It doesn’t matter how long you have been married, ten weeks is a long time to be apart. Pam and I have a strong and loving marriage, and we recognize that there have been fine and valid reasons for this recent phase in our lives: I had two months left of a term to finish off; Pam had a new grandchild to attend to, and as it turned out, a temporarily disabled son to look after. The Lord has His own timing on things like this, and we have learned long ago just to follow His direction on such issues and not to sweat the outcome too much. As with so much of what happens to the children of God, our heavenly Father does indeed know best.

All the same it was very sweet to finally meet again after all this time. We have another separation coming up, not quite so long, until our daughter gets married and I finally get to fly home to Canada. Looking ahead to this time, we recognized that it would be a longer separation than either of us could easily bear, and so we planned on meeting in England part way through to reconnect with each other, and to have a chance to visit the parts of my family that still live in England.

We planned to set aside a couple of days to ourselves, and decided that Cambridge would be a nice place to do so. It is not far from Stansted, where I arrived, and partly on the way to Lincoln, where we are headed next. After a fifteen hour flight from Kuala Lumpur that included refueling at New Delhi, I arrived tired and happy to meet with Pam who had flown into Gatwick that morning and caught the train across London to meet me there. We rented ourselves a little Ford Fiesta, and drove the forty-five minutes to Cambridge, threw our gear into the little B&B room we had rented and headed into town for a lovely meal at a pub overlooking King’s College.

Today after a full British breakfast that included peameal bacon, sausages, fried egg, hash browns and beans (so much for THAT diet!) we headed into town for a good look around. You can see a little bit of the charm of this university town with its medieval roots in these pictures. What you can’t see is the atmosphere of genteel respect for nature and learning that inhabits this place. Parks and walkways extend everywhere, people cycle and walk in easy ambience along the ancient cobblestone streets past doorways, arches and cloisters that are dressed in ivy and painted with age. Stately oaks and beeches gracefully line the gravel paths; boats are punted up and down the canal past colleges that were old before Shakespeare was born. It was lovely place for a reunion.