Last night I woke up at about 4 a.m. to discover that I was sharing my bed with two cats!  Sasha has established her right to sleep by my feet, more or less taking over Holly's mantle, except that (thankfully) Sasha does not consider nibbling toes a fun activity.  Sophie is less confident and seems to sleep in shorter bursts, at one point lying half on and half off of my lower legs.

I am quite amazed how rapidly they have settled in and, apart from stealing cat treats, they are very well behaved.

This afternoon they are happily snoozing in the kitchen, each having purloined one of Holly's former snoozing places, so they clearly have impeccable taste.

I'm really enjoying getting to know them, and watching them settle in, and I look forward to many happy cat years to come.

...the wilderness is a place of preparation not a proving ground

This was part of the exploration we shared this morning as we looked at the two verses from Mark 1 that describe Jesus' sojourn in the wilderness.  Mention of satanic temptation is almost superfluous in what is, according to at least some scholars a "paradise" motif, whith Jesus not the "new Moses" but rather the "new Adam"  who comes to restore harmony and order between humanity and the rest of creation; the transformation of the wilderness being a constant theme in various Isaiah prophecies hinted at in these words.

Our own wilderness experiences, recast in this light, are therefore not tests of faith or trials to build character, let alone God's means of teaching us an object lessons.  God allows us to experience these times, and we be very afraid of the prowling creatures (literal or metaphorica) lurking there, but it is precisely in these places that God is at work beginning to fulfil the hope of salvation - whether or not we recognise it.

We thought also, this morning, of the 'valley of shadows' and of the shepherd who enters and travels through it with the "sheep".  These places are part of our experience and God enters the darkness with us, comforting and protecting us.

It was one of thoese sermons that had been fun to research and prepare  but seemed a bit ethereal when I came to deliver it... but the feedback was encouraging, showing that it is never about me, that the mysery that is preaching somehow "works" anyway.