As I sit in my study to write this article, I'm feeling really good. It's Tuesday 06th May. Most of us have been able to enjoy a long Bank Holiday Weekend. Friday was my day off, and as I missed a few day's off during April, I decided to take most of Saturday off too. Sunday I worked as usual, fourteen and a half hours of rushing from one service to another and dealing with things that came in on Friday and Saturday. And then I took the Bank Holiday Monday off.
At the beginning of last week, knowing I was going to have a long weekend, I began to plan what I might do, and check out the weather forecasts. And the forecast for the weekend wasn't good. Friday's forecast was the best, cloudy and intermittent showers, but not to bad. Saturday through to Monday, rain - and lots of it. It was looking like a ride out on my motorbike of Friday, and the rest of the weekend at home just relaxing - a bit of TV, a little reading, and maybe an hour or two on the Playstation, and if the worse came to the worse, I'd paint my kitchen - I've been putting it off for months! A relaxing long weekend, but not much of an adventure. The only thing I really wanted to do over the weekend was watch British Superbikes from Oulton Park (I intended to go, but with such a poor forecast, I decided to watch it on Eurosport).
So what, in fact happened, was a real blessing. Friday, after a long ride around Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, was rounded off with a really enjoyable time with friends in a beer garden, followed by a tasty dinner at Harry Kar's. Saturday, after a bit of gardening and some church cleaning at Cadney was rounded off with a BBQ in my garden with friends. Sunday, as I have said, I worked all day. And Monday - the day I planned to do nothing but watch the Superbikes, didn't happen! I went out for a blast on my bike, met up with friends at the seaside then we all came back to mine and had pizza and salad in the garden - and I caught the sun.
Sometimes, we plan things. We go to a lot of time and trouble to predict how things will turn out, and what we must do to make a situation all that it can be. We try to work out exactly what will happen, and when, and how, and why. Then life throws a spanner in the works, and our plans go out the window. Usually, something comes up to prevent success in our plans. How often, as teenagers, did the parties we'd put so much time, effort and planning into turn into a failure, yet the times we just met up with our friends with nothing planned turn into truly memorable events?
For all my planning - based on the predicted weather, and accounting for lots of rain and wind - things didn't turn out as I anticipated. Things turned out much better. The forecast was wrong and I had a fun packed and busy, yet wholly relaxing weekend. Okay, the one thing I wanted to do was watch the racing on Monday afternoon, but I got to see the highlights later in the evening.
Sometimes, it does us good to stop thinking, and planning, and predicting and just go with the flow, and enjoy each moment as it comes, rather than trying to turn each moment into what we think it should be like. God longs for us to enjoy life, and live it to the full. Yet all to often, we miss the good things that come our way because we are looking ahead, trying to predict and shape what might happen in a weeks time, a months time or even years into the future. I learned something this weekend - the true meaning of that passage in Matthew 6:25-34 which speaks of how God provides for all creation, and yet we are each more precious to him than flowers, and birds and grass. We must enjoy that which he provides for us when it comes, and stop trying to force life to go the way we think it should.
With my prayers and best wishes,
Fr. Owain
