Everything is New

 

[1]

2 Corinthians 5:17 Contemporary English Version

¹⁷ Anyone who belongs to Christ is a new person. The past is forgotten, and everything is new.

 

This is a new year. I have had serious reservations about what this year 2025 would bring. Our country has been divided worse than anytime since the Civil War. Only time will tell whether we can ride the crest of this wave or be drowned by it. The past is indeed being swept aside.

On the other hand, life rolls on. We have a water leak in our front yard that threatens to drain the Colorado River dry. But we will take care of that. We have a Better Than 50 Club meeting in a mere fortnight. But members will rise to the occasion. My computer, on which I am typing this, is showing more and more serious signs of rolling over and playing dead. But my brother gave me a little computer for Christmas.

When I say little, I mean tiny: it is less than 3½ inches square and 1½ inches high (less than 9 x 9 x 4 cm) Yet it is 500,000 times more powerful than the computer I used during my doctoral research at the University of Iowa that occupied a whole floor of one of the large buildings on campus, and had dozens of people running it. In less than an hour I transferred onto it more than 100,000 times the total capacity of data that IBM 360 could hold.

I am already polishing off the final chapter of my Ikizu Memoirs book on this Ace Magician. And, yes, with Sylvia’s help we have all but completed the equatorial African experience of our lives, so that part of our past is history and forgotten only in the sense that we no longer are living it.

God has had His hand in our lives through out our whole existence. We are definitely new persons, but in this case “new” includes “old” in it! Yesterday my Standard 1 grade school teacher Ruth (Miss Hurlow) Webster and her husband Eric came by our home. She will be 100 years old this year. I had found some pictures of their wedding (in 1950) that my dad had in his collection and gave them to her. I was in Standard 1 (= Grade 3) that year!

Thank You, Lord, for making us new persons—we look forward to the finished product when You come again.

Here is a wedding picture of Eric and Ruth Webster in 1950

 

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[1] https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51pmHZlGyaL._AC_SX679_.jpg

Sleep, Peace, and Lions

[1]

Psalm 4:8 King James Version

⁸ I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for Thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety.

 

I love the majestic English of the King James Version of the Bible, don’t you? I read Psalm 4 this morning, and it reminded me of an incident in our Tanzanian experience and also of Rose, our fearless leader, who assigned us the prompt: “Write about the blessings you have in your life.” During this NaNoWriMo month, I am trying to whip my Ikizu Memoirs into final or at least semi-final form. I am on chapter 53 of 58 planned chapters. Sylvia is my editor, and she recently sent me chapter 41 entitled Lion Encounter.

On Sunday night we were camping with our group in the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Serengeti National Park. In our tent we had our one-year-old daughter and the three Conway children, too. I awoke in the predawn to the sound of something dropping onto the roof of our tent. Deciding it must be a small branch from the tree we had pitched under, I turned over to go back to sleep. Suddenly, George’s shout: “Get out of here!” from the next tent, shocked me into action. Grabbing a flashlight, I jumped up and raced to the door of the tent, unzipped it, and shone the flashlight out into the darkness.

I stopped dead. Frozen. Not ten feet were the shining eyes of two lions staring back at me. There was nothing between me and two lions! They lay between me and the campfire. Time stretched out. The lions watched me but made no move. I remained still. Slowly, I swung the light of the flashlight in a wider arc. There were at least seven lions around our campfire, staring at me. Their eyes roved a bit to my right. There was George, clad only in his briefs, standing frozen in his doorway—and more lions.

I yelled to wake up the others in the group. Two teenagers sleeping in an old Land Rover looked out their windows. They started the Land Rover, and it backfired into action. All the noise was disturbing the lions’ tranquility. Slowly they got up and stretched. Regally, thirteen lions filed out of our campsite. There was no hurry, no obvious fear in their attitude, maybe only a bit of disgust.

No one got any more sleep. When daylight arrived and we got up to eat breakfast, on the roof of our tent we found two dusty lion footprints. Conversation centered around whether or not the lions were hungry. Two or three miles down the track towards the park headquarters in Seronera, we came upon our thirteen lions, busily polishing off two Thompson Gazelles. That ended the discussion about the lions’ lack of hunger.

This morning, my gratitude extends from not being devoured by lions then to an almost complete Ikizu Memoir now. Rejoice with me!

How grateful we are, Lord, that we can lie down and sleep because of the assurance that You make us dwell in safety.

 

 

 

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[1] https://www.instagram.com/elmarvn/p/CqPs67XKbTg/

God's Peace Under Stress

 

[1]

Isaiah 26:3 King James Version

³ Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.

 

We were teaching at Ikizu Secondary School in Tanzania in the tenth year of national independence. The government was still feeling its way through political challenges, economic challenges, and undesirable colonial hangovers. Besides, much of recently independent Africa was suffering from political instability. Country after country suddenly had a violent coup de tat that destroyed the ruling government and replaced it by a power-hungry revolutionary. Recently Idi Amin, a Ugandan army general, had seized control of Uganda, while the current president was abroad at some meetings. He methodically killed anybody who was connected with the previous regime or might have leanings towards it. Over a million people died from his voracious anger and insecurity.

The Tanzanian government became very skittish. They viewed their own army as being suspect. Any alien was subject to a 24-hour expulsion from the country, if there was any suspicion that he or she might be critical of the government.

I was aware of this policy. I had taught for over four years not allowing myself to say anything critical or disrespectful of anything related to the government. I did my best to positively support all of their actions.

Peter was a student at Ikizu who was always critical of anything smacking of authority. He had circulated lies about the previous year’s principal, a well-respected Tanzanian who had since gone on and gotten elected as a member of parliament. In 1971, restless Peter decided to get me thrown out of the country with 24-hour notice. He started circulating lies about me. He accused me of defaming the flag and the government. He pushed these lies into every government committee that would give him ear.

The current principal called me in and informed me of what was happening. I realized that we were under the shadow of a 24-hour expulsion threat. Sylvia and I packed our important papers and a change of clothing into a little suitcase we could easily grab and walk out the door. The SDA Tanzanian headquarters also heard about it and offered to reassign me to a new mission post in a different country.

“Thank you!” I told them, “But I’m innocent of all of their charges. I feel no fear of physical attack. So, leave me here unless things get worse.”

We claimed the promise that God would keep us in perfect peace and rested on His promise. I confess that my mind was not 100% peaceful. But I did have full trust that God would look after us and went about my business as usual. In spite of Peter’s agitation, we finished the year in fine fettle. The next year we had a furlough, and I returned to the States to finish my graduate degree. I have always looked back on that experience with deep thanks to God for seeing us through.

 

Thank You, Lord, for preparing us for future trials and for your assurance that You will keep us in peace through those!

 

 

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[1] Idi Amin. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0Mo1M-BEyOxPfcg9a4jFxEGDOTnh-Mw55wJXlxa4rhSh22GP9s5O32RFalXWRmcCENQLbDovbrtq3USvU9krxT-e1KeW1A7eGk50GdTj1IQ0KwePwz6HsRifhc0HQl0O7I0QqsrgYaw/s1600/Idi+Amin+Dada%252C+dictator%252C+Uganda.jpg

Dimensions and Trust

[1]

Proverbs 29:25 King James Version

²⁵ The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe.

 

While I was teaching at Ikizu in Tanzania, they held a camp meeting on campus. There were far too many people to use the large campus church for meetings. So, they stretched ropes between several trees and then covered an area with thatch grass to shield attenders from the equatorial sun. By this time, I understood Swahili well enough so that I could attend the meetings and understand what the presenters were saying. One was Bekele Haye, an Ethiopian who spoke in English because he didn’t speak Swahili, and his message was translated, so I heard it twice.

He told the people who wished they had been born white that that was a foolish wish. “I went out one day with a white missionary and worked in the fields all day. The next day, all of the white man’s skin peeled off, so he was in bed in great pain. I was out working in the fields again.” Then he went on and told the people that Africans had been Christians long before Europeans. They got the message of salvation from the Ethiopian whom Phillip baptized. “We should be missionaries in Europe and America, rather than they being missionaries to us. Christianity is really an African religion. We failed to carry it to the world, so the Europeans are doing our work.”

Another speaker was Mrs. Wangai. I have forgotten her first name and her maiden name. She was a Kikuyu from Kenya. She told the people about her experience as a teenager during the British control of Kenya. The Kikuyus are the largest tribe in Kenya. During the 1950s many people of the Kikuyu tribe started guerilla warfare against the English. They were called the Mau-Mau and were fighting for the freedom of their country. They also distrusted anyone who was a Christian because they saw them as being supporters of the colonial regime. To gain followers, a Mau-Mau group came into her village. They lined up all the people and then one-by-one demanded that they swear an oath, denouncing Christianity and pledging allegiance to the freedom fighters. This pledge often demanded sexual favors and drinking a strong native beer that had several opioids in it. Those few who refused were put into a hut with no windows and with guards at the door instructed to kill anyone who tried to escape.

She refused to take the oath and was sentenced to death. They bound her and put her into this prison hut to await her death in front of the whole village. She lay on the floor and prayed for deliverance. After a while her bonds dropped off of her, and she felt herself being lifted up and moved towards the wall away from the guards at the door. She told how a hole appeared in the wall and she was passed out through the hole. Looking back from the outside, she could see that there was no hole. A voice told her to flee into the bush and await the departure of the Mau-Mau from her village. She fled into the bush and hid for several days. When she returned about three weeks later, she found out that everyone in that hut had been executed. She went to the hut and examined it. There was no evidence that there had ever been a hole in the wall.

At the time, there was enough evidence of the truth of her story that I believe her. As I mentioned in a previous blog, if our three-dimensional universe is part of a higher dimensional space, then an angel—who lives in this space—could easily have picked her up in his space. The knots on her bonds would have disintegrated, as I mentioned in my blog. She could be moved slightly out of our universe and transferred past the wall. To her eyes, it would look like she was passing through a hole in the wall. After all, our eyes can only see in three dimensions. She later finished high school and married a Christian man who became a pastor.

Does my explanation change her story of the miracle of her survival? Does it lessen the miraculous nature of her experience? Not at all. We have absolutely no physical access to anything outside of our universe, of course. Does it support my spatial concepts? Maybe.

Needless to say, God fulfilled His promise that if she put her trust in the Lord, she would be safe.

Lord, help us to place our trust in You and keep it there.

 

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[1] https://civilianmilitaryintelligencegroup.com/5652/the-mau-mau-rebellion

It's Not What, It's How

 

[1]

Mark 12:43 Good News Translation

⁴³ He called his disciples together and said to them, “I tell you that this poor widow put more in the offering box than all the others.

 

Once, while I was teaching at Ikizu in Tanzania during the period 1967-1971, the Adventist churches in the whole country set aside the offerings on one Sabbath for Ikizu and its needs. I was excited that we would get enough money to fund some desperately needed projects.

When the money finally came, it was much less than $100. That came from some 20,000 believers. I inquired around and asked what had happened. Why did we receive so little? The members were very candid. Everybody is saying to themselves, “This is to build up the school. Let the Americans provide the money; they have lots of it! They have always done it before.” Tanzania had been independent for less than 10 years. They were still accustomed to the mzungu (white foreigner) providing everything that was needed. This included all that the church needed.

My heart sank. I had visions of the country, and especially the church in that country, taking off and doing great things for God. I used to tell my students that I was there to work myself out of a job. I told them that they shouldn’t be bringing a missionary to teach mathematics. There were lots of Tanzanians who were just as capable as I to do it. They shook their heads in disbelief. (As a matter of fact, I was the last missionary to teach math at Ikizu. When I left there at the end of 1971, we had two Tanzanians on the faculty who were qualified to teach mathematics.)

In 2003 we returned to Tanzania by invitation when the Adventist church was celebrating its 100^th anniversary of Adventism in that part of Africa. The celebration was held on the campus of Tanzania Adventist College (TAC). They needed funds to expand the college and to make it into an accredited university. I was privileged to observe how they had taken over fund raising in a very serious and professional way. Within a very short period of time. they had achieved the desired accreditation, and TAC became Arusha University. Last I heard they were seeking to build a second university. Since there are over three-quarters of a million believers, they desperately need more than one university.

We can all learn from the story of the widow’s mites. When we give as we are able—or step out in faith to give even what we think we cannot afford it, the Lord again multiplies as He did with the two coins the widow placed in the offering box.

Lord, expand our vision to encompass the fact that with Your help we can achieve far more than we can possibly imagine.

 

 

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[1] https://coinweek.com/ancient-coins/what-are-widows-mite-coins/

Sing and Shout

[1]

Psalm 95:1-2 World English Bible

95 Oh come, let’s sing to Yahweh.
    Let’s shout aloud to the rock of our salvation!
² Let’s come before his presence with thanksgiving.
    Let’s extol him with songs!

 

At Solusi in Zimbabwe and at Rusangu in Zambia and in many other churches in the newly independent republics in Africa, I had my soul transported into the grace and love of God by the singing. The people sang in full four-part harmony. They sang with deep spiritual joy that was entirely contagious.

As a kid I remember how we sang joyfully and forcefully enough to make the windows rattle. We loved those songs that were joyful, that had loud chords and praised the Lord.

Then I came to Ikizu in Tanzania. Most kids refused to sing. Those who did sang as though they were singing a dirge. It was as if they were forced to sing. They reminded me of the ancient Israelites who were marched off in chains to Babylon. They hung their harps on the bushes and sat and wept on the shores of the Euphrates.[2] Their captors expected them to sing, but, of course, they couldn’t

Then Pastor Mbwana joined the school. He evidently saw what I saw. However, he knew what to do to remedy the situation. He had a repertoire of Swahili gospel songs all set to the much-loved folk tunes of the people.

Suddenly the students came to life. Their singing was joyous and heartfelt. They made the walls reverberate. My heart leapt for joy. I must admit that the alien, to me, music made me do a double take. I felt alienated, strange. Was this really Christian music? This was music glorifying the gospel. It just wasn’t western type music. I decided to embrace it.

Many of my fellow missionaries, however, were shocked to their core. My music appreciation never has been very cultural or classical, so I didn’t resonate with their horror. They wanted to put a stop to it before it got out of hand. There was a distinct beat to the new music. Those who had long taught and been taught about the evils of Rock and Roll feared it might lead to that. I talked with them and pointed out to them the beautiful change that had come over the students’ singing and themselves. This finally got them to hold off their criticism and wait to see what would become of it.

Thank you, Lord, that Your salvation reaches all people in their own setting.

  

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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er1F8AvJBfk

[2] Psalm 137

Serengeti National Park

 

[1]

Psalm 104:24-25

King James Version

²⁴ O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.

²⁵ So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts.

 

We were poor. All of the other missionaries at Ikizu Secondary owned a car. We could not have afforded to put gas in it, even had we owned one. So, we had to hitch a ride anytime we wanted to go anywhere. From my meagre earnings I had managed to buy an SLR camera and a 200 to 400 mm zoom lens.

We lived on the northern edge of the great Serengeti National Park. Often on a Sabbath (Saturday) afternoon or a Sunday, I would talk with one of the other missionaries—never the Kings who had no sense of adventure—about what we might do. The only real entertainment within driving distance—the Serengeti.

I would almost always ride shotgun while Gary or Fritz or George or Dave or Bob drove. I seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to the trackless steppe county of Africa. Even though the grass was four feet high, and the bush and trees grew with no pattern, I always knew the most direct route to the only ford across the Grumeti River and the way home. There was no GPS in those days.

Upstream or downstream, the Grumeti housed the great crocodiles and even greater hippos. We would often risk life and limb by stealing on foot through the dense brush along the river to snap pictures of the crocs or hippos. Of course, this same thorn brush often hid the lions and leopards awaiting their prey. Hunters claimed you could always smell a lion from 20 feet away by the foul smell of rotting flesh caught between its teeth. I was fortunate not to have ever gotten that close on foot. Every year we got reports of someone’s having been carried off by a lion or disemboweled by a leopard.

Out on the plains we saw the great animals, 5-ton elephants flapping their ears to drive off the tsetse fly, tall giraffes delicately picking off the leaves from between the vicious thorns of flat-topped acacia trees. When we were lucky, we would arrive to experience the hundreds of thousands of wildebeest and zebra during their annual migration towards Lake Victoria. They left the plains totally denuded of grass and blotched with pungent manure. Then we could see the smaller animals: warthogs running with their tails pointing straight up, maybe the sneaky jackal. Always we saw various stately antelope that varied from the eland, as great as a bull moose, to the terrier-size tommy (Thompson’s gazelle) with its perpetual-motion tail. 

As the sun sank towards the lake in the west, we would drive back home, enriched by the vista of God’s varied handiwork. Back at Ikizu, missionaries gathered as Sylvia or Charlotte played hymns on the piano and we hand cranked vanilla ice-cream and popped corn, renewed for a new week of endless work.

Thanks, Lord, that we have never gone wanting and for the enjoyment we have received in spite of periods of poverty.

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[1] https://www.exploring-africa.com/en/tanzania/western-corridor-and-grumeti-reserve-western-serengeti/south-grumeti-river

If You're Not against Us--You're For Us

 

[1]

Mark 9:38-40
Good News Translation
³⁸ John said to him, “Teacher, we saw a man who was driving out demons in your name, and we told him to stop, because he doesn't belong to our group.”
³⁹ “Do not try to stop him,” Jesus told them, “because no one who performs a miracle in my name will be able soon afterward to say evil things about me. ⁴⁰ For whoever is not against us is for us.

 

In 1979, we had just joined Atlantic Union College in Massachusetts. When we went to church on Sabbath, an elderly gentleman approached to me and asked, “Are you Wil Clarke?”

“Yes indeed,” I admitted, somewhat puzzled.

“I’m delighted to meet you in the flesh!” he said and threw his arms around me. “I’m Elder X and am retired here in South Lancaster. It’s wonderful to have another missionary from Africa here!”

It never ceases to amaze me how a person’s brain can process surprise information extremely rapidly. Within less than a second, my mind was flooded with memories.

Eight years earlier, we had been at Ikizu Training School in Tanzania for 5 years, and it was time for my salaried nine-month furlough. In June 1971, I had received a letter from Pastor X, treasurer of a division of the General Conference. It stated categorically that I had no furlough coming since I had only worked for the division for a year and a half. The Tanzania Union (TU) had been transferred from the another division to this division a year and a half before.

I showed this letter to Pastor Y, treasurer of the TU. Ikizu was a TU institution. He told me, “Don’t you worry. You have earned this furlough, and we’re not going to let him take it away from you!” Letters went back and forth between X and Y. I never saw those letters, but Pastor Y kept me informed as to progress. He sighed several times as he told me that the responses he got from X were not even Christian in spirit . Finally, a committee overruled him, and I got my furlough.

Here he stood with his arms around me. I felt like throwing up. I had the overwhelming urge to tell him what I thought of him.

By God’s grace, I returned the Christian embrace and said with all the enthusiasm I could muster, “Brother. It’s great to meet you!” We chatted for a few minutes, catching up on our African experiences.

Thank You, Lord, that friends are better to have than enemies; and we won’t have any enemies in heaven.

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[1] https://www.amazon.com/Avinu-Apparel-Love-Your-Enemies/dp/B093QYKGVN

Priceless Gift

[1]

 2 Corinthians 9:15

Good News Translation

¹⁵ Let us thank God for His priceless gift!

 

When we lived in Tanzania, our boss’s boss made friends with those in high places in the national park administration. He let me know that we could go into the world-famous Serengeti National Park without paying. I had no paperwork proving this and never tried to use it when we entered the park at one of the standard entry points. But it was a priceless bit of knowledge.

There was no entry point near us, but the Ikizu villagers used to drive south across country and ford the Grumeti River and poach in the park. They were careful not to leave any tracks so that vengeful rangers could follow them and bring them to justice. The Grumeti sported hippos and crocodiles in many spots. It also had shallow spots where one could simply drive across in less than a hand’s breadth of water. These fords were not marked.

We had no car, but we could often talk some of our fellow missionaries into taking us on a spin out into the park on a Sabbath afternoon. I developed a sense of the veldt so that I could always guide us much the way I imagined the poachers used and find one of these fords easily. There were always many animals all over these vast Serengeti plains. We saw wildebeest, zebra, topi, and Thompson’s gazelle (tommy) every time we went. We often found ostrich and giraffe. Occasionally we would be favored with a small herd of elephant or one of the great African cats.

It was a cathartic to the stress that built up in our very confined missionary work. Some of our daughter’s first words were “g’af” and “tommy”. Once or twice, we encountered a ranger also out on the great plains. We would stop and exchange greetings. Since I had some knowledge of Swahili, I usually did most off the talking, and we always parted as friends.

On one occasion the ranger must have reported our presence in the park. One day two Land Rovers stopped in front of our house. I was out in the yard, and 8 or 10 uniformed men jumped out of the vehicles and surrounded me, their rifles pointing directly at my chest. I was totally astonished and wondered if this would be my last day on earth. The leading officer stepped up to me and demanded that I pay the entry fee for the previous time I had been in the park without paying.

The entry fee was only about ten shillings (about $1.50), and I was of a mind to pay up and call it quits. But I was very young and adventurous and started talking with the officer, using my best but somewhat broken Swahili. I mentioned my upper boss’s arrangement with national park’s headquarters in the capital, Dar es Salaam. I had no documentation, so my arguments were really worthless, and I was aware of that. We must have stood there in my front yard for well over a quarter of an hour; in those days in Africa people expected to talk about a proposal at length and to become friends in the process. The whole time we were talking those rifles were still aimed at my chest. Those holding them could follow the whole conversation because they all spoke Swahili much better than I.

In the end we came to a truce, and they all climbed back into their Land Rovers and left me. I was still in possession of my ten shillings, but much more importantly, I had the priceless right to go and come through the back entry of Serengeti with a free conscience.

In our part in the great controversy between Christ and Satan, the devil is always attempting to rob us of the priceless gift of God’s grace and eternal life. We have Christ’s eternal promise that no one can ever take it away from us by any force.

Thank You, Lord, for your priceless gift!

[1]  https://www.dreamstime.com/photos-images/soldiers-surrounded-soldier.html

Africa by Starlight

 

[1]

John 1:5

Good News Translation

⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never put it out.

 In 1967 in the heart of Africa, my bus pulled into the tiny hamlet of Nyamuswa. I grabbed my weighty suitcase and a heavy box of books and stepped off onto the dirt road. It was two o’clock a.m. The bus roared off into the night

I stood there. No one was awake at night, and no electricity existed within 25 miles at that hour. No vehicles of any kind were on the road. Nyamuswa was pitch black. There were no phones, not even at home. Cell phones had not been invented. No one knew when I was coming. There was no way I could lug my heavy luggage the three miles to my home at Ikizu on foot. I knew no one in the hamlet. There was no gas station, no café.

Puzzled, I stood there in the night. I hadn’t planned what I would do at this point. Stars were bright in the moonless sky. They made the white-washed walls of the buildings visible, ghostly visible. About four or five low thatched roof buildings down on the right was the maternity clinic that always had several women with complications awaiting their babies. There would be a caretaker there in case an emergency happened at night.

My mind clutched at a faint hope. Maybe I could awaken her and leave my bags there. Of course, men were not welcome there, day or night. Every idiot knew that! I was a foreigner, mzungu. Maybe, just maybe, I could persuade her to let me store my bags there.

I trudged up to the dark, heavy wooden door. “Hodi!” I called loudly. I knocked on the door—no one knocks on a door; they always call “Hodi!”

After repeated calling, a highly suspicious voice replied “Ni nani?” (“Who’s there?”)

“Ni Wilton Clarke kutoka Ikizu!” (“I’m Wilton Clarke from Ikizu.”) With that I had practically exhausted my Swahili. Fortunately, she spoke more English than I did Swahili. After some protracted talking, she understood that I just wanted to leave my bags in her clinic until the next morning. She showed me where to put them, and I left her with a heartfelt “Asante sana!” I would be lying if I said there was not a hint of a worry as to whether I would see them the next morning.

Elsewhere I tell about how the military had been called to Nyamuswa, and they had shot 9 elephants in the Nyamuswa gardens, so wild animals did come into this area every so often. I hadn’t heard any actual reports about animals recently, but I did know that leopards would roam where ever they pleased and that they often killed just for the thrill of killing. Of course, you’ve heard about poisonous snakes and other undesirables. All of these things were in my mind as I started to walk, by starlight, the three miles home.

It was bright enough so I could see where the road surface was. The stars were brilliant. Orion was high in the sky along with its accompanying constellations. The Milky Way was spectacular. So, I really did enjoy the walk. I let myself into the house shortly after three o’clock. Sylvia expressed surprise and joy at seeing me. Later that morning I went back and picked up my bags. They had been moved but were totally unmolested.

Thank You, Lord, for the beauty of a still, dark night with a bit of tension yet filled with Your care.

 

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[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/light-pollution-star-night-sky-england-rural-census-orion-campaign-a8873096.html