​As I watched, the sun broke free below dark clouds along the fells and suddenly,  brilliant shafts of light draped the sky, touching every leaf and blade of grass; enabling their own beauty.
The scene was reminiscent of those 'spleandour' pictures of heaven meeting earth.  I was aware of a beauty beyond all physical senses, and for a while I thought of Elizabeth of the Trinity.  Still a young woman in 1906, she knew the time was near when her then incurable illness would lead her into eternal realms.  She wrote to her sister, I am sure that you will rejoice at my first meeting with Divine Beauty  ... the Lord .... then to spend my eternity in the Trinity which is already my dwelling-place here below.
 
I thought about heaven - and the Divine Beauty.   I imagined myself there - lost with loved ones - in the vast, countless crowd - as more and more the numbers swelled.   I saw the smiles and heard the laughter of children no longer hungry; the relieved faces of war victims made free;  of refugees now at home ....   all overwhelmed by the beauty.   Surely many of them had never had opportunity to glimpse this through Jesus in their time on earth  ... and I had not told them!    I pray there may be many called to prepare others for the Divine Beauty of The Trinity.  They are all welcomed through the grace of God.
 

It seemed to me that everywhere I turned; in the news which filled the media and in life situations I encountered every day, I met people crying out for freedom.  Many were unable to share the key to all freedom  -  Christ who is the truth  - who sets us all free ..
These prayers came to mind ...
 
 
 I am a prisoner, Lord,
behind the razor-wire of contemporary living:
the ceaseless winking of the clock;
the bulging diary's tentacles;
embraced by family commitments;
snagged with physical limitations.
 
Yet I am free:
free to breathe clean air;
free to think and speak, to care and love;
free to inhale your life-giving Spirit.
 
Help me put my hands through the wire
to pass out my freedom
to the people in the cell next door.
 
  
Lord, Jesus Christ, you teach us freedom comes at a price.
By your life, death and living again
you have given us freedom
which no prison can take from us.
Show us how to live, work and speak for freedom
for all who cower before military powers;
for those squeezed in the tightening grip of hunger and disease.
Help us so to cherish our freedom as to be ready to sacrifice for their release.
  
 
I walked through a hospital ward today,
and prayed for prison bars to fall away
from minds depressed,
encircled by an ever prevalent gloom;
afraid of unseen futures;
paralysed by lost self-esteem;
angry with helplessness.
Lord, help me share my freedom, if only by
a word of comfort,
a look of compassion,
a silent, often repeated prayer
to you.