I saw this sunset and took a picture with my phone. Not my camera, my phone. I am old enough to see the wonder in this. Our kids don't and won't see anything amazing about many of the minor miracles of technology I see and will see.

I remember my Dad saying that when he was a boy they were the first in the street to have a telephone; the neighbours would come round to look at it. (But who could they ring?)

I can remember:
- Having to turn the TV on a good 10 minutes before your programme started in order to give it time to warm up.
- The first calculators.
- The start of Breakfast TV.
- The first microwave ovens*
- Space Invaders being cutting edge.
- Video remote controls on a wire**
- The invention of the wheel...

I do feel really privileged to have been born (1969) at a time when I've been able to see and appreciate so much technological change, it amazes me in a way it may never ever amaze our kids.

* Dad would buy the first of most things. The microwave was very exciting. As a family, we stood looking through the window as the frozen sausage roll slowly turned around inside. Nothing appeared to be happening for a while until a little hole appeared in the top and acrid smoke started pouring out. Quite quickly we turned the oven off. The post mortem revealed a piece of charcoal still wrapped in apparently unaffected pastry. We were still impressed though...

** The first video film rental we watched was "Jesus Christ, Superstar". You had to pay £30 to join the Video Rental Shop. The picture quality was so bad it looked like a snowstorm throughout. We watched the whole thing though, fighting each other for the remote control on a wire...

Surprised by beauty 2

Excellent school run this morning - just back. I like being back in the routine again after the Christmas and New Year "peace and rest".

In a previous post, Surprised by beauty, I had just been listening to Radio 4, and once again...

Desert Island Discs' repeat on Radio 4 is on a Friday and by the time I get back in the car after drop off I've just missed Kirsty Young introducing her guest. Who is it, who is it? Hmmm, I don't recognise the voice, erm, or do I? Most of the time I haven't heard of them anyway, but I always find the musical choices interesting. Today Anthony Horowitz ("prolific author") chose Eleanor Rigby by the Beatles (duh!) for his first piece. I used to listen endlessly to the Beatles as a child/teenager (I remember Mum telling me that they'd split up years previous and I was gutted...) so I know this song very well.

BUT, I sat in the car on the drive, engine off, just listening until it ended. Really listening. This thing is a work of genius. It was like hearing those strings, for example, for the first time - achingly beautiful arrangement, cryingly sad, perfectly appropriate, sometimes in unison with the melody, sometimes flitting around it or harmonising, smooth and then choppy - amazing! The chromatic descent in the chorus is one of the saddest things I've heard.

Just Googled to find the score was by George Martin. Four violins, two violas, two cellos, close mic'd and no vibrato - I never noticed that.

It's a truly great example of the music mirroring the words. They go hand in hand, they are speaking the same message and the one enhances the other.

A dance for two, but as one.