20181130 - Friday - Joe’s Cafe - Fay Berry

20181130 – Friday – Joe’s Cafe

It is a beautiful day today, not a cloud in the sky. So I decided not to go to the Inc Cafe this morning but instead, head north to Joe’s cafe so that I can be closer to the beach.

I am always struck by the sheer beauty of the sea and sunshine and I simply LOVE the beach on such a beautiful day.

I remember the days when I used to be able to go swimming in the sea.

I would take my “boogy board” out with me in the water and get quite a distance out into the water and then look back at the shoreline, and examine each house one by one and count the pine trees.

Years ago, when I was around 16 or 17, I rode my push bike to Henley Beach.

Everything was different then, all the houses hadn’t been built and the dunes extended from HP Mansfields flats at West Beach quite some way out into the ocean.

Our house on Burbridge Road hadn’t been built and the land that is now owned by the Aiport west of Tapley’s Hill Road was just swamp land, and subject to flooding.

Jeff lived at Grange then and I had not yet met him.

My Dad had a friend who lived just off of Henley Beach Road, a man called Mr Davis, and he lived in a house in a road behind the (now) shopping centre just before Military Road on Henley Beach Road.

He was the local dairy farmer and all the paddocks which surrounded his house is where he kept his herd of cows.

I remember riding along Tapleys Hill Road towards Anzac Highway where all the pine trees line the street, and in those days, the smell of the pines was very strong and pungent, and that smell always in later years brought back memories of the beach.

The smell doesn’t exist now, because it is covered over by a billion other metallic smells of cars and cooking and all sorts of other smells. I long for the pure smell of pine needles.

And here is where I wonder at the amazing majesty of God who built our brains so marvellously, to have and retain all these memories of sight, touch, taste and smell, all in our heads for all time.

So many places, so many people, so many objects and things, all retained in our amazing memories.

I am in absolute AWE of a God who can do all these things.

And I look around me, here, today, at Joe’s and over at the next table from me are an older couple sitting there talking to each other and drinking their coffee together.

She is a slim woman probably around 70+ years, and he is of similar age, greying hair and only slightly bald on top.

I don’t think they are married. They look like they are on a first date, both hoping to connect with each other and form a relationship.

How do I know this? Well, people who are married have a certain familiarity about their conversations, but I don’t see that here.

They are not yet sure of each other and both trying to connect.

And that is what is so sad with this world.

We do not appreciate what we have, and so many people are searching for new hope in a new relationship, having discarded the old.

Why do we not all value each other and try harder to work with what we have, not always looking for what we have not?

It sounds funny, coming from me, I guess, because I have been separated for 28 years now.

Yet, Jeff and I are still “married” because I have no intention of forming a new relationship and I know, nor does he.

So we will remain “married” for the rest of our lives, but will always be living separately.

I have often wondered if we could “get back together” but I know that is absolutely impossible and I have no desire for it to happen.

And yet I am fond of him in a sort of a way, and he of me.

So I don’t look for what I can not have, and accept that what I have is ALL that I will have in this life.

And I look forward to being a member of “the bride of Christ,” when Jesus returns to this earth.

When all our weaknesses and mental flaws are healed, and our relationships will not be muddled up with the “flesh-nature,” that “sin-nature” that God justly consigned to death.

And so on this beautiful day I look out over God’s sea, and I bless and praise him for all the multitude of his blessings.

And I thank him for all those many blessings that he has given to me, and I do not look for those things which are not possible for me.

Counting my blessings is what I do, these days.

I think of that post I put up yesterday, of a man singing “You raise me up.”

And I remember the reactions on all the faces of the people listening.

Everyone of them was “moved” by the beauty of the words of praise to God that were in that song.

Many cried or smiled, but all were “moved” by the words of praise to God.

It is in-built in human kind to WANT to worship God, and it is music that brings it instantly to mind, but only when the song has “Godly” words and “Godly” meaning.

But then how beautiful it is.

And everyone knows it and feels it, for a moment in time.

And I wonder what prompted that man to sing so beautifully right in the middle of a city square.

I looked at his face too, and you could see “the praise” in his face, in his eyes.

I wanted to KNOW that man, because I knew that he was a “Godly” man, who loved his God.

So many thoughts in my mind, so many word of praise to God, our Father.

How I long for Jesus return.

And while I was sitting here musing and thinking about many things, the waitress who brought me my coffee, asked me if I recognised her face, whether I remembered her.

Well I remembered her face but not whee it was from, or where i had met her.

She told me that she had been a waitress at Evida, further up in Henley Square.

Yes, now I remembered her.

We chatted about Evida and how it had not been making money and was eventually closed down.

She said that the reason she was now working at Joe’s was because she would have missed all the familiar faces of people she had waited on at Evida’s.

If she comes to my table again, I will try to make her my “facebook friend” so that we can keep in touch in future.

And now for my diet of yesterday