This morning, rather than sitting down with a hot chocolate, I’m sipping on a mug of hot water, honey and lemon.

Yep… it’s that time of year.

Sophie came home with something 2 weeks ago, shared it with Liz and last weekend I Started feeling the effects. It’s been a long week of having to teach, with a cold & using a mask… therefore going back ‘n’ forth between foggy glasses and a stuffed nose.

One consolation though, is that the honey in my mug is from our own bees. Speaking of bees…

University Bees

I found my first wild honey bee colony this week. It was on the campus where I teach in Poitiers, in a lovely area in between three buildings that they refer to as the patio. The trees and picnic tables make it a nice spot to lunch.

I was sitting there speaking with a student and as we spoke… my beekeeper eye noticed a familiar flight pattern of coming & going. I went over for a closer look and sure enough, in an opening in the ground, at the base of the wall, honey bees were coming & going. So cool.

The Future Provokes Questions

If I was chatting with a student it’s because one of my discussion points in class was… ‘How do you see the future?’

I was somewhat shocked by the general response.

There were a number of what I’d call normal responses, but I was surprised at the level of despondency, pessimism and lack of hope that characterized the overall feeling. It struck a chord with this student in particular, who was going through a rough transition, and he asked to speak.

I always walk a fine line with current students because in France is separation of church and state to the extreme. In my official capacity to that student, I’m a teacher, employed by the state, but I was able to touch on a couple of things from my own life as well. It’s a privilege to work with young people.

Pink October

October is breast-cancer awareness month here in France (they refer to it as ‘Octobre Rose’), so the streets are awash with pink… in store window displays, on public buildings and in the sky above.

Beautiful and poignant.

Driving

It’s so crazy that it only took the better part of a year and a half, under various levels of confinement and teaching remotely, to get so out of the habit of driving… But I did, and I’m still getting used to it again.

These are some of my views from drives this week.

• Mondays I usually leave before the sun is up and arrive home after it has set. Now that the cooler weather has arrived… early morning patches of land fog is very common as well.
• Wednesdays Sophie & I usually catch sunrise from the car as we drive to Poitiers together
• Thursdays, the sun is already up by the time Sophie & I hit the road back to Poitiers.
• Friday & Saturday last week was also a Bible School weekend, so I was on the road to Melun Friday night and headed back home Saturday afternoon.

Interesting factoid: The monument on the left of the 2nd picture from the top is the Méridienne de Manchecourt. It’s an obelisk built in 1748 to mark the Paris Meridian which, was used extensively in French cartography in the 17th 7 18th centuries. The Paris Meridian was also a longtime rival of the Greenwich Meridian as the prime meridian of the world.

Reinforcements

Those Bible School weekends wear me out and I’ve been finding it more and more difficult to then come back and prepare & preach on Sunday mornings.

Dominic, as the church’s youth leader, will take those Sunday services on a go-forward basis.

He did a fine job last Sunday and that was no surprise. He’s a fine young man, wholly devoted to glorifying God in his life.

Zoom Prayer

Finally… we had our first Zoom prayer meeting last night and I was thoroughly impressed with how things went.

In addition to our family there were three other households represented, including one of our young people who is currently studying in Germany.

How cool is that!?

I’ll admit, I was a bit of a skeptic, but it was really quite wonderful as we felt the presence of the Lord powerfully moving among us.

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Thank you!

… for dropping by again today.

As always… let what you read, inform your prayers for us and for France.
God bless you today!