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.