Miracles take longer.

No matter how difficult the journey water always reaches the sea.

I was talking to a friend the other day that was despairing of never managing to do all that he wanted. He forgets that he is not the same age as he was last year or the year before. For that matter, none of us is as young as yesterday. I also spoke to another who shared with me that so often things that are not as they should be,  bad things get in the way of fully enjoying the good things of life.

I  was for me to reminded of the story of King Robert The Bruce. He was a very famous person in Scottish history. When I was a boy I was told a story of him in a cave with a spider. I apologise if you have heard it before, but it did make an impression on me and stuck with me for almost 68 years.

He had just suffered a defeat at the hands of the English and was hiding in the cave. He was thinking it was all over and that he should just retreat and go home. While he sat there he saw this spider trying to make a web. It tried and it tried until eventually it managed to begin, from then on it got easier. Robert thought if this spider can do it so will I do what needs to be done. 

The second thing I was reminded of was a tree I saw while away in the mountains. I know some of my friends have a real love of trees, as have I.

I remember a tree that grew in the churchyard of my last church. I took the children out of the service one Sunday morning to show them this tree, a tree they had passed many, many times and hardly taken the time to notice.  

At some distant time, a bird had dropped a seed and it had lodged in the crack in a stone. As the years had passed the tree had grown and grown until it had split the rock in two.

The moral of that story was simple. Some things in life are not easy, but they are not impossible.

As I sat in the hospital waiting room I began this painting on my Ipad. Yes, it is abstract, but can you like me see a dripping cave? lao Tzu the sage says that water always finds its way to the sea because it does not do battle with the obstacles it meets it simply always takes the easy route and arrives where it seeks to be.

There is nothing in life that we cannot tackle but do remember miracles can take a little bit longer.

Have a marvellous day.