catching up

It's St Andrew's Day today.

The guy had time for everyone and seemed to have a lovely knack of befriending absolutely anyone.

But time for everyone comes at a cost. And today the cost is called 'catching up'!

Through this week the time I've had for 'formal' preparation for the coming Sunday services has been next to nil. I stress the 'formal' part, because it's still been going on - it's just been getting done pretty much on the 'back burner'!

So today was a day for some catching up - and fast! I cheated a bit by being out and down here at the halls for 6am. No one remotely around, not even, it seems, way out in cyber space for there was a dearth of even any junk by e-mail post!

I needed to get into action pretty quickly today since I'd stuff still to do for the school. The first of a series of four separate sessions with all of the Primary 6. On Jesus.

So there was a fair old bit of work to do on that. Including preparing a powerpoint file, which ended up being really good!

A bit of a waste of time I have to say, since the Apple Macs used by the school simply couldn't or wouldn't respond when I fed them my memory stick!

Well, it's never a waste of time, I guess. I still have the file and it can maybe be used another time, another way. Who knows?! I've long since learned to smile and just get on with things.

But it meant my adopting an alternative line and more or less making it up as I went along - in terms of the approach I used (the content I'd worked on: and I knew what I wanted to say - it wasn't that I had to make up as I went along: just the approach!).

I guess a lot of life is just like that. 'The best laid plans...' and all that stuff. Being throughout adaptable, learning to adjust.

Something which I don't think we're that good at as the followers of Christ. The learning to adjust. It's not that the content has changed. But how we go about communicating that, well, there we have to change: adapt, adjust, be flexible.

The children were good, I have to say. The end of the morning and quite a long sit on the floor.

The first of these sessions on Jesus was all on his birth. I tried to give the background to it all and help them see what really it was all about. And why we make the fuss we do. And why it's at this time of year.

It's one amazing door of opportunity, I have to say. Four lengthy sessions to teach them the basics in terms of this person Jesus! It's a 'Christmas-come-early' experience, no mistake! A gift from God himself.

Another door he opens. Another striking instance of the work that he is doing in these days.

'Catching up'? Sometimes I think I'm simply catching up with him, he's moving ever forward at such speed!

God's presence

I'm tempted to say, 'another day, another death.' (I succumbed!)

It feels like that, at any rate.

The week's been full already of the fragrances of grief, those services of worship when we've given thanks to God for people now departed from this life. And just when I thought that I'd maybe move on and be free for a while from the pain and the sorrow which death always brings in its wake, I had a call this afternoon informing me of yet another death.

I suppose it serves to underline that all I seek to do is done against the backdrop of that final, sore reality. We all must die one day.

When I came back to the halls today, a man was there for lunch. He calls in with his wife from time to time to have a bite to eat. I've known him over quite a while, I guess, though not that well.

"Aye," he said with an air of resignation, as I went across to have a word with him, "the grim reaper!"

I thought the man was meaning me, at first. And I thought to myself, I surely don't look all that bad!

He was talking, of course, in more general terms. The grim reaper. The starkest fact of life is simply death, I guess.

And that's the sombre backcloth of the work I seek to do each day. Imparting life, when all around is death.

I've known the woman who's died for quite some years. She's worshipped with us here throughout my time. And some years back I conducted the funeral service when her husband died.

Such sharing in a family's grief like that creates a certain bond, I guess, which serves to build relationships. And those quite close relationships are very much the building blocks through which God builds his kingdom here on earth.

Relationships matter so much. Always.

The service of thanksgiving which we held today was another case in point. Again, I've known the lady all the time that I've been here. And, again, I'd shared with her and all her family some ten years back or more when she had been bereaved.

Quite similar, the two of these bereavements that there've been.

For a woman well on in her nineties there was really quite a crowd at the simple chapel service at the crematorium. A simple life, well lived. A woman who'd invested all her living into making for her husband and her family a home.

It seems so bland and stark to summarise a person's whole long life like that. But that's the simple truth of it. That's what she did. That's how she lived her life.

And few things are more crucial to the welfare of society at large. I spoke a bit about that. How building a home takes time and hard work. How it isn't some little afterthought being squeezed into the bookends of our time. It's a life. A vocation. A calling from God.

And she'd honoured that calling well.

Her family asked if I'd go back with them. I don't always go as a matter of course to these post-service meals. I play it by ear. Trying to listen to the Lord and figuring out what he desires.

Relationships. It seemed like he was pointing me to go there and to be there with the family for a while. A token of the presence of the Lord, continuing on beyond the formal service that we'd had.

Short moments when the love of God can gently be imparted to a family in their need.

The lady who'd died had two surviving sisters, so I went and sat with them. Just chatting a bit and taking the chance to talk about the sister whom they'd loved. And now had lost.

They were warm and bright like their sister had been. But the pain of bereavement is sore. And I felt for them both.

I was thinking today how just sitting with folk is a lot of what I do! But then I thought that that's in fact what Jesus did as well. A lot of the time anyway.

I'd been along at the school again at coffee break. And that was really just a sitting with the teachers there. Listening, talking, relating.

And then, on coming back, I was sitting again with a crowd of folk here. A lady was in, a regular here, and Donna, the cleaner, had stopped for her coffee as well. So there were, I suppose, about five of us there, drinking coffee and talking away.

About life. So many different facets to our lives. So many different issues to address. So many different burdens to be shared.

But the sitting and talking - and I guess the simply being there - there is somehow a therapy in that: a comfort and assurance in the sense somehow that God himself is there.

That's always the key. The presence of God.

I always remember the pleading of Moses of old. How he said to God, don't ask me to go unless I'm assured of your presence.

(I think the Bible even gives the word a capital, the Presence of the Lord, it's that important, that foundational a thing).

Nothing's more important than the presence of the Lord in what we do. I want to know his presence. I want to bring his presence.

There was a meeting at night I attended. About The Lot. It's a venue up in the centre of town. More a ministry, really, than anything else.

We were meeting about the future. The way ahead. Exciting. And scary as well. A bit like Abram stepping out. Or Moses, for that matter.

And above all else, the need to know the presence of the Lord. We couldn't even contemplate such stepping out, unless we had assurances that God himself goes with us all the way.

And it seemed to me we had that sort of guarantee from God. Which means, I guess, we shift the gears and go!

inside the story

Today's been just a little bit more varied in the things that I've been doing.

The shadow of bereavement and of sorrow still hung across the day. A service of thanksgiving for a man who'd died last week. A man I'd never met. A family I've only got to know within the context of their grief these last few days.

But not without those same sustained demands upon my heart. How quickly, in the cauldron of a family's grief - how quickly you can get quite close to them and feel the pain that's theirs.

There weren't so many at the crematorium for this service of thanksgiving. A man who'd lived his life quite differently from Ian in many ways. And very much a 'loner' in his way, I guess as well.

A life well lived, of course, I do not doubt. But not within the context of the family of faith. And so that whole dimension of the large, involved community of faith was wholly absent. The service, too, is therefore very different in its tenor and its stress.

Each service of this sort is so entirely different from all others, you could not even start to have some one-size-fits-them-all approach. Without the thing becoming just a totally impersonal and God-less sort of thing. Which to me is just anathema.

If I want the Lord to be known by the people sharing such times, I have to pour my heart into the thing. I have to feel the pain. I have to be myself involved with all the family, instead of being detached, removed and distant from it all and leading all their worship in a cold and clinical way. Folk need to know the heart of God himself goes out to them. That he, as much as any, feels their pain.

Well, I think that they felt that they'd met with the Lord. And I pray they'd have heard his voice.

It's times like that, when hearts are sore with grief and faced by all the stark reality of death - it's times like that that sometimes people start to listen out to what God might be saying to their hearts.

But that was in the afternoon. Before that there'd been quite a bit to do!

I was in at the school first thing. The Primary 1-3 assembly once again. I wasn't doing the talk or anything. Just being there and in that way sort of sitting with the children for a while.

Except they're on the floor and I get to sit on a chair - thankfully! My body wasn't made to do such sitting there, cross-legged upon the floor: I admire the children for sitting like that for so long and for coping so well with it all.

Right after that I was on to the Primary 1s. (For them it was another little session of their sitting on the floor. Poor things!)

I was there to speak about Christmas. I focussed on the shepherds. Their concentration-span is not that long (the children, I mean, not the shepherds: I can't really speak for them!)

I tried to get them involved. By making the sounds and acting the parts.

Shepherds who were sleeping, shepherds who were maybe sitting round and telling little jokes to one another. Snoring and laughter in equal measure. And the sheep in the fields with their varied bleating noises. Daddy sheep (deep bleats), mummy sheep (more middle of the range, their bleating) and little lambs (a high-pitched sort of meh-eh-eh-eh-eh-ing).

As I say, I wanted to get them involved. To see and feel that they as well were there inside the story. I guess that's what I'm endeavouring to do all the time. To open the book and help folk get inside the story.

Be part of it. Instead of simply reading it.

And then we had some actions, too, once the angels came and sang their praise of God (the children did that too - I mean, they played the part of the angels as well).

Then on and down to Bethlehem, and I had them up and onto their feet (some of them, at any rate: I split them up into different groups - not least because one of the children was in a wheelchair and I didn't want to make him feel left out): and some of them clapped and some of them hollered. And off they went to Bethlehem to see this child who'd grow to be their King.

I love being with the children! They're so keen to learn. So keen to enter in to all that's going on. Though what they all took in, who knows? I leave that all to God!

Back here there were things I needed to do before the lunchtime service. It wasn't my turn to speak at that - how grateful I am for so many able people here who share this teaching ministry with me: but I was leading the worship and therefore had a few things still to prepare for that as well.

And Heather and all her family called by just before the service started, too. It was lovely they feel so much at home round here - all of them. That's the way it's meant to be. And that's how it always feels with them. They're just part of the family. And we of theirs.

Greta was doing the teaching slot at the lunchtime service today (as well as playing the piano - a multi-tasking woman no mistake!). What a gifted lady she is! She had about the hardest bit of the book of Ruth to explain and she did it wonderfully well. Clear and just so well applied.

As I say, it's great to have such folk around. And to have them so ready to help. They all so gladly give of themselves, in countless different ways. It's a huge and humbling privilege for me to be part of the family here!

At night I was out at a service again. It feels like this week is full to nearly bursting point with service after service all the time!

This time, though, it was a service further afield. Along the road, but still in the north of the town.

Newhaven. A fellowship with whom in one way and another down the years I've had a fair involvement. Tonight saw the start of Peter Bluett's time as minister there. And what a great service it was (despite being still, in some ways, fairly formal)!

A real sense of expectancy. A buzz about the place. The sense of God himself being very much involved in all that's going on. It was good to be there. And good to catch that sense again that underneath statistics and beyond the eyes of those who only see the visible, there's something really striking going on these days.

Our Lord at work! And we ourselves a part of it. Inside the story. Writing it more than reading it.

angels and heaven on earth

A day like today leaves me absolutely drained. Out-for-the-count-on-my-feet by the end of the day.

Mind, it was a good day, no mistake. A 'high' day in the annals of eternity.

Another day when God just seemed to camp out in our midst and make his presence wonderfully known. Another day when God, it seemed, took pains to stress the pleasure that he has in all his saints.

For the whole long day was taken up with just one theme. Our marking the end of a life well lived in the cause of Jesus Christ. Our thanking the Lord for his grace in his servant Ian.

Again it was an early start. Up and out by 6am, there was much that needed done.

Some final preparation on the message I would bring. The service sheets requiring to be checked through once again and then be printed off. A powerpoint presentation to be finalised, with all the 'animations' and the timings to be tinkered with and sorted out just right: then loading it and checking it and setting out clear guidelines for the person who'd be running it across there in the sanctuary later on.

It all takes time - and it's best not rushed. A day such as this is a gift from God and a day to be savoured throughout.

The girls were in early, too.

(Well, I think of them all as the 'girls', they've such eager and passionate hearts and stamina second to none: in fact, I often think they're really just angels in human guise!)

There's lots to be done for a day like this. But God honours our labours and always there's so much laughter and fun in the onerous tasks getting done.

Setting out the halls. Making everything just right. They always make the whole place look just wonderful and see to all the smallest little details in the most amazing way. I think they're all just total, utter stars. And that was them from early in the morning through to five at night without a break.

They really serve to make a day like this the next best thing to heaven here on earth.

And then there were the services. The crematorium first, with a larger crowd there than I'd thought there be. But a good clear word and a marvelous spirit of praise.

From there it was a case of a quick turn-around and back to the church for the service here at noon. The place was packed, with loads of folk from who knows where the half of them. I guess from all sorts of different walks of life - and some from years and years ago.

The grace-filled, gentle influence Ian had was thoroughly pervasive in the love he shared around.

What a glorious service of worship it proved to be! Uplifting, ennobling, heart-warming. And full of the Lord in so many different ways.

Ian's son, David, spoke as well. No easy thing to do. But this fine young man, he did it all so well. The things he said, the way he spoke. Ian himself would have been humbled and proud at his son standing there speaking thus.

The whole thing was simply so steeped in the presence and grace of the Lord. The sort of thing you can't put into words. But at times like that you need no words to know that God is good.

And then there was the lunch here in the halls. The whole place almost heaving with the volume of the people who stayed on. What marvelous times they are! A genuine celebration of a life so full of Christ - and not some weary wake, suffused with gloomy-faced distress.

It was great that the children were there as well. Ian's grandchildren. All eight of these lovely children (another one's due, literally any day now). They'd drawn a floral tribute to their Papa which we projected on the wall. It was simple and lovely and powerful indeed.

They were all so good and their all just simply being there in some ways made the day.

What fun we had! I remember when my own Dad died, my sons, they still remember with delight the funeral day.

The fun and games they had that day in the aftermath of all the formal services. My Dad's own older brother, he was there: and, just a child at heart himself, he was crawling under tables in the hotel dining room, and giving all the children there a ball!

And so, to this day, my sons have only very happy memories of their Grandpa's funeral day: even in death, the fun that they'd had while he was alive, remained to the very end.

I wanted it to be the same for all these lovely children here today. A day they'd remember with gladness and one which would still be so full of the fun that they'd known with their Papa.

Well, that was really all the afternoon by the time folk had left and the clearing up was done. And like I said at the start, the girls were just such stars. They always are.

They must have been exhausted by its end. But what a day they made it be for everyone.

It's hard to move on from a day like that. And the evening was hard in that way.

Other things to do. Other folk to see.

Another grieving family, gathering here from different parts, preparing for the service that there'll be tomorrow afternoon. And for them, of course, tomorrow will be just as hard and just as much a special day for them.

I think it's the business of pouring my heart into so many different homes that I find so very hard. It sometimes feels my heart is being stretched in about a thousand different ways.

For my heart was sore and broken with the passing of a friend. My heart's whole living energy was poured into the day that just had been. It felt as if there wasn't that much left!

And yet, and yet .. and yet there was this other family, too, needing not a formal sort of going through the motions, but needing the heart of the Lord being opened to them. Through me. I find that hard, to stretch my heart already stretched to breaking point and drained of all its strength.

But God gives grace. And I was glad of the chance to be with them and share the time with them as well. And see the Lord himself at work.

I hadn't met these folk before. And yet there's been an easy, warm rapport. And the newly widowed woman is now talking of perhaps in coming days being part of what we're doing here at lunchtimes through the week.

Who knows just where this sorrow in her life will lead her under God? Who knows just how he'll take up this great grief within her heart and work it all to good and open up a future for this woman that she'd never even countenanced before?

To share with the Lord in the work that he does is a wonderful, thrilling thing! It maybe sometimes stretches me to breaking point, but I love it! I always think, what a privilege it is that he gives, to share what he's doing with us.

A couple of visits later on, I was back at the halls to get down to the task of preparing tomorrow's address.

Never having met the man who died, the whole thing's very different from the way it's been with Ian. Harder, in a way, as well, of course. I'm mostly working blind.

But I felt that I got the bulk of it done: and called it a day at 10. Weary again. But happily so, in the knowledge that none of this work is ever in vain.

And tomorrow is more of the same! The sheer, pulsating thrill of being involved in what the Lord is daily doing in his world!

works of art

Today, like most of my days it seems, has been pretty full!

It's a busy old week this coming one - quite apart from what yet may crop up. So I was up and at it early to try and get ahead.

I don't like being rushed at all. Not when there are services such as this week holds for me to lead and thus prepare.

(Well, especially not when there are services such as that. I don't like being rushed at any time!)

It was good to be able to pop along ('pop' if you call an hour and a half a 'popping along'!) and share some time with Heather, Ian's wife, and some of her family, too. Really a case of sorting out the details in relation to tomorrow and the way the day will run.

We joined in prayer before I left and committed them all to the Lord. Tomorrow will be a big and special day for them: and God, I have no doubt, will make his presence felt in quite some unmistakeable ways. When I pray with a family like Ian's, there's a sense of real expectancy, despite it being a time of grief and loss.

The bulk of the day after that was spent in preparing the service. A thing like that takes time. It's not the sort of thing I rattle off with any ease or speed.

It is, I think, a sort of work of art, a chance to stretch my literary and creative gifts in such a way that something of the glory of almighty God is sensed, and all of us left deeply and profoundly awed by all he is as we gather for this service of thanksgiving for Ian's life.

But it's hard, painstaking work. And it took me the bulk of the day (and I'm not quite finished yet!).

I think I felt the 'pressure' all the more today because Ian was himself so very much an 'artist' under God. His whole life was very much a work of art. That's what I want to convey. And so it's all the more important that this service of thanksgiving is itself a thing of lasting, striking beauty.

A moment set in time which captures all the splendour of the great eternal God.

I was out again at night to call on other folk who've been bereaved. A lovely couple, too, they are. Her mother died last week, well on up in her nineties. And her daughter was so attentive, in latter years not least.

But another very different set of details and another life well lived.

How the Lord remembers all these details of so many different lives, I cannot even start to guess! His knowledge is amazing! And I guess it stems from the vastness of his heart of love. Which is good to be reminded of!

The details are important, for it's these that make the services a personal thing. And God is nothing if not personal in how he always deals with each of us. It's that I'm always eager to convey at times like this.

They were glad I'd gone round, I think. Glad of the comfort that someone knows and cares. That they're not alone in their grief.

Glad to be prayed for, glad in the knowledge the arms of God are gently placed around them in this way to strengthen and sustain them through their grief.

I finished the night at the home of the couple I've been seeing for quite some months. We drifted round to what had been the focus of this Sunday morning past. Spiritual gifts.

It was quite exciting stuff! I mean, these two have moved on such a lot in terms of where they're at. And it was like the Lord just moved them on again and spoke right to their hearts.

We spoke about their gifts. And that was quite revealing in its way.

And then I spoke of how the Lord had taken those four fishermen, right at the start of his ministry, and had simply moved them on a notch or two.

'Your gifts lie in fishing. That's what you are and who you are. I'm not going to ask you to do something else: just use those gifts for the kingdom of God'

So I said the same to them. These are your gifts: now use them for the purposes of God. And we prayed along those lines.

And I marvelled at how far these two have come. Because that story of the call that Jesus issued to the fishermen was where we first began. Months ago now.

We were back where we started - except a good few notches further on and up! It was thrilling to see and to share.

priorities

Most of my weeks you'd probably think I'm chasing the clock.

Sometimes, too, it feels like that. There are, of course, so many things I'd like to do: and loads of things I figure that I may be should be doing as well.

But I can't do them all. So a lot of my days I'm working at priorities. The day-by-day priorities the Lord himself sets down. He's the only one I really have to think about and seek to please.

This week there've been a number of deaths. Which means (at least) three extra services next week, for each of which there's always the need for hours or preparation.

Quite apart from finding the time to call on those bereaved and .. well, simply be with them and share with them their sorrow and their pain.

And that's before the midweek lunchtime service which we've added in. And a series of commitments at the primary school I've taken on next week.

So next week's almost spoken for already, so it seems!

Today I had time along with the family of Ian again. They're lovely folk and make me feel myself just one of them. Such times are very special. And today I was there not least to have time with the children. I mean Ian's grandchildren.

Old enough to miss their Papa desperately. Young enough to find some things confusing and (who knows) perhaps a little scary, too.

It was great to be able to talk with them and try and put their minds at rest and help them share the hope Ian had himself. They've been brought up very well, this growing clan of grandchildren.

They felt, I think, secure in knowing that their Papa was just 'sleeping' now with Christ. A good and lovely sleep which one day will be ushering in a whole new day for all of us, so wonderful we cannot even start to think just what it will be like.

Going back to the halls I popped in for just moments to convey my own good wishes for a young lad who was off today to graduate. He's a fine young man and I wanted to wish him well and let him know how glad I was for him.

Friendship is built, I always believe, on little things like that. And so I try to work on them.

I was barely back to the halls from there than I was meeting (by appointment) two young folk at the other end of life. Getting married next year.

A morning full of switching gear for me!

A lovely pair, so right for one another and so eager that their marriage should be something that would grow and last. I've been trying to meet with the two of them on a reasonably regular basis.

No set agenda or anything quite like that. Just getting to know them bit by bit. And helping them work through the issues which have to be faced. Again, it's simply giving folk those bits of time which genuine friendship needs.

And as I say, there isn't time for everything. Or everyone. Unless I spread myself so thinly in the time I give it wouldn't count for anything at all.

I looked in later at another home. The lady there, a lovely Christian lady, who's been struggling since her husband died eight years ago - she's taken a downward dive. An unusual disease which has knocked her for six and left her with weeks to live.

Her family have been great (as she has been with them). And I was glad to have the chance to see them once again. Though she herself has lost her power of sight and isn't seeing much.

They've round-the-clock nursing care provided for her now. She's that far gone. It's hard.

With her like that, and Ian now passed away, and calls from two more funeral undertakers with arrangements to be made for two more services next week - it was one of those days when I'm made to feel so conscious of the brevity and frailty of all our human life.

And how little time there really is to fit in all we want to do!

So I was out again in the evening to see one of the families where death again had called. I try to avoid being out like that on a Friday night. But sometimes needs must!

There isn't time for everything in life. We have to be selective.

And the choices which we make through life are absolutely crucial. Every day.

people

Today's been a day filled with people. A good day, as such. But not much time for anything else.

Like some quiet and extended time alone to hear what God is saying in these days. That sort of thing I've been doing on the hoof. Listening to him as I've gone around.

Thursday's the day I try to get in to the school at the coffee break. A chance for a chat with the teaching staff. Though I also got time with two of the girls from Primary 5 whom I happened to meet on arrival. It was good to chat with them.

Little, fleeting conversations. With the girls. With some members of staff. With the Head himself. Fleeting. But sometimes they're the means by which relationships are gently built.


Then on from there to spend some time with Ian's family. The undertaker was there at the time which was why I'd gone there then. It sometimes makes it easier to coincide my visit with his own.


It was good to be with Ian's family. They're very close, of course. All of them. And all the generations, too. He was that sort of man. Adored by them all.

And now, with his passing, creating a huge big void in all of their hearts and their lives.


I know the family well and counted Ian a friend. I've shared with them all now down through the years in weddings and baptisms and all of the ups and the downs of their lives. Friendship like that as followers of Christ is very much a privilege and a joy.


They make me part of the family, too. Which is humbling - and heart-warming as well.


I was glad of the time with them all. And we managed through all of the laughter and tears to address all the things needing done.


Back here at the halls when I returned I had a rapid turn-around. A quick five minutes to see some folk who were in to sort the computer.


They've not been well the past two months, this couple who were in. So it was good to see them and have a chance to catch up with their news. And good that they've the expertise to sort things out computer-wise!


It was off to the school once again. The SU group for Primary 4 and 5 meets now for a quick half hour. This was the third week that we've run it and each week there've been a few more children there.


Including a girl from Primary 7 this week, who seemed to want to stay! It's going well and I think the children who are coming really like it quite a lot.


Another chance to sit and get to know them just a bit. And share with them what matters most to us!


There were calls to make in the afternoon - and e-mails needing answered too. And a chat with a man whose mother is ill and who's now back home needing 24 hour attention and care.


I don't think she's long to live. And I guess he needed to chat. To know he wasn't alone. I'll call by and see his mother and him. These days will be hard for them both.


At night I was round with the family of Ian. Touching base, catching up on how the day'd gone and arranging to meet with his grandchildren, too, to go over with them what will happen next week at the short committal service which we'll hold.


The children were pretty high. And I don't think I exactly helped them down the mini-mountainside of non-stop action and of chatter which there was! But they're a lovely crowd of growing girls and boys and I've seen them off and on, I guess, across the years.

Before I'd gone round there, I'd taken time, in another connection entirely, to try and write a piece about the picture we were going to give to Norman who had led us in the music at the service of tanksgiving for my Mum.


We wanted to give him something, as a way of saying thanks. His playing was really quite out of this world. And we wished that he as well would have some means of remembering a special day.


Hence the framed photo which we'd got. A photo of the cross down on the shore at Innean Mor, far down the Kintyre peninsula. So I'd written a piece to explain with the gift just why the place was always so significant for us.


And so later on my sister and I went out to his home to give him this gift. I enjoy doing that! There's a lovely sort of joy in ... well, simply giving. I think he was pleased with what we'd got. And I hope that it helps him remember with pleasure a day that was special indeed.


So, as I say, a day that was filled with people. Like the heart of God himself.


People. He loves us. And in that love he came to be with us. Spend time with us. Share life with us. To laugh and cry and live and die. To bring the grace of heaven to the griefs and trials of earth.


And I'm just slowly learning that true life is found in daily following him.

no wasted journeys

It's been a wasted journey, I'm afraid.

Those were the words they used at the school when I went in first thing to find the assembly was cancelled.

Given the rain was chucking it down and I'd come all that way on foot (not that it's more than a five minute walk) - and would have to return in like manner - I could see what they meant.

Except it didn't really feel like a wasted journey at all. Some good fresh air and exercise. A chance to pop into the P5 class and see the children there. The people that I passed and spoke to on the journey there and back. Hardly a wasted journey.

I don't like to think that any journey's 'wasted' in the providence of God. Perhaps because I'm conscious that it is indeed a 'journey' that I'm on these days.

That 'Abram-esque' adventure where I do not really know just where it all will end. Just that I'm travelling. Going out from where I've been for long enough. Exploring new terrain. Going right on off the map.

But in thinking back, it seems as if my day has been a series of some rather different journeys.

The journey to school at the start of the day. And another small brick being set in place in the building of relationships.

Then later on a journey to the crematorium for the funeral of the man who'd died last week. The 'big man', Charlie. The massive Hearts and Monarchs fan.

It was different, the funeral service, I'm bound to say. Not quite the usual sort of format and not quite the sort of content that I'd normally expect. Music from the Hearts CD, with the singing of the songs the fans there sing. (We did have a couple of hymns as well!).

But I really quite enjoyed the time, if that's the word to use. 'Enjoyed' because there was for me the joy of God's own presence in it all. Like Jesus at the wedding there in Cana long ago. It was like he pitched up here as well.

I didn't wear the robes I usually do. That was, I think, symbolic in its way. I took off all the 'clothing' of religion. Like Jesus did.

I tried to get beside these folk and understand their grief. To share their joys and sorrows, to relate to their emotions and engage with all their feelings at this time. And yet to bring God's message to them all. As a friend, on a level with them. And not some distant, other-worldly piety which would leave them feeling cold.

I enjoyed the challenge and was conscious of the privilege it is to journey, just like Jesus did - journey to, and enter then, the world in which the people here now live.

Not a wasted journey. Not at all.

But I wondered, too, about the life this man had lived. How possible it always is to make of life a dreadful, wasted journey. To end up going nowhere in our lives. To miss the point. To lose the plot and wander off and miss the One who is himself 'the way'.

And live a life that is in fact, when all is said and done, another wasted journey. I tried to get that across to the folk. I felt it pretty strongly.

From there I had a journey to the hospital.

Ian, a friend and fellow leader here, was ill. He's struggled for a good few months with failing health. He's always bright and always such a tonic when you see the man. But his breathing's been bad and it's not been an easy time for him. Or for his devoted family as well, of course.

He was back into hospital through last week and I'd seen him then. But today he had taken a turn for the worse. I got a call from his wife (in a roundabout way) so went in and was there at his side.

I wasn't there long as his daughters came in soon after - his wife was already there. They needed time together as a family. Ian's always been such a wonderful family man and all of them adore him through and through. Understandably.

The nurses then shifted him through to a single room and so there were some moments when I had the chance to be with them all.

They were all upset, of course. I prayed with them all as they waited there that the Lord would give them the grace and the strength to make these last sore hours of his life a very special time. (I mean 'sore' for them, especially: Ian was really not distressed at all).

Mother Theresa always used to say the ministry she had in being there for and with the people whom she served on passing from this earthly life was very much akin to what a midwife does in bringing someone into this strange world.

There are few greater privileges given to folk than 'birthing' a person from this world to the next. So we prayed for the grace to fulfil that role. And we prayed that Ian's son would make it in time (he had to travel down from Aberdeen).

Not a wasted journey. Not for Ian's son. Not for myself. Not for any single one of them at all.

I wasn't there long at that time. But I was glad to have been there then.

I called back later on. Another journey, back through the maze of the hospital wards. Ian had died a half hour back or so.

Our prayers were well and truly answered though. His son had made it in time. They were all of them there at his side when he died. And they'd made those final moments of Ian's life a very special, hallowed time indeed. Full of the presence of God.

And, yes, it brought it all back home to me, the way my Mum had died as well. It felt like we were all in it together. Like all the saints, we all belong to one big, lasting family. Who journey on together to a better world.

So we stayed there and we chatted quite a while. With laughter and tears and sorrow and joy. We spoke about the man he was, the life he lived, the love he showed. We read from a Psalm and we thanked the Lord and we asked for grace.

And we knew, above all else, the way that Ian had lived his life, it was no wasted journey.

Not at all.

He'd found the way, he'd journeyed well. And he'd reached his destination.

It was humbling and thrilling to see it and share it and know it.

off the map

There are times when people are very direct.

Which is good. Because God can be very direct.

Today I was speaking with someone at length and the person suggested the following sentence might well be God's word for myself -

"Teaching MUST be followed with action that makes room for God to move".

It's stuck with me all day.

We weren't speaking at all in abstract terms. It had to do with a specific situation. And the way that God's directing things and what that means for me. Kind of re-inforcing what I'd felt God saying yesterday as well.

Like it's not enough to merely teach his truth. I've got to do the thing as well. So it's not enough for me to teach the people here about the challenge of 'doing church' another way. I've maybe got to show them what that means.

As in do it myself.

To some extent it's that which I've been trying to do for quite a while. But there's maybe more. Further, larger, 'riskier' steps of faith. Action which makes room for God to move.

Action which affords the chance for what I'm trying to say to be in fact now seen.

I went back to the book from which the quote had come. And straightaway my eyes were drawn to something that the author wrote about the sort of leadership Alexander the Great had exercised.

The guy had conquered all the known world. But not content with that he figured that he'd like to cross the Himalayas and extend his conquests into all that lay beyond.

Which was awkward. Because no one knew what did lie beyond. They'd come to the edge of the map.

His officers "had a decision to make: would they be willing to follow their leader off the map, or would they be content to live within its boundaries?"

I think that's where I'm at! Which is a bit scary. And a bit exciting too!

Am I willing these days to venture off the recognised 'map' of how church should be done?

Today there've been meetings, and people to speak with, through most of the day. Same again at night. And right on through to the very end the theme has remained the same.

The meeting at night was an interesting one. Committee meetings of any sort aren't always quite like that: and committees of the Presbytery of Edinburgh less so than most. Sometimes these meetings almost do my head in!

But tonight's was good and kind of got quite heated by the end. In a right sort of way. Not the 'aggro' sort of heated up. Just lively. Animated. That sort of thing.

And about exactly this same issue on a wider front. The call to be bold and to venture off the map.

I don't often speak at these meetings. I haven't much to say. But tonight I found myself talking, with urgency, passion and zeal. Along these lines again.

Venturing off the map.

And then when I was thinking back about it later on, I thought of that same quote again - "Teaching MUST be followed with action which makes room for God to move".

It's not enough to say these things and urge them on a crowd of other folk. It's got to be followed with action.

My being ready myself to venture off the map.

forward planning

Mondays often involve a fair old bit of forward planning.

As in preparing for all that the coming week is going to hold. Including, of course, the coming Sunday services.

It's sometimes hard to get myself down to that. Yesterday's still so fresh. My mind and my heart are so full of the word that I've only so recently brought that it's hard to shift gear and to start all over again.

There is a certain continuity, of course. God's dealings with us all, and what he has to say, they're hardly a staccato sort of thing. He builds on what he's said and done before.

So it's much more like I'm reading a book and turning the page to start a whole new chapter in the story as it bit by bit unfolds before my eyes.

Or ears. Because it's basically a case of trying to listen to the Lord. As he reads to me the next succeeding chapter in the story of his dealings with us here.

It takes both time and energy. But it's good, exciting stuff. Being in the story ourselves. Instead of somehow simply sort of reading it as just an academic exercise.

So a large part of the day was spent engrossed in getting down to all of that. Tuning in. Waiting, reading, praying, thinking. Tossing things around with God, to tease out what he's saying to us here.

I was out at different points as well, seeing different folk. Like the widow of the man who died last week. And their daughter.

Forward planning again, I guess. At least in some ways. Planning with them the way they'd like the memorial service to be.

The man was a massive Hearts supporter. Heavily involved. A programme seller at Tynecastle and an away-game season ticket holder too. Committed, in other words!

And a long-term fan of speedway, too. As avid in supporting the Edinburgh Monarchs as he's been in supporting the Hearts. I saw his death was mentioned on the website of both teams. That's how involved, committed and keen the man had consistently been.

And so they want a service with a Hearts song as they enter and what is I think essentially the 'anthem' of the club being played at some point through the varied ceremony we'll have. 'We are the Hearts'. And a well-known local radio DJ who's a friend to speak about the guy. Another friend to read a home-grown poem that a further friend composed.

I think a few years back I'd have run a mile from conducting a 'service' along such lines.

But since the last few weeks it's been the wedding Jesus shared in that's been brought by God before me, it's like he said - 'Now you go do that too'.

Except it's a funeral not a wedding I'm to go to and attend. Their world. Their grief. Their pain. Their terms. Their service.

That's challenging. To bring the grace of Jesus to their world. To make his presence known. To let his voice be heard.

In language they can understand. In terms to which they all can well relate.

It's almost like the Lord gives me a 'practical'. It isn't simply 'theory' I expound. I've got to learn the practice too. Wedding, funeral. Same difference. Get out there, God says: you've seen what Jesus did, now you go do it too.

At night there was some further forward planning.

With the couple I've met with for quite some months as we've worked through Coming Alive! Well, that's been a loose sort of basis for all that we've shared and discussed.

We ended up thinking of worship tonight. Not because I'd planned things quite that way. We just got onto that and stuck with that and tossed things back and forward on those lines. It was good stuff as always. A help to me as it was to them.

But we're nearing the end, I suppose. So I raised the question with them. What next?

It came up very naturally. We'd talked, as I say, about worship most of the night. And I'd shown them what Paul had to say (1 Cor.14). Which is quite a shock to the system, I think!

He says when everyone gathers together, we're all to come with a hymn, or a word, or a fresh sort of revelation: we can all, he says, we can all prophesy, and if a revelation comes to you while someone else is speaking, well the guy who's in full flow should stop and let you have your say.

I mean .. well, I mean, that's not the way we do things here!!

So we got chatting away about all of this and I think they saw that things were rather different in the days when Paul was writing this.

Like they didn't have large buildings and when they gathered together it would be in someone's home. And so I asked them how they'd feel about expanding what we presently did (the three of us) and use their home as a 'gathering place' for a larger crowd of folk.

As the next step forward from where they're at, I think it seemed to them an obvious and attractive move.

And me? Well, the whole thing really excited me. I thought that's surely just exactly how Christ's church is meant to grow.

I didn't go with that in mind when calling on the two of them tonight. It's simply how the evening opened up. Forward planning of a rather different sort!

at least ...

It's always good to have a fall-back position.

Like being able to say when Scotland lose, "Ach well, they may have lost but at least ..." - well, you learn over the years to make up your own end to the sentence.

Thankfully it's only a game! And maybe the fact that all the Italian players had black arm bands on their shirts put the whole thing in its perspective. That football fan being killed last week .. well, for him it was life that he lost.

We just lost a game. It's kind of rather different.

Sundays, I guess, are given by God to get that perspective back again. And today's been a day for getting myself ready for that.

Out and about, doing various jobs. In to the bank and cleaning the house and going to the shops and buying the food and cooking a meal and digging the garden, trimming the hedge and stopping to read for a while.

Then watching the game with a crowd of some grown-up boys in the home of one of my friends.

All of the day providing the chance to reflect on what God has been saying. Earthing it all in the up and down world of the people who walk these streets.

I know what he's called me to say. It's being able to say it in such a way it makes sense on the streets of the world.

Where people find their hearts are often broken and their hopes are often foiled. Where time and again they think 'If only this', 'If only that'.

That sort of world. What I'm given to say has got to make sense in a world which works like that.

A world where Scotland lose.

fever pitch

I was in at the barber's again today.

Another of my periodic visits to this favourite haunt of mine! And they were all on the top of their form. Non-stop chat from all of them.

And all the chat? Scotland, Scotland, Scotland. That was all! With the crucial game tomorrow coming up, when Scotland play the Italians through in Glasgow - and Scotland with the chance of going on and right on through to the European finals next summer - everyone's excited. Including me!

And one of the girls had a ticket she'd got for the match! I mean, how does a girl from a barber's shop do that!? No wonder they were all excited to bits.

They had the local radio on. And just as I went in they'd heard this guy go phoning in and buying up a ticket for the match for fifteen hundred pounds!

It's Children in Need again today. That was why the ticket was being sold. And everywhere I've been today it's these two national matters which have been on everyone's minds.

The folk in the shops, the children at school. Even the lady behind the Post Office counter.

All of them dressed for the day. Some of them into their Pudsey bear routines. Some of them into their kilts. The place is sort of fever pitch today!

I'm glad to be out and about on a day like that. It's like on a day such as this, all the inner feelings that are maybe always there, are given full expression.

Passion and hope, kindness and fun, child-like excitement and chat. All right out on the surface today.

It's good to have emotions showing face, I thought. We're most of us too good at simply hiding how we feel and keeping it behind the white-lace curtains on the windows of our hearts.

So no one really sees just where we're at or how we are or what we're really thinking.

Perhaps not even God. We close the door on him as well too easily.

Late on in the day I called on a home where grief has come gate-crashing into their hearts. Bereavement. I'll conduct a memorial service for the man next week.

The guy who died has been here in the village almost 30 years. A youngish man. Just one year older than I am. Hardly old at all.

And leaving behind a wife and a daughter who've shared so much of the life that he lived all these years.

He certainly filled his life all right. I couldn't even start to count the different charities he's helped.

And a massive, life-long football fan (supporting Hearts): and a speedway fan as well.

In some ways I suppose he was himself the absolute epitomy of all I'd seen already through the day. That passion, kindness, all that child-like energy and all that ingrained hopefulness and fun.

And yet so quickly and so suddenly the whole thing just evaporates away. Death. The whole thing just so fleeting. And - if that is all there is - so empty, therefore, too.

We can't afford to hide behind those staid and white-laced curtains which we draw across our feelings and emotions in our hearts. We can't afford to push these things away.

We need to see why passion is important and why kindness is so good: we need to see why life should be such fun for us and filled with so much hope: we need to see why all that child-like wonder and excitement which we feel is ultimately good.

We need to see where these things have their truest sort of focus, what gives them all the only lasting meaning they can have.

And that, I guess, is what my life's about. Which takes me back to the barber's shop where my day, in a sense, began.

With people. Where they are. In the highs and the lows of their lives. Sharing the joys, sharing the sorrows. Sharing my life and sharing my heart with them.

And sharing my Lord as well. Who gives life all its meaning.

I did take a look in the mirror as well, when once I was done with the barber's shop. I did half wonder if the guy who cut my hair was so immersed in dreaming of a Scotland win that he'd gone and cut a huge St Andrew's flag across my scalp!

It would have been appropriate! And it might have meant emblazoned on my very head and hair was the symbol that above all else reveals to us the heart of life's true meaning. The cross.

(But he hadn't!)