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!