Our Palm Sunday message at the Missionary Fellowship last Sunday evening was about John 15:1-8 – the speaker had forgotten it was Palm Sunday, but I thought the timing of the message was a great blessing. He shared much about his own experience of when he used to be a landscape gardener and gave very helpful insights into what the pruning process actually involves, how the gardener directs the growth of the plant etc. He said that people would always stop their cars where he was busy pruning and complain, “There’s nothing left of that plant!” But come summer, when the trees were bearing fruit and the shrubs were in flower, nobody remembered the pitiful, dead-looking stubs of a few months ago. It seems as though the Lord is busy pruning me until there is almost nothing left – may He receive the glory of some ultimate fruit.
On a more mundane level, it was a week in which quite a lot got done house-wise. I packed up the last stuff at the Van der Walts’ house and moved last of my things over to the flat. Our handyman put up brackets so that the bamboo pole that my mosquito net is tied to can easily be moved back and forth (and I don’t have to daily tie and untie it), he put up brackets to hang the curtain in front of my “closet”, he put up another bracket so that the hideous cord of our landlady’s satellite dish, which for some reason is in my room, is tucked away neatly, and he put up a shelf above my desk so that I finally have somewhere to put my books. A lot still needs to be done (wonderful Allison has been doing some more grouting in the shower, bless her) and I went through quite a few cynical moods this week (“o well, one more thing that isn’t perfect”), but we are getting there. Our living room looks a lot better with a table and chairs, and should look even better when some of the junk we want to get rid of is gone. We don’t have running water in the mornings from about 6 until anything from 10h30 to 12h00, but I’m getting used to that as well.
It has been perhaps the dullest and worst Easter ever – after feeling better for a few days, on Friday I started feeling awful again, and spent the last 2 days moping around the house, not wanting to do anything or see anybody, and not feeling up to going to church this morning. Finally feeling a bit better now (11h30 Sunday morning). This slight illness and all that is going on in my life certainly makes me long for glory, for seeing Jesus’ face and being rid of all my sin and failure forever…
