By Rev Fiona Bennett (From Seeds February – March 2025)

Earlier in January, I was up very early one morning, out in my garden. Everything around was encrusted in white frost.

I was cold, very tired and resigned to a tired day, when I happened to look up. A deep indigo sky was studded with sparkling stars. It was stunningly beautiful. Lines came to my mind from a re-working of Psalm 23: ‘You lift my head; my vision clears. The blessing cup overflows.’

I would not have seen that glorious sight but for the clear cold sky and my early start.

It was a reminder to me that in the midst of ‘all that troubles, threatens and diminishes’ it is important to allow God to lift our heads, clear our vision, and to be reminded that God is always with us, abundance is always around us and that God’s bigger story of love and hope is always going on in the world.

God’s story is far broader and richer than that which is consuming my thinking or feelings on a cold, grumpy morning!

It was due to the cold and the early hour I felt put out by that I could see the stars.

It is often in the tougher situations in life that we remember what is truly important and learn to savour the beauty and wonder always around us in any given moment.

The blessing cup overflows (even when we are tired!).

‘In the midst of all that troubles,
That threatens and diminishes,
You set abundance before me.
You lift my head; my vision clears.
The blessing cup overflows’

Part of Psalm 23 (Psalms Redux: Poems and prayers by Carla Grosch-Miller