The Coming Spring

Understanding Seasons
My favourite one in the UK is Spring, and in Ghana, the cool season – which is around the British summer time period. But I’ve had to go back to my posting of July 16 to find words for the season I'm in.

The season has seen me asking many, many questions. I’ve raised questions to myself, my mentors and of course to God. With one of my mentors, those question time sessions, to be very honest, have actually been LOADS of fun - girly dinners and lunches with, well, plenty South African vin to wash the delicious food down.

But in the midst of these times, I voiced and raised queries on life’s issues to my mentor that I previously would not even have dared to think about let alone voice. But guess what? She had, at some point or the other in her own seasons, asked very similar questions. The guilt eroded.

People just like us
This morning I thought of the woman with the issue of blood. I thought of the Shunammite woman, and I thought of the Syrophoenician woman, and even Mary and Martha when their brother Lazarus passed momentarily. Sorry, very gender-biased today.

Only God knows the mental and emotional turmoil that passed through their grey matter. And I think the point of the record of their life stories is that they are people just like us.

With the woman with the issue of blood (Mark 5, Matthew 8), the Bible records that she had spent every penny she had on doctors but none had been able to help her. I can’t even begin to imagine her grief.

All that money spent on sanitary pads – or whatever they used in those days. And then I am thinking, was she married? If so, that probably means that it would have been somewhat difficult to have sexual relations with her husband, which would have placed an incredible strain on the marriage. Even if she wasn’t, any chance of that would have quickly eroded given the ever present hemorrhage, anaemia, tampons and sanitary pads. God help us.

But God help us He does and did for each of those women came into contact with God’s grace at some point during their low seasons and, voila, breakthrough.

And now for Mireille Guiliano and the July 16 posting. Go ahead and read/re-read. More like spiritual gastronomy, I think.