Trust a kinder world

In November our eldest daughter, Lucy, paid us a flying visit from New Zealand and we shared our first Thanksgiving meal since 2009 together as a whole family.

 It was truly wonderful and it got us thinking.

The marking of past events which are still significant to us appears to have become a regular part of our lives at this point in time.

Maybe it’s simply something to do with getting older and having more time to reflect upon things. However we also wonder whether it stems from an increased willingness to look back and learn from revisiting significant life events in the past.

This December has been full of such memories.

It’s  the tenth anniversary of our arrival in Kenya. We landed at Nairobi airport early in the morning of the 5th December 2012 and our first blog post back then from our new home highlighted the need we had at that time to exercise trust.

Plus ça change!

There is so much uncertainty in our lives on both the macro and micro levels and anxiety often seems to follow in its wake, so willingness to trust has become a necessary daily practice.

But trusting what exactly?

Obviously, our own faith tradition points us towards trusting in the kindness of God. And we endeavour to do so but we’re not always very good at it.

Yet God’s graciousness has again and again prevailed so why we still struggle is probably worthy of some reflection.

We have decided to treat each new day as its own opportunity to grow in exercising trust.

We’ve also learned that there’s some considerable mileage in just trusting that people and events won’t be as we fear they might.

Many years ago the phrase “Trust a kinder world” became a bit of a watchword for Liza in particular and it’s a choice we’re trying to make as we focus on the great mystery and joy of Christmas and move from this year into the next.

We are committing ourselves to looking for and hopefully also becoming channels of that Kindness.

So we thank you for your continued following of our intermittent forays into the blogosphere and we wish you all joy in this wonderful season.