MUDDY WALKS

Over the Christmas and New Year break we have been on a couple of muddy walks!!!  Very muddy walks!!  Our first was with our daughter and two grandsons at Whitlingham.  The path was very puddly and our youngest grandson took great delight in splashing in puddles and squelching in the mud.  On occasions he told us that he was stuck and on one occasion he left his welly in the mud without his foot in it!!  The second occasion was a walk with our son and his family at Mulbarton.  Once again the path was very muddy and puddly.  At one point the two oldies (us) landed up on our bottoms in the mud, having slipped, fallen and taken each other down!!  Our son and grandson came to the rescue and hauled us up. 

I was thinking about this afterwards and it came to me that this is a bit like our Christian life.  Sometimes we get bogged down, or we slip over and need hauling up again.  Over this last year we have all experienced different things that have perhaps got us a bit bogged down and stuck and we have needed others to come along and help us up.  Even when we are on our feet again it is sometimes difficult to move forward, the way seems so hard.  For us on our walk, we turned back as the way forward looked too precarious!!  Do we sometimes look at what is ahead and say ‘no, we can’t do that’ or do we trust that God is leading us and he will be with us, keeping us on the firm path and not on the boggy one.
 
2022 I am sure will hold difficulties as well as triumphs but we can trust in the Lord to keep us.  Psalm 40 says ‘I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry.  He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.  He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.’

As we face whatever 2022 brings let us trust in God to lead us in the adventure that he has planned for us.