Not what I expected

 

The past couple of days in Britain it seems to have reverted back to winter.  There have been parts of the country that have seen snow and hailstones – in May!  Yesterday I succumbed and eventually put on the heating for a while, the cold was reaching right through to my bones.  They say that over the weekend it will be a little warmer.  I hope so as I have tomato and pepper plants that I want to get out into the little greenhouse before they take over the living room.  This is not the weather we expect in the southwest of England in May.

Yesterday I went into a particular shop in town looking for a product that I have been trying to get for a couple of weeks.  I discovered, however, that they had something similar but not exactly what I had been looking for.  For some reason the product I wanted is no longer available but this is the nearest I could get.  Sometimes when this happens or when the manufacturer decides to change the design on the packaging, we get a little confused – it’s not what we expect to see and so think that maybe it’s a different product altogether.  I’m sure I’ll soon get used to the alternative.  But for the moment it sort of throws you a bit when things aren’t always as you expect.

 

I suppose that’s the problem really.  I make plans and have things all sorted out in my head and then find that it doesn’t always work like that and I have to change my plans or get my head around a new strategy.  Ah!  How often I have done that.  We tend to plan ahead which is not a bad thing.  In fact it is a good thing but the trouble is we can so often have fixed ideas about things, become rigid in our thinking and inflexible in our attitude and then life happens and we have to rethink the situation or change our view about something.  Looking back over my life, I realise that very little has actually turned out the way I had planned or thought it would.  Over the years I have had to change direction on a number of occasions, when there was need to adapt to some unplanned situation. 

 

Having said that, I am still learning to go with the flow and travel where the wind blows me.  Over the past few years I have repositioned my thinking on many subjects and changed my mind about some things.  I am learning to realise the limitations that come with a controlled and planned life and accepting instead the freedom that comes with just letting the Spirit take me where He wants; to live without the confines of the controlled construct of organised church where my ideas and attitudes are under the authority of others; instead I now live in the freedom of the wild that it outside the walls of the building.  There is a breath of fresh air about it all.