overdue an overhaul!

God said "Let there be light!" And it was so.

I guess we tend to think that that's an easy thing for God to do. Little more demanding than a gentle snap of his fingers.

But I don't suppose it works like that at all. The rest of the story reveals the way it works. He spoke and worked and did a bit. And then he stopped and paused and rested for a while. Reflected on the progress of his work thus far. Drew breath. And then get down to doing some more.

The word he spoke was never something random, chance or simply sort of off-the-cuff. Its great creative power was bound up with the concentrated focus of his mind and heart.

He knew (because he'd taken time to pause, reflect and think it through) - he knew that this was now the word he had to speak.

That's something which I'm conscious of when Fridays come around! If I'm to bring a word this coming Sunday - and if that word I bring is to be truly his, invested with his own creative power - then it needs the sort of focus that a concentrated time of quiet reflection alone can bring.

I'm listening through each day, of course. Mingling with the multitudes and tackling many tasks, it's not as though there's not a sense of God himself being present in it all. And God speaking through it all as well.

It's just I need some time and space to get alone with him and put the thing together, discern the word he's eager to be saying to us all. Fridays are often like that.

I'm out and about as well. Today I was down in the village at different points; and calling on a man who'd been in recent weeks bereaved; and, later, going up to see my good friend, Ian, still stuck there in the hospital but slowly making progress in his health.

But the bulk of the day was spent on my own with the Lord, simply trying to learn from him the word I am to speak.

He gave me a picture!

The picture of a boat I'd seen on holiday in Harris through the summer months. Not quite a wreck, but long since past its sailing days and now no longer up to that for which it had been built.

A picture, he seemed to say, of what his church has become.

A picture to impress upon my heart the pressing need for something of the total, long-term re-fit which I've sensed he plans to give us through these coming months. In a strange sort of way, a picture which encouraged me no end.

Like the Lord was saying, yeah, stick in with what you're doing there. It's needing done. The boat is long since overdue an overhaul like that.

Like his word for us is really pretty simple - and invested with that same creative power!

Let there be an overhaul! And there was (or will be!)

dawn

When the janny at the primary school starts wondering if I'm looking for a job, that probably is indicative of just how much I've been round at the place these past few weeks!

"You seem to be here all the time!" he remarked. Pleasantly, I should add. There wasn't any aggro in his voice at all - just surprise.

Well, yes, I was round there again, ostensibly to be there when the teachers have their coffee break - a brief and hurried 15-minute break, which for them, I guess, must always seem too short. A social sort of visit. Touching base. Being there and just going with the flow.

I almost didn't make it as I had somebody in and it was tempting just to give the time at school a miss.

But how glad I am I didn't take that line! The end result of my being there was a door being opened here and there and everywhere it seemed: teacher after teacher coming up and asking if I'd come and help them teach their class some aspect of the RE course.

The 15-minute coffee break became about an hour in length as, with the coffee over and done, I went and spent some time with a teacher of a P5 class considering how I might be best equipped to help them cover all the different aspects of the course.

The outcome of it all? A five-week set of 45-minute lessons every Wednesday morning in which I'd aim to take and lead the children through the basics of the Christian faith.

Five weeks on the trot with these same 50-60 children at the P5 stage: five weeks where the chance to build relationships is there for me to take: five weeks where the chance to help these youngsters see just what it's all about is given me by the Lord: five weeks where exposure to the good news of the kingdom is something that the teachers, just as all those many P5 children, will now have.

Talk about a wide open door of opportunity!

I'd been asked back in June if I'd take another student from New College for his placement with ourselves this year. And I'd declined. And part of why I'd taken such a step was just the sense I had back then that through this coming year I'd need to have that extra time involved to be in school.

Today I began to see why!

a day of opportunity

There are some days when a single thing can dominate the day. Today was that sort of day - and the 'single thing' was the service I was taking giving thanks for the life of the lady who'd died last week.

I've had this sense, since first I called by on the family at their home, that this was somehow going to be a time of opportunity for them. Hard to put my finger on just why, but sometimes that's the way it is: I simply know. Within my very soul. As if the Spirit of almighty God alerts me to the work that he is doing in their lives and says - 'now this is big.'

It's like a gate is opened from the start and through that gate a reservoir of God's own grace begins to flow: the strange and unseen 'gravity' of God's great Holy Spirit being at work just draws whole river-fuls of grace right down upon their lives. Without any effort at all. It just happens!

And so although I'd never met the folk before, it was as if I'd known them all my life the first time that I walked in through their door. The conversation flowed. The atmosphere relaxed. As if we were, and had been all our lives, the best of friends.

Don't ask me how or why it happens quite like that. It simply does. Sometimes that's just how it is. And what I've learned to recognise is simply this, that when that sort of thing takes place, the reason is a sovereign work of God. As if he marks this out as being the very moment that he's waited for (for years perhaps) - a time of opportunity, a moment when he draws the curtains back for them and lets them catch a glimpse of who he is and what he's on about.

It's hard to explain. I only know it happens; and that when it does, my own relational involvement with them all, combined with how I lead them in their worship on the day and what I have to say, is somehow instrumental in their lives being simply bathed and steeped and drenched in all the soothing grace of Christ.

So a day like today both excites me and terrifies me silly! Part of me's thinking, "How can I do this? I'm not up to this at all!" And another part of me's thinking, "I wouldn't miss this for anything! What a privilege! What a thrill! What a joy!"

Yes, even though it's a funeral. A strange sort of joy. Crazy!

So there's a lot of prayerful preparing to do: and apart from a trip to the school first thing, the bulk of the morning was all about that. And I knew what I had to say. That's part of the way such times like this work out. I know from the start what it is that the Lord wants to say.

I just have to get it into words! Which is easier said than done most times.

Of course, I can never tell just exactly what's going on within their hearts as the service of worship is held. I only know that at this one brief moment in their lives, a truth is being impressed by God upon their hearts - a truth that has within itself the potency to change their lives and turn them upside down.

At times like that I know I stand on sacred ground. It is both humbling and exhilerating too. And afterwards it leaves me pretty much exhausted, drained and spent.

God was in that place. I knew it well. But what about the family? Did they? Ah, that's the bit that must remain a mystery. That's in God's hands alone. I only know that on a day like this, for some at least, the line between eternity and time was, for a fleeting moment, pulled right back.

stepping out

To this day I still remember the thrill and the excitement that I felt when, as a little lad, I used a brush to paint just dabs of water across a blank sheet of paper and see a picture quite magically emerge.

A blank sheet of paper, but you knew there was something there: and bit by bit, with each succeeding stroke the brush would make, the picture would appear. (Little things please little minds, I know!).

It's something of that same excited 'painting' that I'm knowing once again these days. A nagging sense, initially, of there being something new to which the Lord has patiently been calling me: to start with, just a sense of there being something there, something that the Lord had kept in store for me - hidden from my sight, but definitely there.

And bit by bit, that 'picture' is beginning to emerge: each passing day, it seems, is just a further dab of water on the page which makes the call more clear.

It's the call of God first issued to a middle-aged (and doubtless sort of middle-class) believer from the dim and distant past. Abram. "Go. Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you."

Nothing more than that, at first. Though I'm aware there was a promise attached: "you will be a blessing .. and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

I got the general drift of that a while ago. A constant, clear conviction that those words were spoken once again to me. And bit by bit its import is becoming clear.

It's not so much a geographic "Go" as something more 'vocational'. For all of us, a different way of being church: for me, a different way of going about the ministry to which I'm called by God.

Leaving the familiar sort of pattern I inherited from those who were my fathers and my forbears in the faith and moving on and forwards to a new and different ministry 'terrain'. Not disowning or abandoning the stress upon the teaching of the word of God. Just reconfiguring how it's done.

The journey's begun and step by step I'm simply trying to follow where the Lord himself will lead. I have no other compass and there is no other way. "Go to the land I will show you." That's all I can do - just go where he leads.

It's a realm where relationships count. A manner of living that drives me out instead of subtly sucking all my time and strength within. Out and onto the streets: out, where the people are happy to meet and ready to talk and eager to just be themselves.

Well, I'm working on that and today was a day that filled me with real excitement! It was simply full of people. Two stockbrokers, for a large part of the morning - and then they stayed for lunch and there they were, mingling quite happily with all sorts of others, a striking sort of picture for myself of how the Lord delights to see his church: a spectrum of all ages and all stages and all sorts of different backgrounds all at one.

I'd agreed later on to meet a friend who works in town for a coffee after work. I had a meeting up town and he was finishing work, so it suits us both to meet at Beanscene. I always enjoy the chance to chat with him: it's stimulating, challenging and always makes me think.

Tonight, though, as we sat and chatted over coffee, cake and buns (well, he had a cake and I had a bun!), who should come over but another girl whom I've known for years. She's a lovely girl who's now involved with a lively crowd of Christians out of town: she'd seen me over the floor and so she'd come across to say 'Hi'.

But what encouraged me most was the fact that she and a crowd of her Christian friends were meeting there, converging after work from all their different parts of town, to chill and chat and share with one another and to know the very presence of the Lord himself amidst the mutual friendship which they knew.

They do this maybe once or twice a month. And that for me was such an affirmation from the Lord because I've taken steps myself to meet with some of our young folk right there - in Beanscene no less - and make that time and place a chance to build each other up and help us grow in knowing Christ himself.

Like the Lord was reassuring me and saying - 'see, this is what I mean: this is just exactly where I mean you now to be.'

Was I chuffed! And after the formal meeting which followed (what a contrast! I thought to myself, these are two completely different worlds!), as I walked along the pavement there in town, I met a guy who remembered me from his days in the local Primary school.

Another 'chance' encounter and another chance to chat. No more than maybe just a couple of minutes, but enough for me to learn about the plans that he was forming for himself. A 'gap' year, with maybe Global Xperience.

I said to keep in touch, to let me know if that was where he ended up. I said it would change him one way or another and that we were always keen to see folk taking up the challenge of such ventures.

I remembered the word the Lord had been speaking on Sunday night: how Jesus called people, and got them doing things for him, before they became his disciples. And that was part of how they became his disciples.

And then, en route back home, I called on by the family most recently bereaved: saw the daughter who'd been injured (albeit only slightly) in the accident on Monday: and prayed with them all in advance of the service tomorrow. I can't help but think these days are for them all a hugely significant time.

"Go. Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you." I wouldn't miss this for the world!

God knows

Early starts on a Monday morning are not a combination that I'd usually choose! (For obvious reasons - I'm generally dead beat after a Sunday: and last night was no exception)

But this morning I needed to see my son off at the airport at just a bit before 5.30am. An effort to roll out of bed at that sort of time of day, but Johnny Cash blaring his 'Walk the line' in my ear (on my mobile phone alarm) was good enough to get me up and going for the day.

I was glad to be up, I have to say, because I hadn't had the chance before to do much preparation for the service of thanksgiving being held mid-morning. So a good few hours without a soul around was just ideal for thinking through just what I'd say and how I'd paint the picture of a man I'd never met.

He'd lived in the village here for countless years - but I have no recollection of encountering him at all, despite my being here now for nineteen years myself. He was a quiet, private man, certainly; and there wouldn't have been much we shared in common, I suppose: so our paths were hardly all that likely to cross.

But it still seems strange to live and work so close to someone else for all that length of time and never really meet the man at all (well, not to my knowledge).

It made me think of the grave that there is on the beach at Inneanmor (down the Mull of Kintyre): the beach is pretty remote and only reached by a three-mile trek across the moors: and the grave that's marked out way down at the beach has been there since 1917 - an unknown sailor whose body was washed up on the shore.

There's a little cross and on the cross the two short words - God knows. That says it all. With a succinctness of which I'm envious!

God knows. I'm glad of that. Because I have to say I did not know a thing about the man for whom today, along with others, I was giving thanks.

It's like being blind when other people see (for mostly all those present would have known the man at least in part) - and then being asked to paint for them a picture or a likeness of this man I've never met which would at last enable them to see him as he really was! The blind illuminating those who see!

I find such funeral services pretty hard. Well, I find all such services hard. But such as these are doubly so because I'm really doing it 'blind'.

I remember from years ago a lady in Cumbernauld who'd once been able to see but had long since lost her sight. Ruby McTaggart was her name (strange how some names come easily back to mind): she was a lovely little lady, and I recall her very vividly saying one day that she actually 'saw' things better now that she had lost her natural sight.

I sometimes think of her at times like this, when I, too, am acting 'blind'. And the 'sight' I have to use is very much a 'sight' that's given me by God. God knows. Back to that again.

In some ways that communicates to those who gather at such services. For they must know themselves that I have never met the man and if I paint a picture that evokes for them the essence of the man they've known, then that can only be by God's good grace. Because I cannot know the man, the logic of it is that God must be the one who knows.

God knows. I hope that comes across - and maybe serves to wake folk up to something that is absolutely basic to our lives.

The down-side, of course, of an early start like that is that I'm ready for bed by the middle of the day! Siesta time. I try to stop for a little spell in the middle of each day (it doesn't always work!) - and I figured I'd need to today!

A ten-minute doze did me the world of good! Just as well. I had a lot to do preparation-wise, as I was to see Lisa and William tonight about the baptism of their little girl this coming Sunday and I wanted to have at least a draft idea of how the service might look.

I like a service like that to be personal for the family concerned - as well as appropriate for the wider family of God's people gathered together for worship. But because I don't really know the couple that well, it's a bit of a 'shot in the dark': in other words, I'm again obliged to do it 'blind', and trust the Lord to lead me in the choice of praise.

What a thrill, then, later on at night, when I called on them at their home to find that the very first item of praise that I'd picked was a hymn that they'd sung on their wedding day! God knows!

I was going to say it was obviously that sort of day. But, no, that's how it is each day and all the time!

Like this afternoon, as well, when I'd sensed I should call on a family who've just been bereaved (the service of thanksgiving for the lady who'd died will be this coming Wednesday).

Sometimes there's just this overwhelming burden on my heart to go and call at someone's door: I don't know why, I only know that I should go. So I'd gone to their door and the daughter-in-law who opened the door was really quite taken aback: they'd had a dreadful day - their teenage daughter, on the road down south to start back on her university course, had been involved in an accident: the car a total write-off, the girl herself (thankfully) quite safe.

So I think my pitching up like that just then was really quite a comfort. A sort of reassurance that there is, indeed, a God who knows and cares.

Just how important that can be for people in their need .. well, God knows!

cash deposits

Although it's technically a Bank Holiday weekend, for some reason the Nat West bank up town was open this morning. Thankfully!

I'd paid in a sum of cash using the 'Quick Deposit' facility on Thursday evening in order to ensure it was available on the Friday. But the sum had not been credited to the account at all.

E-mails getting lost in cyberspace is one thing (annoying, but by and large I can cope with that): cash getting lost down Quick Deposit 'black holes' is rather different - and in this case was creating rather more problems than a lost e-mail.

So when I discovered that the Bank was open this morning, I was up town first thing to try and sort the thing out. It turned out that someone had poured a can of juice through the Quick Deposit letter box and so the Bank had the cash but couldn't decipher the account details.

Sometimes I think that something similar has somehow happened with the riches God has given us in Christ. He's made this massive 'cash' deposit, but in the case of so many of us it doesn't seem to have been credited to our accounts! At least we don't seem to be in a position to enjoy it for some reason.

Maybe the church has unwittingly 'vandalised' that Quick Deposit box...

One guy who's helped us here to learn just how this 'cash' God gives can end up where it's meant to be, being credited again to our accounts, is Martin Aliga.

He leaves to go back home tomorrow to Uganda - and we'll be sad to see him go after the last two years he's been here with us all.

We had a BBQ tonight down at the halls to mark the man's departure: and then a time of praise and celebration which he led.

It was a lovely sunny evening and a fair old crowd of folk came out - a brilliant mix of old and young alike: and some who simply came with friends who'd said, 'Why not come along with us?' The poor folk didn't really have a clue just what was going on - but they figured that a BBQ on a night like this was something way too good to miss!

That surely is the way it's meant to be. A chance to meet and mingle and to chat with one another over food and drink.

I was chatting at length with a couple that I hadn't met before (I've spoken with the lady on the phone and so enjoyed the chance to put a face to the voice).

They spoke about the way the Lord had led them here to Edinburgh - in really very striking and exciting ways.

For them, God's word to Abraham had been a very special word - "Go .. and I will make you a blessing."

In some ways that's exactly how I see young Martin's moving on just now. The Lord himself has called him on and back home in Uganda, I have no doubt, the Lord will surely make the man a blessing all the time.

He's certainly been that for all of us. Freeing us up to worship God. Helping us to make that 'cash deposit' of the gift of Jesus Christ, our own. Ensuring that it's credited to each of our accounts!

Life gets very problematic when a pretty simple system ends up vandalised!

preparing for blast off!

Stuck behind a desk has been the story of my day.

A chance at last to prepare at some length; to gather all the threads this week has brought, in terms of what the Lord's been saying through his word and through the reading that I've done and through the countless different strands of conversation that I've had - to gather them all together and to start the final weaving of the message that the Lord means me to bring.

I always get excited when it starts to take some shape: the Lord begins to speak with growing clarity and lays upon my heart what lies upon his own.

For that I need time, seclusion and space. Today was that sort of day. An early start again, but then a concentrated span of hours on end to figure out just what it is he wants to say and how to make it clear.

If I pass on even half the sense of thrill and expectation that I've known myself, the place will be heaving! But then, it's not for me to know just how folk will react - or even if they'll understand just what God's on about!

That's part of the adventure for me: I don't ever know and can't ever tell just how much will get through.

I only know I've got to keep on pressing home the summons of the Lord these days. That's why I've sensed the Lord directing me to take the congregation on a trip back over time to spend a year in Corinth and to see what 'church' was really meant to be. I think we might all be in for a shock or two!

And my hope is it changes our lives!

an instrument of grace

In at the local primary school again, this time more informally.

I'd managed to get some reading done before I went while all was still quite quiet round the Halls. Getting in at 7.30am has that great advantage and the time with no one else around and nothing else requiring to be done was just what I needed today.

At the school it was mainly just coffee and chat, as the staff had their morning break. It's really sort of 'touching base' - and it does no harm for the children, too, to see me often there.

One of the girls in our church family here has been struggling a bit with her health, so I took the chance to ask her teacher how she's getting on: it was great to hear her say what a lovely girl she was - it really gives me quite a boost when, even as they're growing up and in the sometimes hostile (I mean to their faith) school environment, the staff can see the pleasant, courteous brightness of their lives.

The same was true much later on when I visited Ian again in the hospital at night. Before I even got to him, the nurse was volunteering - "what a lovely man he is!" (and, of course, she's absolutely right!)

Two fairly minor moments in my day, but underlining once again the impact of a person's life - young and old alike. Something about the person. Jesus, in a word! shining through in all his striking 'loveliness'.

Anyway, the school. It was more to see the head himself that I'd gone in today. To chat about assemblies and the way I might fit in. He's strong on pushing 'values' which he thinks the school must play a major part in giving to the children growing up: for many of the boys and girls, unless the school instils these basic values in their hearts and minds, they'll simply never get them any other way.

All the more pressing, it seemed, in the light of the murder last night of Rhys Jones, the 11 year old boy down in Liverpool. There's talk today of 'feral youths', a creeping sort of culture of the jungle in the younger generations growing up. As if these youths were sometimes not that easily distinguished from the wild and violent beasts which roam the undergrowth.

In the aftermath of last night's tragic murder of this little boy, such views gain growing credence.

Well, anyway, the head is keen to push his set of 'values' and I'm glad to play my part. I share with him, I guess, a vision of being able to transform this whole community and change it from the jungle which it could too easily become and see it rather grow to be a good and pleasant place where all may live at peace.

He spoke about the work that's done in London by Camilla Batmanghelidjh: to my shame I hadn't heard of her, despite her being the 'Woman of the Year 2006'. When I got back later on, I googled her name and learned about the charities she runs - Place 2 Be and Kids Company. I was struck by what I read -

she has devoted much of her life and formidable energies to working with the young cast-offs whom no one else wants to go near: teenage prostitutes, drug dealers, knife and gun-carrying toughs, crack and smackheads. And the rest. She embraces the kind of children that the rest of us avoid...

I found that pretty challenging. Not least because there's someone else I've read about who did exactly that. Like Jesus. Working with the cast-offs of society whom no one else wants to touch, the sort of people most of us avoid... And giving to these rejects of society the hope and love and life they so much want.

The head was saying that down in London where the work is based, the police have said that if the funding stops and ends her work, the crime rate will just soar. One person making a massive difference. An instrument of grace.

Am I prepared to get involved like that, engaging with the wilder side of life?

And yet we all have needs. The rich and the respectable as well. Death, not least, affects us all.

A lady with some long-time-past connection with the church here in the village had died: and the family had contacted me. So I called by to see them - very much the other side of life from 'feral youths'. But nonetheless as needy in their own sore, grieving hearts, as any other folk.

What a pleasure to meet them! And a privilege, too. I'm always so aware of that. The privilege of being welcomed into homes where there is grief and hurt and somehow bringing to their battered hearts a sense of God's own presence, love and help.

I think they had a sense of that - and that's as much the privilege as any other thing. Being in some small way an instrument of God's own healing grace.

being there

There was the first school assembly of the year this morning, along at the Primary School: and I went along, really just to be there as I wasn't going in any way to be involved.

The head had thought he'd only ask me in for the occasions when I'd get to speak - once a month or something of the sort. He's sensitive to the politics of the thing, I guess, careful not to have a Christian minister too often to the fore. I'd said, though, that there surely wasn't any harm in my being simply present - a face but not a voice. And he'd seemed quite content to run with that and so I went along.

Just a presence. Nothing more than simply being around.

After all, I'm taken with the notion that for thirty years in Nazareth that's all that Jesus was. Thirty years of being there - and no one really noticed God at all! But then, the 'pay-off' for those thirty years of simply being a presence in the place was startling when it came. Three years of massive impact which would change not just the town, but, more than that, the world.

So I'm happy just to be there, a chance to have a quick few words informally with children and with staff: to give a brief encouragement, to offer them a smile, to show by simply being there I'm interested in them, I care.

Not there because I have to be, not there because I have a chance to push my own agenda. Just there. For them. Like God himself.

From there I went on round to see a man who'd been in touch about his father's death. Well, his step-father, really - though since he'd only been a boy of six when family life was spoiled by father running off, this man his mother then went on to marry was, in truth, the only real, live father that he'd known.

Again, it crossed my mind that what this man most needed was a sense of God being interested and there. At the school the head had been speaking about the very real importance of our hopes and dreams. The children had their dreams all right - playing football for Scotland, being a professional gymnast, rescuing animals, even one who wanted at this early age to be an archaeologist!

So many, though, have had their dreams all shattered and have given up on hope. Perhaps this man, bereft again, is just a bit like that. A lot of shattered dreams throughout his life and ... well, where is hope now found when death is very final and our lives seem just so short?

Just being there is a message in itself, I guess. An acted sort of parable proclaiming God's own grace.

Often it's the little things without a word being said which end up saying so much! I'd bought a card this morning at the shop to send another teacher from a different school who's laid aside at present with a collapsed retina. We've had a bit of contact with him down the years - a bit of gentle banter and a fair amount of coffee, cakes and laughter, and sometimes, too, a bit more serious chat.

And now the guy's laid low - well, mainly horizontal, as I think he has to spend some 40 minutes every hour lying flat upon his bed. It could have been much worse, as well, from what I hear. Anyway, a card, by simply being there, as it were, can maybe say far more to him than any words inside: I hope so! Little things which say so very much.

Barely before I was back at the halls, I was seeing someone else. Unexpected again, but only unexpected by myself. The Lord knows what he's doing and he had my day well planned!

Martin is a lovely guy whose home is in Uganda. He's been here for the last two years and treats us as his family: and now he's heading back this coming Sunday to Kampala and the next stage in his life.

Every conversation that we have begins with "Praise the Lord!" Martin insists on that! He's taught us loads and still there's loads we have to learn from him. He's having a final fling this Saturday night, a barbecue and then a time of praise - informal, but the sort of thing he wants to try and organise a bit to make it something special for himself and for his friends.

He wanted to chat through some details relating to that - but also to talk about some burdens of the heart he'll have to bear when reaching home. We talked and then we prayed; and as we prayed we asked the Lord most urgently to work some mighty healing grace.

He was hardly a moment gone before another, older person had come in (this time by appointment). A very different set of needs and once again the need to pray most fervently for sometihng of a miracle. I felt myself way out of my depth - no bad place to be, I guess.

"Put out into deep water," were the words that the Lord had been giving us Sunday past. This is deep water, all right! I wasn't really sure just what to say or do - I certainly didn't really understand just what was going on in this poor lady's life: but I sought to hear, not just her words, but what the Lord was saying, too.

And all I heard was Isaiah 43.15. So I read that Scripture to her (along with that bit earlier in the chapter where the Lord is saying he loves us and we're his and he'll look after us through thick and thin): and I simply gave those words to her as his. His word to her.

I don't know if it helped or not. Sometimes it isn't any words we say that really count: it's just our simply being there, our readiness to listen and to give the person time.

The afternoon brought something very different and again quite out of the blue. A lady rang up to ask if I was somehow able to track down for her the details of the baptisms of her step-mother back in 1939 and then, in 1941, her step-mother's younger brother.

That entailed a trip down to the Bank where all these records from a former age are kept. I remembered the girl from the school today whose dream was to be an archaeologist: and I thought, this is kind of like me! Digging up the past!

I dug the details she was wanting out eventually - and thought this wasn't quite how I had dreamed that I would fill my days!

But then, I thought (and the time you have to wait to get these records out allows you time to think!), well, maybe there's a sense in which I am a sort of part-time archaeologist. I'm digging up the past to try and help us see today just what it is we're meant to be as followers of Christ: they got it right back then, and somewhere down the line we lost our way.

Those early generations of the followers of Christ, somehow it was their simply 'being there' which made such a massive difference. As I was reminded yesterday as well, you are the equipment.

Being there means that Jesus, too, is there. And things just start to happen when that's so!

'you are the equipment'

Few days work out quite like I might plan - and this was no exception!

I'd planned on 'preparation': that's to say, some thinking round the passage and the theme the Lord is giving for this coming Sunday's worship, and some wider reading, too.

Instead, I got people. The chance to meet a range of different people and to sit and talk with them; to listen to their stories and to talk about our dreams. As I say, not much of it was planned to be that way at all.

But it's people and relationships that count, not learning and performance on my part. I remember being struck a while ago when I read through Mark's gospel from The Message: I came to the bit where Jesus sends his twelve disciples out, each one still pretty much a rookie at this sort of thing, and says to them -

"Don't think you need a lot of extra equipment for this. You are the equipment..." (That's somewhere in Mark chapter 6 I think).

You are the equipment. I'm what he uses. Not my neatly-worded sermons nor my slickly packaged visual presentations. Just me. The person that I am. In relationship with others. Listening, sharing, talking, dreaming, laughing, praying. Me being me and Jesus somehow being there in me, through me, also doing his stuff.

You are the equipment, he says. So all the preparation went on hold. And the day was spent in largely being with people, engaging in important conversation and in building those relationships which count.

A long, and unexpected, but really fruitful conversation through a large part of the morning with a lady whose discernment of the promptings of the Lord I've long since shared. She's boldly taken steps of faith, responding to the leading of the Lord and now she rightly senses that he's still got more he wants to do: lots more. All that's happened thus far's but a start.

She's onto something central to what God is surely doing in these days. She understands that so much of the 'baggage' which the church has come to carry is just exactly that 'equipment' which the Lord says we don't need.

My nephew, David, was in over lunch - and what a fine young man he is! Well-mannered, good-humoured and always with so much to give. He gets on so well with any age of person.

The young, teenage girls in the kitchen were falling over themselves (or so it seemed, but I think he was oblivious to that!) to be the one to serve him: and all the while he's happy just to chat away with me, and with my Mum, a further generation up, and with the other local minister who was also there for lunch (who's not a further generation up from my Mum!)

David and his peers today, that growing generation understands far better than the ones that went before how crucial is the need for good relationships.

He spoke about the way that through in Glasgow, where he's studied these past years, he dresses in a T-shirt and his shorts (even through the winter months) and trots across to his local 'corner shop' with nothing on his feet.

The lifestyle of Africa where he grew up dies hard!

And that unusual, non-conformist dress-code that he has results in growing closeness to the guy who runs the store (it also seems to get him regular discount!).

You are the equipment. Just being 'you'. Which is all that David's being when he goes across the road. And which was all that Jesus was. Not conforming to all that others wanted him to be: but simply being himself.

I was chatting at night to a couple who've been sharing in our worship on a Sunday these last months. And I found myself suggesting that in essence that refusal (or reluctance) to conform is very much a feature of our life. Why do things just because so many others do them and expect the same of us? We simply try to be ourselves.

We don't believe we need a lot of baggage to be the followers of Christ and heed his call. We ourselves are the equipment.

Which makes life so much simpler.

the craft of engraving

Funerals take a fair amount of time and preparation. And today's been largely filled with just that sort of work. The service itself in the afternoon and the lengthy preparation through the morning.

I sometimes think they're rather like a tombstone that's erected at the close of someone's life: a final and a permanent reminder of the life the person lived.

As such, it's always crucial that I get it right!

The service of thanksgiving has a certain basic form: it can be varied, of course, to some extent, but the thing that really matters is the content. It's what goes on the tombstone as the clear, enduring epitaph - it's that which really counts.

And that's which takes the time and constitutes the work; the 'chiselling' out, with words my only instrument, the chiselling out of that which is the essence of the person's life.

Those guys at the golf 'majors', whose job is to get the engraving done before the silver trophy is presented to the winner at the end - those guys have my huge admiration. They have to get it right (it would be easier for them, of course, if Tiger Woods was absolutely guaranteed to win!) and they have to do it fast. It's a permanent record.

Funerals are a bit like that. A kind of spiritual engraving that I'm called to do upon that strange collective memory of the person's kith and kin, which forms a lasting tombstone in their hearts.

It involves me in encapsulating well, in just those few brief moments that I have, the essence of the person's life: painting out a portrait from a palette full of countless little memories people have: and setting such a portrait in the context of eternity, whereby the Lord himself will speak and go on speaking to our hearts.

I have to try and turn these verbal tombstones into something like the 'tablets of the law' through which abiding truths are spoken from on high and pressed home to our hearts.

I have to get it right and I have to do it fast. At least it always feels like that!

The pressure of both is intense. And so I like to set aside as much time as I can - and mostly that means doing little else. I only ever get one shot at doing that verbal chiselling on the tombstone that the funeral service is.

So that was the bulk of the morning today. No-one else around the place, which meant there weren't diversions and ensured that I could do this next 'engraving' with the focus it required.

At the service itself this afternoon there were crowds and crowds of folk. Standing room only, albeit the chapel involved was the smaller one of the two. At the end of the service, as people filed out, a man I didn't recognise came up and shook my hand.

"I've known her now for over fifty years," he said: "and you got her to a T!"

How important that is! And reassuring, too.

I sometimes think the task involved is basically prophetic at heart. Discerning, then proclaiming, what is nothing less than God's own word about the person who has died. Not his judgment on the person's life: but his word.

A word which shows that God himself has known this person through and through and loved them all their days - and therefore, too, a word which will proclaim, to all assembled there, he knows and loves each one of us as well.

And so it's living stones as well I'm chiselling out: my words at such a time can have an impact on the hearts and lives of those who're still alive: my words can maybe help to shape the future course their lives will now adopt.

Engraving God's own truth on people's lives and helping write his story in their lives.

I called by on the couple later on, the couple who've been working through the booklet which we use for those who want to find out more of what it's all about, Coming Alive! - again we had a good and fruitful time, sitting round their table with a warming mug of coffee in our hands. (In fact I even used the mugs at one point to explain about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit!).

I asked them what they wanted on their tombstones when they died. What they hoped their living would achieve.

They spoke about the way, above all else, they wanted to be known for how they'd brought their children up. So we chatted about that and they came to see that what they really wanted is the change and transformation that the Lord is all about: working in our lives the experience, the character and the massive sort of impact that is seen in Jesus Christ.

I said - you really want to change the world! Why stop with just your children when there are so many other people that you meet with day by day? The call that Jesus issues is ... well, at root the chance to join him as he brings about such change.

Sometimes, I fear, we've lost the plot and left folk far too passive in their faith in Jesus Christ. People want a cause for which to live and die, something that is big enough to merit that engraving on the tombstone that's erected at the closing of their life.

He helped to change the world. Something like that.

If I can give to people something of a vision for just what their lives can come to be in Christ, I guess that I'm engraving, even now, chiselling out a living, growing likeness to the Lord. Exciting!

redesigning the garden

Well, I really wanted to get out and into the garden today .. but the weather being what it was, I didn't manage more than half an hour or so before being soaked right through!

Frustrating! Like so much in life, I guess!

I've started - after months of trying to figure out just what is needing done - I've started on a fairly large re-shaping of the front bit of the garden at the entrance to the house. I get these notions from time to time; large-scale garden projects which I work at in my head for long enough and then pluck up the courage to translate into the landscape round the house.

The bit at the front has been niggling away at the back of my mind for long enough. The way it's laid out, it just doesn't work. It's laid in grass (well, it used to be grass and now it's just green and the green is just moss and the moss only shares it with weeds): but since it's on the north side of the house and doesn't get much sun, it's more forlorn than lawn.

A mess as much as moss.

It's laid out wrong. It's not that the lay-out's intrinsically wrong: it's just that it doesn't work there. 'Garden' must be done another way if things are going to grow there and look good. And can be done another way, with just a bit of boldness and a lot of careful thinking and no small amount of work.

So that's what I've started. And because it's very much a thing I'm undertaking bit-by-bit, it's going to take a while! And that's why I'm keen to be out at the work as much as I possibly can.

And all of that's a picture of the other sort of 'gardening' that I do. Called 'church'. The spiritual state of Scotland is no longer what it was: conditions here have now changed. The 'prevailing winds' that blow through our society have altered over time. The plot on which we're now 'doing church' is facing north.

What maybe worked before, what maybe was appropriate in sunnier times - well, the way that we've been 'doing church' for long enough, it's laid out wrong for now. It just won't work.

And so, I'm bit-by-bit in process of transforming how the 'garden' of our Christian lives are lived. It needs the same imagination and the same persistent boldness and the same sustained commitment to keep working at it day by day and week by week - and trusting that the Lord will make it grow and be the lovely, lively, life-imparting thing it's meant to be.

Tonight, at a 60th birthday do, I got speaking to a guy who's involved in a church in Dundee. (He's actually from New Zealand and he's working out in France, but he's part of the church in Dundee!).

They're trying to 'do the garden' in a different sort of way up there. Three nights a week, a team of them go out around the pubs and bars and clubs, to meet with folk and chat with them and share with them the Jesus whom they love.

Mainly it's the staff they get to know, and over time there's scope for them to talk about the sort of things that most folk are quite keen to find in life. Meaning and purpose and hope and fulfilment and love and peace and joy and ... well, the lot!

They want to know about these things. It's just that the way that we've been 'doing church' for long enough, it doesn't work for them. In a north-facing world, a different sort of lay-out is required. And that's what these guys in Dundee are seeking to do. Laying the good news out in a different sort of way.

And that's what I am trying to do as well. And sometimes it's frustrating!

fixing it

A man was in to fix the faulty printer here this morning. (It still worked in the main but it was plainly not functioning quite as it's meant to be doing). Anyway, I let the guy in and largely left him to it once I'd got the man a coffee and some biscuits on the side.

I watched him for a while to see the way he went about his work. The machine's quite big (quite expensive too) and he'd turned it round to get himself the access to the workings of the thing. A massive array of electronic circuit boards and who knows what.

What to do and where to start? I wouldn't have had a clue! But the man knew his stuff and located the root of the problem we have: and, though it took him quite a while and a bit of going back and forth to get fresh parts he needed for the job, he fixed it up and got it back to working as it's meant to do.

It struck me as I worked away myself that I'm doing something similar as well. Fixing something big that's somehow not quite working as it's meant to be.

'Church' is the way it's described. And it's needing fixed. It's not that it doesn't work. It hasn't totally 'died' on us yet (not quite!). But there's something wrong. And I think that most folk sense that now.

As I did some preparation and began again to hammer out the details of the word God means to speak, I felt like I am called by God to fix things in the church.

To be able to look at the whole, big, complex set of 'circuit boards' which lie behind the church's life and work, then figure out what's wrong and get to grips with fixing it.

It's a delicate task but it needs to be done. And I relish the challenge it brings!

And later, when I called in at the Hospital to see a friend who's not been well, it struck me once again that that's what's always going on in there as well. Fixing it, for those whose human circuit boards have sprung a fault.

This friend was having problems with his breathing and they'd recognised the causes and they'd gone about adressing them with remedies which made the man look just as if he'd landed from a spacecraft and had yet to get his helmet taken off!

I suppose he couldn't care a whit just how he looks, as long as he gets well! And likewise, in the work I'm called by God to do, I don't much care just what it takes as long as I can fix things for the church and get things back to working as they're meant to be.

sink or swim

It was great today to be going back into the local primary school. Nothing very formal, neither classes, assemblies or anything structured like that. Just in to see the staff at coffee time and have the chance to chat.

My role in being the chaplain there has changed across the years. Changed to being essentially relational, far more than any sort of up-front formal role, the way it used to be. It used to be that I was in far more and had the 'teaching' slot at each week's regular assembly. Now, it's more about my being around the place, a presence and a person, a face that children recognise, a friend to whom they can relate. And not just all the children but the staff as well.

Essentially relational. It makes life more exciting, that's for sure - I never know quite who I'll end up speaking with or what the time will bring! And so, unlike a formal talk, it's not a thing for which I can prepare at all - except by looking to the Lord and trusting that he's there himself, at work in all their lives.

I enjoy it like this, I have to say, and I see that this is simply how he calls us all to live. Working at relationships and bringing to the people that I'm with a sense of God's own presence, love and power.

One of our members died a day or two ago and so, last night, I'd called to see her husband and to share in all his grief. He told me that his wife had run, for thirty years and more, an evening class at one of the local schools: three nights a week for thirty years she'd taught a non-stop stream of children (parents, sometimes, too) to swim.

I was thinking of that when in at the school today. The chance there is, through being there in the school each week, to form and build relationships which serve across the years to help the children live (and not just swim!).

This lady, Margaret, who passed away, believed it so important that a child should learn to swim and what she did was simply teach two things, her husband said - survival and technique. The speed, she thought, could wait: the speed would come, if first they'd learned technique.

I was struck by what he'd said last night. Across those thirty years of being there in a local school three nights a week, she'd had the chance to form and build relationships and teach who knows how many different people how to swim.

I guess, in essence, it's exactly that I'm learning now to do. By being there in the school, and being there in a hundred other places where the children and community at large are found, and building on relationships that time alone can grow, it's there I have the chance myself to teach these folk to live. Survival and technique. That maybe puts it well!

An example of that today. Donna helps to clean our halls here week by week. She's grown to be a large part of the team we have and feels, I think, so very much at home. A single Mum, she's reaching the point where her older son is hitting the teenage years.

Survival is a theme, I think, to which she can relate! How on earth is she going to survive these next few years of bringing up her boys through teenage years? She doesn't want to 'sink' but really wants to learn to 'swim' instead.

We gave her today Rob Parson's new book - Teenagers! What every parent has to know. It wasn't her birthday or anything else. Just a chance to build on these relationships we're forming all the time and help the girl survive.

I suppose, as well, I actually ran an 'evening class' myself tonight! I've been seeing for a while, on a weekly sort of basis by and large, a couple who are really keen to 'live'. They want the best, at home, within their marriage and their family life, at work, across the board. And so the three of us have bit by bit been working through the booklet that we use called Coming Alive! (we don't go through it point by point 'religiously' - it's really more a starting point which triggers our discussions and then gives us sort of 'stepping stones' which keep us moving forward all the time).

These times we share are always great! Tonight was no exception - and again, as they asked all their questions and tossed around truth, it was lovely to see how the mist is beginning to lift. Each time we meet it's much the same, though I never know what to expect.

It's the 'Margaret's-evening-classes' thing again. Building those relationships each week and helping folk, who want to make the most of life, to swim and not to sink.

the spirit of Mrs O'C

The bulk of the morning was spent in 'admin'. Not really something I enjoy doing that much but it needs to be done and the work involved can be a helpful exercise in focussing my mind.

It took me quite a while (it usually does!) to write up summarising notes of the meeting we held last evening of The Hub.

(The Hub is a group of 10 of the leaders here tasked with providing some sort of a lead for the much larger body of leaders: its very existence is reflective of our still feeling our way forward as to how we live out our life as a congregation in a way that actually furthers what God means us to be about - rather than getting in the way)

I remember way back in primary school days first learning the skill of a 'precis'. I have vivid recollections of a rather bizarre teacher called Mrs O'Callaghan (at least she seemed bizarre then - even though I didn't know the meaning of the word!) teaching us, on pain of death it sometimes felt like, how to do a precis. Strange how it's teachers more than fellow pupils that I find myself remembering more clearly. Same at secondary level, too. I was thinking the other day about my latter years of schooling and while I could remember virtually all of the teachers in my 'specialist' subjects, I could recall next to none of my fellow pupils! Worrying, I thought at first. But then I figured it was just the love of their subject which marked these teachers out and just that love of their subject which they managed to pass on to me. That's quite a challenge for a guy like me, intent on teaching others God's own truth. Passion's the priority!

Anyway, back to good old Mrs O'C. Our discussions last night were pretty wide-ranging as we tried to think through how we translate the principle of a 'gifts-based' approach to ministry into the life of a congregation where most things are done on the basis of positions people hold.

Well, I try to ensure that good, old Mrs O'C would be proud of her erstwhile (sometimes rather errant) pupil. And, as I say, the discipline involved of extracting the salient points and giving some coherence to discussion which was really quite wide-ranging and diffuse - that discipline is a good one and it helps me get things clearer for myself. It ensures, I suppose, I reflect upon the things that we'd discussed - and reflection like that is a thing that I'd otherwise probably skip.

Meeting with Alastair later on (I generally do on a Wednesday afternoon) was helpful in that regard as well. He'd been at the meeting, too, last night, of course, and so that gave the chance to toss around with someone else the things I'd been reflecting on.

I recognise that such prolonged reflection is both vital to the sort of leadership I'm called to give - and, also, not a thing I'm naturally inclined to do: left to myself I'd be dashing on to something else.

The spirit of Mrs O'C still haunts me down the years! As if today she still is there and stops me in my tracks and says, 'Slow down: don't read and then rush on to somethinig else. Go back, reflect on what you've read and then distil the essence of the thing until you're able in a few short words to say just what it is that actually's being said'

The same would be true of another task that Wednesdays usually bring. That of updating the Update, gathering together from far afield both news and information: and then condensing it until it's in a form which helps us all get a feel for what's going on.

E-mail's great that way! I was able to include a note from my brother, safely out in Zambia now and full of real excitement at this next stage in his life. It's taken time to get him there - what he calls "the In-Between Time" - and in many ways that time was very much a case of simply waiting for the Lord and listening for his voice. Reflection.

Good reflection issues in incisive and radical action. For him that time of 'In-Between' is over, in the past: a new era has begun. And now, he says, "I have never felt so excited!"

'two-soup service'

An early start this morning as I wanted to get the soups on the go before heading off to have breakfast with a couple of the children from the African Children's Choir.

The choir are here in Edinburgh again for the festival and despite what must be a pretty heavy and tiring programme they are always so appreciative of everything that is done for them and given to them.

It's an absolute joy to share in a brief meal like that with them: humbling, too, to hear them give thanks to the Lord with such genuine and heart-felt gratitude for the gift of sleep, shelter and food - and to hear them asking with such confidence for the Lord's blessing on their hosts and on their ministry.

They return to Uganda within the next 3 weeks after what's been something like 15 months away and it was moving to hear one of the girls speak of looking forward so much to seeing her Mum again. There's so much we take for granted in our well-to-do and very much sophisticated world - so being with the girls this morning was refreshing to the soul and served to kindle gratitude and make my life a 'song' (at least figuratively - I can't sing like them at all!).

How open they are, as well, to embrace and befriend new people. A hug of warmth and welcome coming in - and before too long a readiness to joke and tease, calling me Uncle Jelly and insisting I must snore and pretending that they keep the lovely honey to themselves. God bless them in the ministry they have (far more than just a ministry in song).

Back to the soup. Two different ones today, as week by week we try to offer just a bit of a variety. The basic rule of thumb (I think) is that one of the soups should be safely 'traditional' (a little bit bland, perhaps, but beneficial just the same) while with the other there's scope to be more adventurous.

Last week it was my 'Tarracarrotomango' soup which filled that latter role: this week, a soup that raised the eyebrows of at least one (I think because she hadn't seen that particular combination before) - the 'Long Green Skinnies' soup (I try and come up with some names that are other than bland! It was really based around leeks and courgettes .. and not actually that daring at all!)

I sometimes think that this culinary challenge, meeting the oposite needs or desires of two rather different 'clientelle' (one looking only for something traditional and safe, the other feeling they could get that anywhere and wanting something a bit different), mirrors the challenge of ministry more generally.

I'm conscious of two very different constituencies today, both of whom are hungry for the Lord. The one can't see beyond 'tradition' and can only really cope with church when things are done the way they've always in the past been done. The other for whom that simply doesn't work or wash at all.

I have to remember they're two very separate soups - it doesn't do to mix them! And I find myself being drawn towards, and stretched between, two very different ministries. Can one guy cope with both? In the kitchen, yes. In the church of Jesus Christ? I'm not so sure.

It was the 'second-soup' sort of ministry I found myself involved in this morning. A large bit of time was spent on the phone with the lady who'd got back in touch with a text from abroad at the end of last week. It's not the church she needs, it's the Lord.

Can he work miracles? She doesn't think he can. But I believe he does. And will. And, no mistake, without his intervention this will only spiral down and further down. Traditional 'church' was no real use to the man born blind that Jesus met: he needed something else and something more. This woman's just like him. It's the 'second-soup' she needs!

Tuesdays are usually the day I meet with my fellow minister from the near-by Episcopal Church. We have lunch together, chat together and pray together. It's always time well spent. The chat is never idle and we leave, most times, both challenged and encouraged and aware that in our meeting thus the Lord's been there as well.

Today was just like that. A good two hours and more, which some might think is maybe time I could be better using in some other way. No. This man's become a good and trusted friend - and friendship's built on times like that. The chance to eat and talk, relaxed, and free from any sort of pressure from the clock: and finding Jesus very much a part of it as well.