It’s an unofficial celebration day here on the island.  After a very long hot summer today we have the first proper rain.  All around you can feel the dry, dusty patches of land drinking it in.   Cracks in the earth are being filled, dust is being washed off. People are smiling as the air feels fresher and cooler.

Of course there are inconveniences – drains that have spent a summer accumulating dust and leaves take a while to get back into action, my car isn’t entirely waterproof, and I’m not at all sure where I packed away the umbrellas…

But it feels good.

And I suddenly realise how much I need to step back into the rainy, overflowing, soaking presence of God again.  It’s been a long, hot dry summer and I am so ready for some rain.

This rain is embroidered in backstitch.  A skill I spent rather a lot of time trying to teach to some eager ten-year olds at camp recently.  In fact, I repeated this phrase so often that I can still hear myself saying it, over and over again:

“first you have to go ahead of yourself a bit, in as straight a line as you can, and then you have to come back to the place where you see the last stitch go in.  Ahead of yourself and then back, ahead of yourself and then back, ahead of yourself and then back…”

“Ahead of yourself and then back”

We go ahead of ourselves all the time, striking out in the things we think, or hope God is asking of us.  But there are times where the thread is loose, the way forward is unclear, we no longer seem to be attached to the line of what has gone before.

Life is backstitch

We need to learn to keep going back-

Going back into the arms of Jesus,

going back to resting in his presence,

going back to the last thing we heard him say.

I wonder what the last thing was that you ‘heard’ Jesus say?

Choose to remember it.

sink your heart deep into it.

Let it soak into you, fill you up and then give you the direction to stretch out ahead of yourself again.

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I’d love to know how God speaks to you through this (or other postcards). Please leave a comment below, Ellie x