Scenes from a bus

Public transport.  It’s a marvellous thing for writing inspiration, or even just a little entertainment at the end of a working day.  Sights from today’s bus ride home:

A Goth at a bus stop with black gloves with a skeleton pattern on the backs of the hands.  As I tend to sit upstairs, I got the bird’s eye view, which included seeing a skeletal hand holding an apple…very Snow White?

Person sitting in front of me on the bus at one point, who had a fur trim to the hood of her coat, which matched the colours in her hair ie salt and pepper dark hair.  It made me feel quite positive about the greying process to come, if you can make it seem like a fashion statement…

It’s all about perspective really.  Left to my own devices, all too easy to climb inside my head, as it were, which can be a dark and not particularly cheerful place to be.  (Particularly in the mornings on the way to work, when it’s not that much lighter outside.)  But a bit of distraction is a good thing – we don’t grow out of the need once we’ve passed the stage of toddlerdom, it seems to me.

Equally, meeting with friends in cell group yesterday always brings perspective.  Even though we’d not seen each other for just a couple of weeks, there seemed to be plenty to catch up on.

The morning papers at work fulfil a similar function.  Yesterday’s G2 main article covered the issues of organ donation through very moving interviews with various people involved with the procedure in some way, from the parent of the child who donated his liver, to the man who received it, and the nurse who put the two together etc.

However grouchy I may feel at students doing not doing what they should abroad, it’s a salutory reminder that I am not being asked to face the same level of difficulty in my life just now.

Of course, these various scenes, snapshots of others’ lives, are not just for my benefit.  But I can choose to keep my eyes open to them – and remind myself to have eyes to see, where God has something to show me.

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