spiked coffee?

There's a guy who lived an awful long time ago whom I seem to be 'meeting' at almost every turn.

The guy's called Abram. And, as I say, he lived a long, long time ago.

But I can't seem to get away from the man. Like the Lord is somehow keen for me to meet the man and take to heart the message and the challenge of his life.

Maybe it's a sign of age or something.

Because Abram doesn't come onto the radar of Scripture till he's well on up in years. Living in what was, I guess, a pretty well-to-do sort of place and looking forward in the normal run of things, presumably, to a kind of easing off in later years.

And then he finds his dreams of any sort of comfortable retirement put on long-term hold.

He's called by God in later middle-age to start out on a journey to another, better land.

Where? Well, he really doesn't know. But he goes, nonetheless. Not knowing where he's going. It's a risk. But he goes.

Because he somehow surely knows within himself that this is where the future lies. God's future. The world's future.

And his future.

I've had this nagging sense for quite some time, I guess. Three years, maybe more. This sense that what was Abram's story in his latter years is somehow to be mine as well.

Like my real life's work is still to come! A call from God to take such steps of faith and head towards a very different land. A very different way of being church.

I've challenged folk for long enough to recognise this call from God. The call to venture out in faith and learn again just what it is to be today a follower of Jesus in the very complex, multi-cultured world in which we live.

I preach it. It's like now God maybe says - Just go ahead and do it!

I had a meeting today and that was the sense that I had as the time marched on. 'Meeting' maybe makes it seem more formal than it was. It was a coffee really. Nothing more. Up town. But I was meeting and speaking with someone there - and the time ran on for a good two hours.

And that was the sense I had. Like God just planted Abram there, right across the table, as it were. As if to say - He did it: now you go do it too.

It's scarey when that happens. Exciting. But scarey.

And I'm not sure what it means. Or what it will involve. Or where it all will lead.

It's not enough to preach it, so it seems! Sometimes a guy has to go and prove it. To do it himself and show what it's like and let folk see that it works.

As in, be a leader. Give a lead. Take the step of faith and head on out.

Not brief and safe excursions out into the sort of 'countryside' around. Not a kind of ecclesiastical weekend camping trip.

But leaving. Like Abram did. Packing up and heading out and ... well, leaving all the trusted, tried, familiar things behind.

Maybe my coffee was spiked!

But those two brief hours in the middle of the day brought a potent experience of God!

They put the morning's preparation in a rather different light. Gave an added 'edge' to all that I'd been thinking through. And made me see things through a rather different pair of eyes when calling on a range of folk much later in the day.

He may have lived millennia ago. But the guy won't go away and I'm starting to feel I know him pretty well!