26th Feb Chemo Day 5

Do you believe in fairies? I do! No not the sort who live at the bottom of the garden… we have a bit of a joke, my son and I sometimes, when discussing the mysteries of computers. No two seem to be alike and it’s almost as if the things are alive! I know a fair bit about how they work as I’ve built and repaired all sorts of machines, but time and again it seems that logic is thrown out of the window and they go wrong for no predictable reason. How come you can be doing the exact same thing ten times in a row without a problem and then suddenly it freezes on you and you have to crash the program and start again? All sorts of mysterious programs run in the background causing untold conflicts and system errors! Recently I had my new Sony laptop freeze on its first day of life... takes a week for that to happen when I build one! Anyway my son and I have decided not to worry too much about the mysteries of how and why things go bump in the night... it’s all down to the Microsoft fairies!

I’ve been thinking again, quite understandably, about the question of why God seemingly answers one prayer and not another? This is most certainly not down to fairies! Though I wonder if sometimes we treat God as the great magician in the sky, say a magic prayer he’ll wave a magic God wand… for example I do have a bit of a thing about religious judgmental dogmatism. And don’t get me started on the prosperity gospel… we can never buy an answer to prayer. No, to me our faith journey is much more simple… it has to do with a relationship. We know God as a person; we speak to him, he speaks to us. We ask, he answers. He leads, we follow. We have to trust that he can and will answer at the right time, in the right way and is not dependent upon us jumping through a particular hoop, in a particular way, avoiding interference from who knows what. His favour is towards us… period!

Last night was again quite difficult for Jane and also right through the day she was coughing and again in some pain. But her breathing is still pretty much OK. The day was brightened up with an extended visit by one of our daughters, come to cook and entertain us. That was special and then we had a text from our other daughter’s eldest who plays for a girl’s football team. She scored a hat trick and was named ‘man’ of the match! Wow life is beginning to feel almost exciting!

I made a throwaway comment to Jane this afternoon ‘I wish I could take your place’. Her reply was inspired… ‘You don’t need to, someone’s already done it’.

1 Peter 2v24 ‘He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds you are healed.’ (NLT)