It is a beautiful day as I write this… warm sunny skies, wafts of children playing and celebrating a birthday near by; an eagle soaring overhead. And it is May Day, which I know is a labour day in many countries, but as I’ve written before, for me it is a day of buttercups.
And true to her faithful self, my sister Valerie sent me a buttercup… by text. And I loved it. Because that is what we did for so many May 1st’s together when we were little girls. We picked posies of buttercups and celebrated Spring.
So here is a bouquet of thoughts for you today… because it seems I have a lot on my mind.
We were watching Downton Abby last night on Netflix, and I must admit, I’m hooked and find it a fine way to spend an hour with my husband. I find it an interesting tale on many levels… a look at estate life in the early 20’s and the changes that the upper class around the time of the first World War. Their world of entitlement was ending, and not all knew how to handle those changes.
And we were taken with a quote we heard last night, in a scene from the former chauffeur who had married into the family (which was scandal enough at the time), but he came to be loved by the family. He had become “one of” the upper class by marriage, and struggled with loyalties to his past and his present.
In this scene, he stops to help a school teacher who has car trouble, and who has some opinions about the upper class! She tells him, “I never fancied their type”, referring to his new family. And he replies with such wisdom: “I don’t believe in types, I believe in people”. At least that is how we remembered it, and we were so taken with the thought.
How often do we sort people into “types”, and forget to see the person, to hear their story? It was good to be reminded that there is good in all people if we choose to look for it.
And even as I think about my “bouquet”, I am again so taken with the variety of people God has made, as well as the incredible variety of everything we enjoy… food, flowers, insects, animals, all of creation. It is truly amazing!!
On another completely different note, I was so taken with this scripture we sang this morning, from Psalm 19. It is a prayer I have prayed in recent weeks, and it hit home this morning again as I sang the words. “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to You, oh Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”.
It is always good to examine the heart. Is the language I speak, the thoughts I think, the way I treat others, pleasing to the God I love, the God who created me and redeemed me? I pray so.
I sketched these words today, to remember them, with buttercups, of course. Because God has created beauty, flowers, spring, and life itself, all gifts I’m enjoying this very day.
