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!