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.