May is quite an exciting month. Hopefully all the rain and wind will have gone, and the anticipation of sunshine is there. The gardens are looking lovely with a variety of flowers in bloom, with the expectancy of more to come. It is always a delight to look in people’s gardens as I walk around the villages. It never fails to impress me how wonderful some gardens look. I try and take their ideas and transfer them to my own, with anticipation of my garden looking beautiful too, but not always with success. It doesn’t really help that I don’t know the names of lots of plants. I have an app that allows me to take a photograph and it then tells me the name and properties of the plant, but I am not sure that everyone would be delighted to see me wandering around their garden taking photographs. May can also be when we are starting to look forward to holidays, events, and time off work. Holidays may have been planned and booked for some months but as the time for them draws nearer so the anticipation and excitement increases. Anticipation is about expectation. It means that we look ahead to what is coming and believe with certainty it will happen. I think another word for anticipation and expectation is faith. In Advent just before Christmas we wait in anticipation of Jesus’ birth. But there is quite a lot of talk of anticipation in the Bible. Among other things we think about the anticipation of the second coming of Jesus. Paul writes “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is going to be revealed to us.” When we look around at the beauty of nature both in the open and in our cultivated gardens and the excitement of upcoming holidays and events, I find it hard not to be overwhelmed by the anticipation of what is to come. I have just looked at Facebook and my daughter has put this quote on, “To be happy you must: let go of what has gone, be grateful for what remains and look forward to what is coming next”. Good advice in a nutshell.
This month’s book is The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson.
God Bless
Maureen Kendall