I WOKE UP EARLY this morning, and sat on our veranda as the sun also woke up!       How wonderful and glorious sunlight is!   It transforms everything,    Changes the aspect of all that its rays light upon.  
And it is my Birthday morning, and I found myself remembering sun filled days in my youth, and even the attitude of people to the sun.     A 'sunny' day was one to be enjoyed, and to find a little fun, laughter and pleasure in more than others.   School, going to work, doing a chore all changed when the sun shone.
One did not fear it in those days - you just enjoyed it whole heartedly.        It made me remember that when I was a child almost everything was good for you with few reservations when it came to food for example.      HAVE A PINT OF MILK A DAY!       START THE DAY WITH AN EGG!     CHEESE, BUTTER, and even MEAT were all recommended.     Somehow, even those of us restricted by poverty, had a more 'robust' and wholesome attitude to life in general.      A world with more to reach out for in innocent belief that it would achieve only good.     Few restrictions - just wholesale liberty after the War.      During the war diet was seriously restricted but afterwards things eased and once again people began to live  .........

NOT quite THE SAME TODAY.     Red MEAT is bad for your heart!   Eggs can give you Salmonella and don't help your Blood Sugar levels!    Cheese, Butter, and even milk all bad for you.     LESS and LESS of the little you might 'fancy' is good for you - keep away from it all..............And DON'T go out in the sun without sunscreen, dark glasses, and considerable carefulness - it will give you SKIN CANCER.    Yes even the joy of the SUN has been dimmed for the generations that have followed mine.    All of life has in fact dimmed!        To compensate for it and to somehow forget what REAL sunshine is we look for the pale palliatives of drugs, alcohol and sex - all somehow (for all the colour we dress them up with) experienced in a black and white world, pallid with dull and unhealthy attitudes.    Where HAS the SUNSHINE GONE?
Behind the clouds of Heart-disease, Diabetes, Hypertension, and a host of others.     Fear, Doubt and Apprehension of what is in store for us dilutes the very brightness of the sunshine......and we are reduced to pale shadows of what we once were......

THEN into my head came this little Song written way back in 1939, before all the sunshine of life began to wane and filter away.....

YOU are my sunshine;

My only sunshine

When skies are gray.

You'll never know, Lord

How much I love you;

Please, don't take my sunshine away!

It was sung to me when I was just a youngster by my Mum (it is me NOW that has substituted the word LORD for dear.     It fits in perfectly with my thought and constant need.    JESUS IS my true sunshine, and his Presence, whenever it makes me aware of him, does to me exactly what the sunshine does when it banishes all my surrounding darkness away.     Yes HE is my true sunshine, and I LOVE Him dearly, and cannot do without HIM in my life.      I need Him all the time, restoring a positive frame of mind and faith in me that rebukes all the fears, anxieties, thrust upon me by the Prince of this World,  setting me free to reach out to others, both children and adults, with love, affection and Truth in the liberty of His Spirit.

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Duchess of Alba, Grandee of Spain

SEVENTY THREE years!        Still just a chicken yet!    
I have been reading up about the Duchess of Alba, a Spanish Grandee aged 87 who has just recently married her 3rd husband some twenty four years younger than herself.     Apart from being one of the richest women in the world, she is probably best known for her many facial plastic surgeries.      She has a continuing zest for life, but personally I have no desire for earthly longevity - just longing for that NEW body to come and replace this ageing one.    And I definitely have no desire to patch this one up until it resembles little of its originality!         In a recent article I read that she is also a distant relative of Sir Winston Churchill, and Royal House of Stuart!!       One age-avoiding, fun loving, billionairess who owns a large part of Spain, hidden away from the knowledge of most of the rest of us for the best part of her life.   Amazing!

Well the sun is STILL shining here today - just a few fluffy white clouds in a perfectly blue sky, and I am enjoying myself.    A quiet day - a happy day.     Daryl and Carol and their three children, Edward, Daryl's elder brother, and Manu will all share a meal with us tonight.      THANK YOU LORD for taking such good care of me and mine.     I first consciously woke up to the fact of GOD being there for me when I was SIX and came to know YOU, Lord, when I WAS 17.    When I was 26 you called me to Kenya and here I found my wife Esther in 1971.     Testimony Faith homes had been started in 1969 and Esther and I together have seen  the Lord supply our need, and the need of hundreds of children day by day, up to the present.    HE has kept us both in health and strength.    He has clothed us, fed us, kept us alive.       We have not done any of this for ourselves or by our own effort.    HE is our STRENGTH and our LIFE.     All the honour, the praise and GLORY goes to One who came to DIE for us at Calvary, and who ROSE again to be WITH US, and Who will COME AGAIN SOON to welcome us home and into the NEW Heaven and Earth that He has prepared for us who love Him.


God Bless and be with you all



John and Esther & Daryl and Carol.


PS - Electricity actually WENT at 7a.m.   -   but returned at 9a.m.      Wonderful.