In preparing for Forest Church I walked the route as a recce yesterday morning.
Going into the ‘foresty’ bit with tall firs reaching to the sky with the sun glinting on the tops of the trees caused me to lift my head up in wonder and see their skeletal shapes rubbing up close to each other. In amongst this a small oak leaf fluttered down from above out of nowhere with not an oak tree in sight. That also made me think of the uniqueness of that single leaf out on its own amongst giants all uniform in structure. It was the uniqueness of the leaf and its movement which caught my eye. This spoke to me of how I feel in the world sometimes – alone but making a difference by being noticed for that difference. (Holiness – that’s what that is – being different)
I then came to some running water which was just before a really muddy section of the path. It was running under a little bridge. Where the water was very still it had collected a lot of scum on its surface. Again a lesson in that. If we are not moving with the water or in the flowing river we stagnate and start to collect dirt and rubbish. But then there is a line in Psalm 23 which says that he leads us beside the still waters. I guess these will be clean waters. Sheep apparently are disturbed by moving water so need the stillness to drink from them.
Also this morning I purchased A Hebrew teacher explores the heart of God by Chaim Bentorah for 99p on Kindle. I started reading about the meaning of Song of Solomon 4:9 by Chaim Bentorah. He says it is a difficult book to translate especially this verse. A word is used which he expounds on which is livabethini. Interestingly it connects to trees and being stripped bare.
So as not to infringe copyright the original text has been removed by the author. See above book to read more on the subject matter.
