"If it is possible on your part, live at peace with everyone."
Matthew 18:18.
Image generated with the assistance of ChatGPT
I was thinking of yesterday’s blog about the father reading to his children. I had fond memories of the father who adopted me. He was a wonderful storyteller. Sure, he could discipline, but I only recall the good. I lost him in my early years, and I am reminded of an evening back some decades ago.
*****
It’s midnight aboard the Princess of Scandinavia, adrift in the middle of the North Sea between England and Sweden. I’m on the top deck, freshening up from two malt whiskies shared over an earnest conversation with a couple—schoolteachers from Södertälje, their names now lost to memory, but not their human kindness.
With no light pollution, the night is a pure, inky black—and every star in the heavens is unveiled. More than I have ever seen. There’s something about standing alone beneath a sky like this that coaxes out the deeper questions. It feels like the Creator’s quiet way of drawing us to Himself through the wonder of His work.
A thought strikes me: only I, at this moment, am seeing this precise scattering of stars. No one else on Earth is looking at what I see.
I think of my father, gone since I was twelve, and wonder where he is. The thought lingers, then settles into musing:
Meet me amidst the ocean,
Under the Northern sky,
To the light of constellations,
As our restless souls pass by.
I am happy that I was in his good favour when he closed his eyes to this life, but, It is a sobering thought that many shun, or fall out with parents over the most trivial matters in life. And as time goes by, it becomes too late, too late to say "sorry" for the lost years
"If it is possible on your part, live at peace with everyone."
Matthew 18:18 (BSB).