Seventy-seven years plus one day! - The day after my birthday - Fay Berry

Yesterday was my birthday, my 77th birthday, 28th November 2016, and I got to thinking. I received so many lovely phone calls and messages from all of my friends and it made me think about the span of my life here in Adelaide, this beautiful small town city in vast Australia.

Today has been an absolutely beautiful, sublime day and I have spent most of it either in the 303 cafe by the sea at Henley Beach, or sitting on a bench on the seafront soaking up the sun. The weather is perfect; it is one of those shimmery, ethereal sort of days that are always “special.” I have watched the windsurfers skimming along the tops of the waves, and the young and fit jogging along beside the rippling mini-waves at the water’s edge. In my mind I have run with them, using the legs that I used to have not the ones I have today.

I have thought about my life over that span of 77 years. Has it been a ‘good’ life? would I have it any different than it has been? No, not really. God knows best and from the young wilful girl that I was, I am now a much older version of ‘me’ and I feel, a much wiser version of me, and so the life that I have lived was necessary to grow the “wisdom” that I have. So ‘no’ I wouldn’t change a thing.

Two of my daughters rang me today and I had quite long conversations with each of them. I love my children so much. They are all of them wonderful kids, and certainly worth the “having.” Yes, they brought me pain, but they also brought me joy. I am afraid I also brought them as much of pain as there was of joy. They have their lives to live too, but they are all strong and enduring, and God will care for them, so they will be all right. And my wonderful crop of grandchildren – how beautiful are they!! and even my little great grandies, all wonderful and a gift from God.

Lately I have been studying the Cherubim through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation which is a subject that fascinates me. I have been thinking of the standards of Israel, the Man, the Lion, the Ox and the Eagle. I have always felt represented by the Ox more than any other of the characteristics of the ‘man of the one.” I have seen myself somehow as a “burden bearer” rather than having the other characteristics of the Cherubim.

H Madeley writes the following about the ox

“The ox was chosen by God for sacrifice because of its typical characteristics—patient, enduring, pullling its weight, giving of its best, unmurmuring, uncomplaining. These spiritual qualifications are the basis of numerous apostolic exhortations. It is a ruminting animal—chewing the cud; suggesting the type of individual with whom God is well pleased—those who “eat the Word’ and ruminate upon it, and so obtain the maximum spiritual nutriment from it. The ox, too, is cloven-footed which indicates sure-footedness, certainty, confidence; those who are not easily moved once having taken “the stand” on the side of truth: that class that “stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made them free;” “in singleness of mind serving the lord,” because “a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” David may have had these facts in mind when he wrote: “It is God that girdeth me with strength, and maketh my way perfect. He maketh my feet like hind’s feet and setteth me upon my high places.” With the cleft foot an animal can grip the sod, and browsed upon the edge of a yawning abyss without the slightest fear. These are some of the features which must be visible in those who are to pass the examination which will admit them to God’s favor.”

Well, those are the characteristics I aspire to, anyway, given my natural inclinations, but I am certainly not an eagle, or a lion or a man.

Yesterday, Verity Edgecombe took a phot of me, and so I have an up-to-date picture of me. I think what I will do now is put up some pictures of me at various stages of my life.