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.