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!