Things arrive at the right time

A good friend recommended this site to me. http://www.sacredspace.ie/ It seems very simple and very good.
It gives prayers and a reading for each day. It encourages you to take time to do these important things.
The text for today was Mary and Martha - it spoke to me just when and what I needed to hear.

I am in the middle of an amazing experience. Seeing and learning about so many things, many of them conflicting with each other. My response is to race around and see more. It is almost too overwhelming to try and think about all the information that is coming in.
Yet in the middle of it all is a still centre - sort of God space. 'Still' maybe isn't the best word. God isn't still, as in inactive.
It's a bit like the pool that forms at the bottom of a waterfall. Ideas get swept down; the light, easy ones spill out and bob off downstream; the heavier ones roll round and round in the flowing water of prayer, bits of scripture, love, my history and experience. They bump against each other - knocking off corners changing as the interaction and the contact forms them. Then eventually they emerge, mostly unnoticed, sometime useful and occasionally beautiful (for me anyway) and worth sticking in a pocket to pull out and remember on another occasion.

What has this to do with Mary and Martha? - Well it just reminded me that to sit at the feet of Christ is just as important a use of my time, as rushing around seeing things and collecting experiences.
OK, so I know that is obvious and I have heard as many hundred sermons to that effect (and I will probably preach a fair few in the future), but it was what I needed to hear right now, so I though I would share it with you.

Another friend commented that my trip here seemed a lot about sight seeing. Yes it has been, but it has also been about so much more.
It has been about absorbing the fact that people with vehemently differing views about the conflict out here (Jews, Palestinians, Muslims, Christians etc.), are all people of good will and not the media stereotypes.
It's been about walking in the city where Jesus walked, accepting that it is nothing like it was then, but that through the prayers of the many people who come here (however strange their customs) because of his life and death and resurrection, he is still here.
It is also a lot about trying to reconcile this huge scar across the Holy Land (the 'Security Barrier'), which treats people like criminals and cattle, and the fact that I can only reach a partial understanding (however awful it clearly is) because I have never lost a child at the hands of a bomb and am unlikely ever to do so.

As you see there are many, many heavy things in the pool at the bottom of the waterfall, and the water keeps on flowing. So just to say that I am sorry I haven't been very good at keeping up to date over the last few days. (I will try to catch up a little.) I am still here and like Martha I am learning that sometimes I need to sit with my Lord, learn from Him and let things work their way out.

Thanks for your patience. Helen. x