Summer is definitely here: our little 1 euro thermometer in the shade on the balcony is reading 32 Celsius and it’s 7:27pm.
What a day! A really pleasant long lunch chez nous with French friends, full of chat in French, which is wonderful for our improvement end encouraging too that we can communicate! Chris Froome is still wearing the yellow jersey in the Tour de France, Andy Murray has won the mens’ singles at Wimbledon (again), Lewis Hamilton has won the British Grand Prix (again)… and the team of our adopted country are predicted to win the Euro 2016 final tonight. Allez les bleus !
After France won the semi-final on Thursday, the horn-blowing and shouting on the street outside went on for a full 45 minutes. If they win tonight, it certainly won’t be shorter!
Yesterday morning I decided to get up at a reasonably early time and go for a walk up La coulée verte (a wooded and green pathway which runs for 14km from Massy nearly to the centre of Paris) while it was still moderately cool. I managed to get away at 8:35am (not bad for a Saturday). I usually use these walks as praying-walks. The photos are from this walk: nice, isn’t it?
On the outward leg, I decided to do something which I used to do a lot when I was a student: go back to some chosen point in my life and then thank God for all He had done in my life since then. In my student days, when life was periodically quite challenging, I used to find this really helpful. So, yesterday I started in my mid-teens, before I became a Christian, and finished (just over 6km later) by thanking God for what He’s going to do in the future.
It was not an exhaustive time of thankfulness, but it was so very refreshing. It was great to remind myself of all the times God has stepped in and fixed stuff, of the times I thought He’d got it wrong… but events then proved that it was me who had got it wrong (D’Oh!). Times when God brought good things out of bad circumstances. Times when He showed that He knew the clear way through, when all I could see were blockages. Thank You!
The return leg of prayer was much easier.
If you’ve never tried this, I recommend it wholeheartedly.
Breakthrough France 